If you have houseplants and see little white scaly looking bumps or stuff that looks like small patches of cotton on your plants, you probably have mealy bugs. These are commonly brought in with cuttings or plants from infected sources. A few years back, I had a well-known cactus and succulent expert send me some rare cuttings. I was soooo thrilled, but later found out that a few of the cuttings had mealy bugs hiding somewhere on them. A little while after I mixed the incoming cuttings with my own plants, mealybugs started multiplying. I tried many of the commonly recommended ways to get rid of them, but they didn't work. I found Bayer Advanced Complete Insect Killer to be helpful, if applied a few times in appropriate intervals. The chemical is not listed for indoor use, but, after reviewing the chemical components, I found they were relatively innocuous when applied with what I would consider reasonable care.

I was going to post links with many of these "let's talk about something" posts, but I didn't quickly find one that I really liked for this particular topic.