Spotted Lanternflies
Last edited Mon Aug 21, 2023, 05:15 PM - Edit history (1)
My son and I were texting today about lanternflies - he's got a bunch at his work and I do a lap around the house and kill what I can each morning.
At one point, he texted to say "We're going to lose this war. There are hundreds in the parking lot."
Maybe a bit of hyperbole, but I took recycling to the landfill and the Japanese Knotweed (the original invasive species in W PA) lining the hillside to the dump was covered in thousands of them.
I spend most of my free time outdoors and have never seen anything like this.
Anyone else seeing them in large numbers?
ETA - my son sent a video on his lunch break. One parking spot in the lot looked like a barn cat covered in fleas - there had to be 50-75 flies crawling around in that space. He said the entire back lot looks like this spot and reiterated that we're going to lose this war.
= new reply since forum marked as read
I refuse to use forever chemicals and banding the trees can kill birds etc.
I hope someone comes up with a way to eradicate them soon- by way of genetic engineering to prevent reproduction.
- Hopefully soon! 
They looked like tiny ladybugs with white spots instead of black spots. But I suddenly realized they were spotted lanternflies that hadn't fully grown yet. They weren't flying then, just hopping around like little red grasshoppers.
Well now it's late August and they're flying around and much harder to see. I killed one with brown wings the other day, the wings haven't turned red yet. These insects don't sting or bite humans. As a matter of fact they don't even want to be around us, they just want to eat fruit trees and grapevines. They won't kill us, they'll just kill our food.
This was my post: https://www.democraticunderground.com/107418993
"Are you seeing spotted lanternflies in your area?"
and finally saw my very first one some time in late summer in North Wales, Montgomery County (about 15 miles north of where I live) in a parking lot that same year. It was sitting on the tire of a car parked next to mine at a shopping plaza there. I was there with my sister and niece and I remember dragging them over to point it out to them and was somewhat debating whether to try to smack it where it sat but didn't only because it was on someone else's car tire, and then it jumped away as I looked closer anyway.
Fast forward a year later (2020) and in they came into the city and in my neighborhood. They looked docile but were hard to smack because not only do they hop fast, but their wings give them enough lift to hop pretty far (in some cases, almost 6 or 7 ft) with a single leap! 
Still, I was able to spot and snag the crawling black-spotted or red-spotted nymphs.
Fast forward another year (2021) and it was an invasion in my neighborhood. I had them crawling all over the front of my house (walls and sidewalk) and on my car, and bought a couple spiked swatters to get what I could in addition to stomping. They were also out on my back patio and I spent much of that summer trying to eradicate them.
And then the next year (last year - 2022) I saw a few, but nowhere near what I had seen in 2021. I was armed with the swatter though.
And this year, I finally saw my first one last week. So far I've only seen that "one", although I expect there may be a few more out there but it is still, at least at the moment (knock on wood) a far cry from a couple years ago.
