Stinkbugs: Threat or Menace?

April 29, 2011 9:47 AM

The Brown Marmorated Stink Bug (Halyomorpha halys) is an invasive insect introduced from China and first spotted in the United States in 1998 in Allentown, PA.

Since then, stinkbug infestations have spread across the Mid Atlantic and Northeast, causing crop damage, especially to orchard crops, corn and cotton. Genetically modified Bt Cotton has been especially hard hit, reducing yields below that of conventional cotton. Sustainably raised crops have also been affected, in particular no-till corn.

Farmers and researchers are researching control methods, such as using trap crops and natural predators, such as parasitic wasps. (Home gardeners can also use beneficial insects to help control insect pests.) And, lest you think all stinkbugs are bad, the excellently named Giant strong-nosed stinkbug is considered an important predator of soybean pests.

posted by electroboy (64 comments total)

One of those beasts divebombed me in the head this morning and woke me up. They're still not at epic infestation levels here in Baltimore, but when I went to West Virginia a few weeks ago, every surface was CRAWLING with them.

A friend of mine up there has a woodburning stove, and when she'd light it, smoke would come pouring into the room. She disassembled the stovepipe to check if something was blocking it, and yeah something was. TEN MILLION STINKBUGS in one writhing mass. Absolutely revolting.

Even so I'm not quite at the point where I say BRING ON THE PARASITIC WASPS! I mean, that kind of thing has never gone wrong before, has it?
posted by capnsue at 9:53 AM on April 29, 2011 [3 favorites]

I actually considered a post about this myself, because the bastards are LEGION in Northern VA these last two years. Apparently what happened was that the changing climate extended their breeding window something like threefold, so the population exploded a year or three back, and since then they've been reproducing out of control. I have to shake the fuckers out of my LAUNDRY every day. We can't even figure out how they're getting inside the house.

Worst part? Since they're stinkbugs, you can't even take your rage out on them like you want to. You get to say "OH GOD DAMN YOU LITTLE MONSTERS" and wave your fists around... and then get a piece of paper and gently flick them back outside, or flush them if you feel like wasting several gallons of water on pyrrhic vengeance.
posted by FatherDagon at 9:54 AM on April 29, 2011 [5 favorites]

TEN MILLION STINKBUGS in one writhing mass.

Seriously want to throw up at just the thought of this.
posted by Threeway Handshake at 9:54 AM on April 29, 2011 [2 favorites]

We're over-run with them. They're pretty entertaining for my cats though...
posted by blaneyphoto at 9:58 AM on April 29, 2011

Here is a trick I learned to trap them. At night, put a bowl of soapy water underneath a lamp, and turn it on. Turn off all the other lights in the house. They will be attracted to the light, and make their way over to it. Eventually they will get tired and fall off into the soapy water, and drown and die horribly. (The detergent in the water does something to them that makes them die. Regular water doesn't do it.)

I haven't had to try it at my house yet but I'm sure the time will come...
posted by capnsue at 10:00 AM on April 29, 2011 [4 favorites]

(The detergent in the water does something to them that makes them die. Regular water doesn't do it.)

I always thought it was that the detergent breaks the surface tension so that bugs sink instead of sitting happily on top like they're on a little trampoline.

We're in Michigan. My dad was just telling me yesterday that he found a big heap of stinkbugs in his pole barn the other day. Bleah.
posted by not that girl at 10:05 AM on April 29, 2011 [2 favorites]

We have these in England too. Except here we call them the Conservative Party.
posted by MajorDundee at 10:06 AM on April 29, 2011 [11 favorites]

a big heap of stinkbugs
man, they really stink
a big heap of stinkbugs
i don't know what to think
stinking up the barn, babe
and the kitchen too
a big heap of stinkbugs
lord you know it's true
posted by flapjax at midnite at 10:13 AM on April 29, 2011 [5 favorites]

I don't know if meant to be a slow, gritty blues song, flapjax, but that's how I'm going to read it in my head.
posted by infinitywaltz at 10:18 AM on April 29, 2011 [2 favorites]

In So. Va. I pick at least ten a day off the walls. For at least the last 5 years. Before them, we had a ladybug explosion, but ladybugs are small and cute not large and stinky, you hardly notice them until you are sweeping up and have a dustpan full of them. The only good thing I can say about the stinkbugs is that they move slow and are easy to catch. Last summer was the worst; I counted 200 at one time on the outside of the house. They have just become a constant around here.
posted by puny human at 10:18 AM on April 29, 2011

God I hate these things. We found about 20 in a curtain once. The only good thing is that they have the defensive instincts of a brick -- you can pretty much reach out and crush them with a kleenex without them budging.
posted by condour75 at 10:19 AM on April 29, 2011 [1 favorite]

I worry for the farmers in Adams County, Pa., home to numerous apple orchards. If the stink bug infestation is bad, it could put a real dent in supplies of fresh apples. A good article on this topic from last fall.
posted by MonkeyToes at 10:22 AM on April 29, 2011

My parents' house in northern New Jersey gets swarmed with these every year. Great pains are taken to not smush the bugs and unleash the stick. We usually just capture them and throw them outside, which is pretty useless. I'll tell them about the dish of detergenty-water trick -- that's a good one!
posted by chowflap at 10:23 AM on April 29, 2011

There's something about this region that makes for infestations. After the cicadas emerged, we had in successive years a plague of crickets, house centipedes (scary) and millipedes. I almost felt like a needed a trackball.
posted by RobotVoodooPower at 10:29 AM on April 29, 2011 [1 favorite]

We can't even figure out how they're getting inside the house.

