You may need to take the plant(s) home for the weekend for a good shower to knock many of those Mealy Bugs off the plant(s). Insecticidal Soaps, according to what I read, is a better control then Neem Oil Products and mixing Neem in the water will do nothing to help.

Here is a link that might be useful: Mealy Bug control

Unfortunately the plant is quite large and was just brought back about a month ago. I had taken it home to re-pot and while i was doing that it got numerous "baths" with the hose to try and get all of the mealy bugs off. I have read some posts that mention BATS but i am unsure as to what that is. Do you have any info on that?

Fill a plant mister with a solution of one part alcohol to three parts water and apply the alcohol in a much more efficient manner. Be sure to get the spray down into the nooks and crannies where mealies hide.

Yours is one of the many Aglaonema cultivars so popular as an easy to grow indoor plant. Mealybugs are their one common pest.

I am also going through a mealybug problem. I know where it came from...a store whose plants were full of them! I went back to show the manager which plant started it all (ereca palm), and the plants were full of them. He was clearly upset and started throwing plants away. They were crawling on nearby pots, spreading. Ugh.

The store had such nice house plants and a good variety. But now I realize that this store is untrustworthy. I bought at least half a dozen plants there and each one had mealybugs.

Today I found eggs on an English ivy that was doing so well. It was growing multiple leaves at all the leaf joints. But I had to murder this plant for the good of my precious spider plant.

So in the past two months I had to kill a jade, serveral ivies, a croton, etc, etc, etc. In the past two days I have found a couple mealybugs on two of my peperomia, and my philadrondon. What is strange is that there are two types of mealybug. The ones on the philadrondon are long tail...I hate them so much I wish I could punch one. I can only take pleasure in killing them and their egg sacks with rubbing alcohol.

I have to say that if you spend 10 or 15 minutes a day manually looking for them, you can get the bugs and eggs before they have a chance to get out of control. I am hoping this works for me. I recommend you use a flashlight, it is a very good way to see them. Check the stems near the potting mix. That is where I found the egg sacs. Bastards!!!

Thanks for listening. I needed to get that off my chest :-)

Keep in mind that the rubbing alcohol could be as damaging to plant tissue as the Mealy Bug.