Pam - I found this artical on thrips - if you are having trouble with the color of your blooms it may be thrips..
Controlling Daylily Thrips
Thrips are the bane of evey daylily grower, hybridizers and collectors alike. The tiny insect can destroy a flower crop and at the very least willl make your daylily blooms twisted, distorted, muddy and off color. We have even found insects which appeared to be thrips inside of distorted daylily seed pods. If you find buds turning brown and dropping off thrips are the likely culprit. Before you start wildly spraying put up a few thrip traps. Take a small piece of cardboard or wood and paint one side yellow and one side blue. Attach to a stake, smear with petroleum jelly, insert the traps in your daylily garden and wait. Withn a few days you should have a few tiny dark (sometimes orange or yellow) insects trapped in the jelly.
If indeed you are infested with the dreaded thrip a very aggressive campaign is required to control them. We use systemic rose fertilizer which contains a thrip insecticide in early spring In warmer areas perhaps in late winter would be the time to treat. 30 days later we follow up with a soil drench of Merit insecticide. We do routine patrols with a sprayer of neem or spinosad if a daylily plant appears to be under attack. Sprays are not very effective because the insects burrow into buds and leaves where the sprays do not reach. This is in addition to the before mentioned systemic controls which will kill most of the insects wherever they hide.
Dry weather encourages the thrips and some daylilies are more attractive than others to the insect. 2012 has been a very bad year for them here and each year seems to get worse. An early and agressive campaign is required if the thrip finds its way to your garden.
