Stink Bug Season In NYC: How To Stop Them Smelling Up Your Home

NEW YORK CITY — Ahhh, fall. The perfect time for picking pumpkins, seeing the leaves change in Central Park and wearing sweaters and jackets.

And to the annoyance and disgust of many New York City residents, it's also the time of year that stink bugs show up uninvited. These bugs aren't interested in your latest pumpkin spice recipes, but they are itching to set up a winter camp in your warm, cozy home.

So far this year, the brown marmorated stink bug has been spotted in 47 states – including right here in New York City.

You’ll recognize these shield-shaped insects by their marbled or streaked — marmorated — appearance.

See also: NYC Pumpkin Patch Farm Guide 2021

It's not just their unwelcome appearance in your apartment that's the problem. Stink bugs are voracious eaters and what they can do with those piercing, sucking mouthparts to an apple, peach or pear orchard isn’t pretty. Lots of other crops are at risk from stink bug damage, too.

Not much data is available on stink bugs in NYC. In the state as a whole, the bugs have reportedly caused severe agricultural and nuisance problems.

To stop further infestations, states including New York have introduced samurai wasps (Trissolcus japonicus) that come from the same part of the world as stink bugs. They hitched a ride to North America, too, likely emerging from stink bug egg masses.

The wasp, which is about as big as a sesame seed and lays its eggs into the eggs of stink bugs, is proving to be a promising biological control agent against brown marmorated stink bugs, according to Michigan State University entomologists.

Stink Bug Control Tips

On the home front, your best defense against stink bugs is to arm yourself with weather stripping, caulking and tape, and make your home a fortress. Seal up gaps and crevices around where doors, windows, chimneys and utility pipes are cut into the exterior. Any opening large enough for a stink bug to crawl through should be sealed.

The best thing to do if you find them inside is gently sweep them into a bucket, then fill it with a couple of inches of soapy water. You could vacuum them up, but perhaps do that as a last resort because it will trigger stink bugs’ notorious odor and make your vacuum cleaner smell nasty.

Some companies recommend a special stink bug vacuum — a cheap, handheld model used only for that chore. The bag should be tossed in a thick, disposable trash bag and taken far from the house.

Poison can quickly kill the stink bugs, but that will also trigger their stench. Professional extermination is another option.

Or, Just Live With Stink Bugs

Or, if you can bear the thought of living communally with stink bugs inside your home, you could just leave them alone.

Their mouthparts — tiny shields about a half-inch long and wide, which they curiously tuck between their legs when they’re not piercing and sucking the juice from plants — are not good for biting people. Stink bugs can’t sting you.

They don’t nest or lay eggs or reproduce indoors. They don’t feed on anything or anyone in your house. They just move in to take a load off for a few months — scientifically, they enter a dormant phase known as diapause.

You’re unlikely to even know they’re there unless you do something to disturb them.

But if you just leave them alone, they’ll crawl right back outside in the spring.

26,000-Strong Stink Bug Invasion

Not every homeowner has a stink bug horror story like that of Pam Stone and Paul Zimmerman, who discovered that 26,000 stink bugs invaded their home as the cool air of fall came to South Carolina. They had left doors open leading to a second-story deck outside their bedroom, and the stink bugs marched right in as if they owned the place.

The couple’s experience, hilariously recounted by Kathryn Schulz in The New Yorker, was “like a horror movie,” Stone said.

They were on every visible surface, and on many that weren’t visible. Squashing them wasn’t the answer, of course, because it’s when they’re threatened that stink bugs throw off that gawdawful smell. But when the couple carried some outside, more stink bugs flew in.

Finally, after 45 minutes, they thought their DIY extermination had worked. Nope. They heard one buzzing as it flew across the room to join its cronies hiding on the backside of a picture.

This went on for days, with Stone and Zimmerman finding them in the strangest places.

Stone, who is an actress, comedian and horse trainer, sprang off her horse as if she’d been catapulted when she discovered her saddle was crawling with them.

Your home may not be invaded by a horde of tens of thousands of stink bugs, as Stone and Zimmerman’s was. But a wildlife biologist in Maryland, entomologists in Virginia and bank employees in West Virginia reported larger infestations — about a million in one place, according to one estimate — of the shield-shaped menace, The New Yorker report said.

When stink bugs feed on crops, damage can include everything from bruises and blemishes to aborted sweet corn kernels and a change in the sugar levels in some fruits.

Stink bugs damage ornamental trees as well as fruits and vegetables, and they pose such a threat that the U.S. Department of Agriculture funded the Stop the Brown Marmorated Stink Bug strike force. It's a team of 50 researchers from 18 land-grant universities closely tracking the migration of the invasive, fast-moving pest.