Most of our cotton is about 10 days to 2 weeks in to the blooming period. This is the perfect time to begin scouting for stink bug damaged bolls. We just completed 5 cotton field scouting clinics across our cotton region and it was not hard to find stink bug damaged bolls, and a couple of fields had high levels—30-40 percent internal stink bug damage. By the 3rd week of bloom, the threshold drops to 10 percent new damage and remains at 10 percent through the 5th week of bloom. These next three weeks (3rd, 4th and 5th weeks of blooming) are the most import time to scout and treat, if needed, cotton for stink bugs. Use the new cotton stink bug scouting card which provides the thresholds, scouting procedures and a template for determining the proper size of the bolls that should be used to make any treatment decision. If you don’t have one, contact your local Virginia Cooperative Extension Ag Agent—we will see that you get one.