The cotton producers quest for "earliness" presents entomologists with a new challenge. The challenge is to achieve an early crop and manage the early sprays. To meet this challenge, we must learn which insecticides accomplish our goals of earliness and reduce the build up of other pest insects. Early season insecticide applications usually cause damaging aphid infestations. Timing the application at an early stage of the crop's development may be less detrimental to parasites and predators. Yield loss data and reproductive biology dictates that a scout detect a generalized infestation of aphids across a field quickly. The first indication of a generalized infestation of aphids is the appearance of winged adult aphids. To allow producers sufficient time to react to such a population, a treatment threshold may have to be set below a damage threshold. Scouting and thresholds are useless if no control is available. If no control is available for aphids, the some benefits of earliness achieved by controlling insects at first square may be lost to aphid infestations.