Carefully peel back the top coat of the scale to identify if it is still alive. Alive ... The test is not attached to the body and can be peeled back to reveal the soft-bodied scale insect (Fig.3).

More than 8,000 species fit under the definition of scale insects, making identification challenging because they appear in so many different configurations. You'll typically encounter either ...

Because they're so tiny and hard to detect, scale insects are best banished from your trees by introducing their natural ...