The cicadas are coming.
Sometime this spring, the ponderous, red-eyed insects will emerge from 17 years in hiding to swarm over the eastern half of Ohio, down into West Virginia and as far east as Maryland and Virginia.
For the most part, these flying cocktail sausages don’t pose significant problems, other than a serious case of the heebie-jeebies in insect phobics. But they can damage and sometimes even kill young trees and shrubs, so homeowners with young plants might want to plan on protecting them.
Oh, and you might want to invest in earplugs, too. These bugs get loud.
The insects we’re talking about are periodical cicadas, members of three cicada species that, through some quirk of nature, all emerge from their long developmental phase in the same year. They’re cousins to what are called annual cicadas, some of which appear every summer.
This batch of periodical cicadas hatched from eggs in 1999, dropped to the ground and then burrowed into the soil to spend the next 17 years growing up. There they’ve been sucking on plant roots and slowly expanding in size, waiting for nature’s signal that it’s time to dig their way out of the ground and go about the business of making baby cicadas.
Exactly when the cicadas will emerge is anyone’s guess, but insect scientist Dave Shetlar believes it will start happening in late April in southern Ohio and maybe a month afterward here. It all depends on when the temperature of the soil about 8 inches below the surface reaches the magic point of approximately 64 degrees Fahrenheit.
When that happens, the young cicadas, called nymphs, will drill their way out the soil and crawl up tree trunks or other vertical surfaces. There they’ll latch on, split their exoskeletons — the hard shells that cover their bodies — and emerge as adults, said Shetlar, a landscape entomologist with the Ohio State University Extension.
Then the fun starts — or the trouble, depending on how you look at it.
The bugs will embark on what pretty much amounts to a late-life insect orgy. The males will seek mates through courting songs so loud that wooded areas will practically vibrate with the noise. The females will be drawn to that racket, and, well, you know what happens then.
Damage to trees
Once impregnated, the females will seek out small branches about the width of a pencil, where they’ll cut a series of slits in the bark to deposit their eggs. Cicadas will lay their eggs on many types of deciduous trees and shrubs, but they don’t much like evergreens, because of the sap.
With most trees, the damage from the egg nests is merely a cosmetic problem. Small limb tips might turn brown and fall off, but Shetlar calls that “nature’s pruning.”
But in younger trees and shrubs with trunks that are 2 inches across or less, the majority of the limbs might be the perfect size to serve as a cicada nursery. A heavy infestation could significantly damage or, in extreme cases, kill a plant.
That’s why it’s a good idea to put off planting trees and shrubs this year until after the invasion, said Mike Bentley, an entomologist with the National Pest Management Association.
Protecting plants
If you already have young plants in your landscape, they might warrant protecting. And the time to do that, Bentley said, is when the males start singing.
Bentley, Shetlar and other insect experts say the best way to protect a vulnerable plant is to cover the leafy area with netting, cheesecloth or a similar material to keep cicadas off the branches. The openings in the netting or fabric should be no bigger than a quarter-inch, so the bugs can’t fit through, said Matt Rhodes, nursery coordinator at Donzell’s Flower and Garden Center in Akron.
Tie the netting to the trunk below the lowest branch, or secure it with duct tape, Bentley and Shetlar said. That keeps the netting from blowing away and blocks cicadas from either climbing up to or flying onto the branches.
Or you can secure the netting to the ground with landscaping staples, Rhodes said. That might be an easier method if you’re dealing with a shrub.
You can also just keep an eye on your plants and knock the bugs off when you see them, Bentley said. You can do that by spraying the cicadas with a garden hose, or, if you’re not squeamish, you can pick them off. They’re so slow that they’re easy to capture, he said, and they don’t bite or sting.
The old method of wrapping tree trunks with foil or a sticky wrap is no longer considered effective, Shetlar and Rhodes said. Those wraps prevent the newly emerged nymphs from crawling very far up the trunks, but that’s not where the damage happens. Besides, Shetlar said, the bugs will just park themselves below the bottom edge of the wrap and shed their shells there.
Don’t use insecticide
But what if you’re just scared of the alien-looking creatures? Can you use insecticide to keep them away?
That’s not recommended for the typical homeowner, the experts said.
For one thing, it’s not very effective, Shetlar said. Even if you spray the cicadas in your own yard, he said, more bugs from the neighbors’ yards will just fly in.
For another, insecticide use can have unintended consequences. Rhodes noted that pets or wildlife will eat cicadas and can be sickened by the chemicals.
Learn to live with them
Better to stay inside as much as possible if you don’t want to come face to face with the marauders. Make sure your screens are in good repair, Bentley suggested, and don’t leave doors, garage doors or unscreened windows open.
We humans don’t have a lot of control over cicadas, he said, so we might as well learn to live alongside them.
You might even learn to appreciate this relative rarity. Periodical cicadas are peculiar to our part of the world, and in any given region, their emergence happens only a few times in a lifetime.
Rhodes is trying to put a positive spin on cicadas when his customers ask about battle tactics. “I’m trying to get people here in the mood and the spirit,” he said.
It’s not like they’re dangerous or terribly destructive, he said. “To me, it’s more fun.”
Mary Beth Breckenridge can be reached at 330-996-3756 or mbrecken@thebeaconjournal.com. You can also become a fan on Facebook at www.facebook.com/MBBreckABJ, follow her on Twitter @MBBreckABJ and read her blog at www.ohio.com/blogs/mary-beth.