Pests: Black Fly

This morning whilst doing our watering we noticed a few black bugs crawling over the pseudobulbs on our Oncidium sphacelatum. Turns out "A Few" was actually Hundreds when we looked up at the racemes. Almost every flower has like 20-50 little black aphid type creatures clustered around it, merrily sucking away. No wonder the flowers were starting to look sad :/

Black Fly Of Doom

Lots of Doom

Not just behind, but in and on the flowers.
And look at those shed exoskeletons. :/

Extreme closeup (crop)

 The Oncidium was then immediately relegated to the bathroom (quarantine and spraying area), had the worst affected (and mostly dead) racemes trimmed off (tragic!), and was then sprayed with Dursban (Chlorpyrifos) 1ml/l with 1ml/l of Bladbuff wetting agent. Made sure some got into the crowns between the leaves, just in case...

I really, really would like a lot of lady bugs and whatever eats/parasitises whitefly and red spider mite...

So, if your flowers look sad, don't assume they're done flowering... have a closer look :/
We'll be keeping a close eye on the rest of our plants for the next couple of weeks.

The photographic models got flushed down the toilet, and the other racemes were tossed in a plastic bag and immediately removed from the OOAB premises... Argh.