Spotted Lanternflys !@$@#!!

The WDW 3

The WDW 3
Joined
Apr 4, 2020
Do you have these near you? We live just outside of Philadelphia and they are insane around here. I killed about 6 of them while filling my car up today.
 
Oh yes - we are in KOP & they are the bane of our existence.
And still there are people who just walk by them - we are supposed to be killing them!! HATE. THESE. BUGS.
 
What, pray tell, is a lantern bug? :confused3 Is it something like a firefly?

it’s a bug that was originally native to Asia and came over around 2014 and has no natural predators here so is running rampant. It eats the sap from trees, killing them. It’s ruining fruit crops and it also creates weird sap fall out that attracts bees and wasps and turns into a fungus and mold.

they are horrible and everywhereIn this area.

https://www.agriculture.pa.gov/Plan...omology/spotted_lanternfly/Pages/default.aspx
 


Yep, we live in Hershey and they are everywhere! I think I’ve killed about 20 just on my property in the last week. Last night I saw two on our patio door and when my DH and DS went outside to kill them, they checked on our red maple, and sure enough, DH said there are a ton on it. I’m sure it will die. ☹️ They checked our river birch and cherry tree and neither of those had any on them. Any suggestions how to get them off my red maple?
 


We are in the northeastern corner of Maryland. We were hiking in Fair Hill and saw several trees covered with crawling SLF. How are you supposed to kill them? I did see capturing them in an empty water bottle.
 
While pretty when they fly they are a dreaded sight. I am in NE Philadelphia and they are everywhere. I go on killing sprees whenever I see them. My 2 youngest grandsons "hunt" them and have contests to see who can kill more.

I had to wait outside a building one day for my granddaughters doctor's appointment and killed at least 10, she ran away.

I have never seen the eggs but I know the nymphs in the spring and they are easier to kill. They can't hop/fly yet. My mom is having a horrible time with them as she has grape vines and they love them. My dad sits with a can of spray to stun them and then stomps them.

HATE, HATE, HATE the nasty things.
 
I remember a podcast about how scientists captured mosquitoes and edited their DNA to wipe out massive populations of malaria spreading pests, and the results were outstanding. Basically the gene-manipulated mosquitoes spread a lethal mutation to the rest of the mosquito population, and it was mosquitogeddon!

Anyhow I read that in recent years some have looked into similar methods to solve the lanternfly problem. It doesn't seem as effective to rely on citizens to solve the problem with limited means.

They're surprisingly pretty.
SLFwingsopen..jpg
 
I'm right across the bridge from Philly, and they're everywhere. We don't have any trees on our property to worry about, but I was working in our basement the other day and I had one in there. Jeez, they're fast! It was zooming around, landing on stuff almost long enough for me to hit it with my shoe and then taking off again. I finally managed to squash it on the jukebox.

@Mysterian last year there was a story on the news about a lady who was killing them and then making earrings out of the wings.
 
There's a very good article about the problem in this month's Smithsonian Magazine.

They are large (about as big as an adult's thumb with the wings out), and tend to be very slow and poor flyers. If they eventually show up around here, I'd be tempted to suck em' up with a shop vac that has a nice little poison cocktail sloshing in the bottom.
 
There's a very good article about the problem in this month's Smithsonian Magazine.

They are large (about as big as an adult's thumb with the wings out), and tend to be very slow and poor flyers. If they eventually show up around here, I'd be tempted to suck em' up with a shop vac that has a nice little poison cocktail sloshing in the bottom.

They’re actually shockingly quick. They have excellent reflexes I guess, because when you try to stomp them they take off. They don’t normally fly far, maybe a foot or two, but it was taking me 3-5 attempts before a successful squash. Now I have a net and I’m able to catch them right away. I told DH I am a lanternfly serial killer! Unfortunately we still lost FOUR trees in my backyard to them.
 

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