 The Nature of Cedar Mill
Stink Bugs!
by Virginia Bruce
The Brown Marmorated Stink Bug (BMSB) has invaded Bonny Slope!
This pest has caused millions of dollars in damages to crops on the east coast, and is now busy building up a population in Oregon. I started finding these critters in and around my home last fall. People thought I was talking about the harmless Box Elder bugs that congregate on warm southern walls, but this is definitely a different animal.
One identifying characteristic of the mature bugs is that they have one or more white stripes on their antennae.
During late winter, they began to fly around in my house. When one landed on my leg, I decided it was time to do something. I contacted the Department of Horticulture at Oregon State, and this spring, one of their researchers visited my property. After examining a couple of specimens I had saved, we walked around my property. He carried a cloth-covered frame, and when he held it below some blackberry branches, numbers of nymphs (immature hatchlings) cascaded onto the frame with each whack of his stick.
 Later in the year, I noticed this egg mass on one of my plums. And now the maturing bugs are waltzing around in my veggie garden. They have damaged my sweetcorn, and who knows what else?
These bugs overwinter in warm, sheltered spaces, and find the walls and crawlspaces of houses an ideal winter home. They emerge in late winter/early spring to mate and reproduce.
Some people don’t notice the smell, but for those who do, it’s pervasive and unpleasant, something between cilantro and paint. Two bugs hiding between our mattress and the wall drove me crazy until we found them, and I still haven’t gotten the smell out of that sheet.
In the mid-Atlantic states, particularly in Maryland, they have gotten so numerous that one school teacher took a challenge from his students to try eating them!
So far, no preventive methods have been found to be effective. Researchers at OSU are working to see if a parasitic wasp from China might be the answer, but they are being careful not to unleash unintended consequences.
The researcher who visited me promised to drop off a “condo” pheromone trap to try to catch this year’s population before they enter my home. Please, let it work!
For more information and resources on the BMSB, and for a link to make your own report, visit http://horticulture.oregonstate.edu/group/brown-marmorated-stink-bug-oregon
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