Do spider mites decrease potency during flowering?

It seems we always get spider mites toward the end of flowering. Now, Straw Cough is at 8 weeks and almost done. And of, course the spider mites are popping up quite a bit. Not much I can do (I have been manually crushing them and cutting off badly infested leaves daily) at this point as far as eradicating them.

So, my question is- should I cut them now because the spider mites are damaging the quality/potency of the final product? There are still a lot of white pistils, but they are super swelled and frosty.

Or are they not harming the trich production at this point (or trichs/buds themselves) and I should let them go another week. I am flushing them now...

On the same subject- I also have mites on a really huge WW plant. This plant was a mom, so it has a bunch of small branches with buds. The plant got spider mites maybe 3 weeks into flowering. Now it appears that the pistils are turning brown- like it is done. I am pretty sure the mites affected this plant. Should I chop it and grab what little has developed. or let it go and hope it forms new pistils?

I have the bastards under control now, but did they already screw things up for me?

I wish someone would come up with something that can kill them once and for all. I know all about the little pricks, and practice all safety procedures (clean room, clean cloths, no pets, etc.).

Yet I always have them...

Hello? Am in the right forum? Anyone know anything about spider mites during flowering? Hello?

Get some lady bugs and they will take care of the mites very quickly. You can order them online or maybe find them local. When it's harvest time pick out the ladybugs and save them for the next grow.

Yea, done that. Thanks for the response, my question is not what can I do about the mites, but rather what damage they are doing to the plants that are almost finished. Are they damaging the bud's potency? Trich production?

Should I harvest them now, or still let them go, even though they are infested?

Thanks again... Ladybugs are on the way

sorry to dig up an old thread, but i too would like to know the answer to this question.

Sparky22 said:

sorry to dig up an old thread, but i too would like to know the answer to this question.

Click to expand...

I had a crop that had spider mites pretty bad towards the end, my yield was noticeably smaller than previous and post crops. The only variable was the spider mites so I'm pretty sure they affect yield, for potency, trichs and what not I felt that the clean crops smelled stronger, but that was all I NOTICED. I'm sure they are causing all kinds of problems, but those are the issues that were actually noticeable in my case.

kdub86 said:

I had a crop that had spider mites pretty bad towards the end, my yield was noticeably smaller than previous and post crops. The only variable was the spider mites so I'm pretty sure they affect yield, for potency, trichs and what not I felt that the clean crops smelled stronger, but that was all I NOTICED. I'm sure they are causing all kinds of problems, but those are the issues that were actually noticeable in my case.

Click to expand...

Yeah i could tell the buds weren't swelling as much when the spider mites set in. We just hit them with some doktor doom on saturday and they already seem to be doing better. Hopefully the yield won't be diminished by too much. At what stage did you get the mites?