Hello Gardeners, I’m Amanda McNulty with Clemson Extension and Making It Grow. The western flower thrips is the most important insect that serves as a vector of tomato spotted wilt virus for us in South Carolina. Thrips are not strong flyers but they are easily moved by wind currents and the range of the western flower thrips has been expanded as it travels from state to state on infested plants in the nursery trade. Thrips preferentially feed in terminal buds or inside flowers, places where it is hard for insecticide to reach them; so spraying your tomatoes will not give you much protection. Only the larval stage of the thrip, which develops inside the plant tissues, can be infected with the virus, and pesticides won’t travel inside the plant. Planting tomatoes on silver, reflective plastic mulch may give some control as it confuses the thrips and makes them fly upside down, they don’t see the tomatoes below.