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Franklin County Area Expects More Stink Bugs

by LarryDeezell | September 24, 2009 at 03:26 pm

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Bonita Wauls can't control the stink bugs on her front porch. Wauls says "They're bigger and feistier than the first year, they're bolder." Trying common bug traps like fly paper, she had said that "they're so smart they go around the strip, they're like some alien bug."

The brown marmorated stink bug is an alien in Pennsylvania and native to China and Japan. It was probably introduced to the Allentown area before 1996, according to the Penn State Department of Entomology

The stink bug has made Wauls street in Chambersburg a disturbing place, they release a stinky, musty smell when agitated.

In Asia the stink bug is an agricultural pest. It's mouth pierces fruit skin like a hypodermic needle and draws out the juice. The mark leaves the fruit unmarketable

Robert Kessler, from the Penn State Cooperative Extension in Franklin County, says "typically this is the very beginning. The hammer is going to hit in two more weeks. I'm sure it will be worse than it was last year."The stink bugs find a warm place in the winters and reappearing on warm winter days. Kessler also said "keeping the bugs outside is the preferred method of control, pyrethroid insecticides can be applied to the south side of a house soon after the bugs appear."

Wauls, who has asthma, said she tried a Venus fly trap last year. Bugs avoided it, and after she fed it a stink bug, the plant died

Wauls was successful with an organic pesticide Diatect and said "it apparently dehydrates a bug in a day." She crushes 100 of them on the porch, sometimes she flushes them, her reply is "they have an aweful smell."