Spotted Lanternfly Leaving Egg Masses Around CT: What Residents Can Do

CONNECTICUT — It's that magical time of year in the Northeast: temperatures dip, football's back on the TV, Starbucks is serving Pumpkin Spice Latte, and the spotted lanternfly adults and their brood are everywhere.

"We've just been getting reports in the last couple of days, the spotted lanternflies are laying eggs at this time," state entomologist Victoria Lynn Smith told Patch on Thursday. "The adults are going to be present until we get a hard freeze of about 28 degrees. And last year in some areas that didn't happen until late November."

The spotted lanternflies got busy, fast: they only hit their adult lifecycle stage around July. And they're good at it, too: the prolific breeders lay masses of 30 to 50 eggs in once place.

The eggs are covered with a waxy, mud-colored substance called an ootheca that dries and cracks, an effective camouflage.

Smith said The Connecticut Agricultural Experiment Station had just processed its 400th report of fresh egg sightings, from over 20 towns, in the counties of Fairfield, New Haven and New London.

It's not as if the adult SLF needed any help from their next generation to be an unsightly nuisance. Although lanternflies usually do not kill plants, they suck out sugars that significantly weaken their hosts and leave behind massive amounts of honeydew — that is, excrement.

The honeydew can attract other insects, including wasps, ants and bees, and also cause a sooty mold to grow on the plant, interfering with its ability to photosynthesize and create the energy it needs to survive and grow. When populations of SLF are high, their excrement will rain from trees and can form slippery surfaces on steps and decks. The adults will also gather in large numbers and have been known to swarm restaurant doors, enter local businesses, fly up people’s shirts, and amass on outdoor furniture, toys and trees. In the fall, adults about 1 inch long can often be found congregating on more than 70 species of plants.

See Also: Spotted Lanternfly Reaches Adult Stage In CT: Make A DIY Trap [VIDEO]

In January, the state had enacted a quarantine order meant to control the infestation by clamping down on the bug's movements. Currently, it's looking to punt.

"We are under discussion right now, of lifting or modifying that quarantine simply because the insect is spreading so fast," Smith said. "The goal of the quarantine was to slow the spread. But it's looking like that's just not going to be possible."

The second phase of this War on Bugs won't be pretty. CAES has already begun distributing "scraper cards" to any human who enlists.

"They are a credit card-like thing that you can use to scrape the egg masses off of surfaces and put them into alcohol, or just basically smash them," Smith said. "It's kind of a messy undertaking, but it's one of the most effective ways of preventing future generations of spotted lantern flies."

Smith said CAES field technicians have already distributed thousands of the cards to residents.

But don't expect the wily critters to make scraping away their young easy: Eighty to 90 percent of egg masses on trees are found 10 feet above the ground or higher.