They can squeeze themselves almost completely flat and get in through tiny cracks. They also eat japanese beetles, which may be why I haven't seen those bastards in a while.

If these bugs are breeding like this because of global warming, I say bring on nuclear winter. Palin 2012! Nukes for Jesus!
posted by stavrogin at 10:36 AM on April 29, 2011 [2 favorites]

I will have to try that soapy water trick, and see what we can get. It's a step up from my previous plan to deal with them, which was to burn the entire east coast to ash.
posted by FatherDagon at 10:39 AM on April 29, 2011 [12 favorites]

Billy Joel wrote about this back in the 80s.
posted by mr_crash_davis at 10:39 AM on April 29, 2011

They can squeeze themselves almost completely flat and get in through tiny cracks.

We had quite a few last summer (though not as bad as some of the descriptions here), and I found them getting into the house through the CLOSED window in my daughter's bedroom. Of course, my daughter has a HUGE phobia about bugs, which is obviously why they chose that window.
posted by briank at 10:39 AM on April 29, 2011

Nice marmorate.
posted by AugieAugustus at 10:44 AM on April 29, 2011 [5 favorites]

In order to slow their invading, you may want to look for, and caulk, parts of your home's exterior that are not as tight as they should be. I have a huge upstairs bathroom window - closed at all times - that somehow lets in a few stinkers a day. They land in my tub :(
I had a similar problem with a walk-in basement window enclosure. Once caulked properly, job done. I'll want to get a professional to do it, though, because the window is rather high up.
posted by nj_subgenius at 10:44 AM on April 29, 2011

As mentioned, they're bad here in Baltimore. I hate how they crunch and pop when you step on them, inadvertently, at night, barefoot.

Fuck stinkbugs.
posted by Shike at 10:46 AM on April 29, 2011

"They can squeeze themselves almost completely flat"

They are so flat and aerodynamic that if one is on the windshield of your car they won't come unglued until you hit about 50mph. If I ever get pulled over for speeding I'm going to tell the cop I was trying to get rid of a stinkbug.
posted by puny human at 10:46 AM on April 29, 2011 [3 favorites]

My in-laws (in Charlottesville, VA) suffered an epic invasion of these this past winter. We missed the worst of it by not traveling to see them at Christmas, but they were still in evidence when we went in January. Ew.
posted by rtha at 10:55 AM on April 29, 2011

Add some sugar to that soapy water, and it's really good at catching flies and ladybugs, too.
posted by anthom at 10:55 AM on April 29, 2011

That's what they are?

I was in a hotel room most of January and February, with about a dozen of these things hanging around, moving slowly or not at all.

I don't like killing things, even bugs, so I was daily fishing them out of the toilet or the shower so they wouldn't drown. I didn't want to put them outside, as I figured it was too cold for them, so i just put up with them. I think housekeeping eventually killed them.

I've actually started killing bugs now, if I think they might be poisonous to my cat. I really dislike killing spiders, but I don't know what'll happen if my cat tries to eat them. There's very little alive or dead that she won't try to eat.
posted by orthogonality at 10:56 AM on April 29, 2011

They are so flat and aerodynamic that if one is on the windshield of your car they won't come unglued until you hit about 50mph.

Another solution is to drive the car straight into a wall to kill it and then ascend to Valhalla for falling in the conquest of your enemy. Seriously, fuck stinkbugs. I feel about them the way Louis CK feels about deer.
posted by FatherDagon at 10:57 AM on April 29, 2011 [4 favorites]

(his outburst at the end is slightly less horrifically offensive when viewed in the context of the earlier bits in the show)
posted by FatherDagon at 10:59 AM on April 29, 2011

an invasive insect introduced from China

Revenge carried out by our comrades for you American imperialist bastards sending the potato bug our way.
posted by pracowity at 11:01 AM on April 29, 2011 [2 favorites]

Don't throw them outside. When it's cold outside they go back into your house because they detect the warmth emanating from it. This winter I found about 6 of them in one room, threw them out the window. About 15 minutes later I went into another room and discovered the same 6 bugs crawling on the wall in the other room. So now I kill them.

The trick is to squash them with something and, when you squash them, don't let go. If you squash them with a shoe, for example, keep the shoe on top of them for about 10-15 seconds and they don't start to smell.
posted by I-baLL at 11:08 AM on April 29, 2011 [3 favorites]

Yes, bring on the parasitic wasps. I would gladly live with parasitic wasps instead of these stinkbug assholes.

My two worsts moments: I used to do a lot of raiding in WoW back in the day during TBC as a warlock. This was at the time where all a warlock had to do during a raid was spam one button over and over. (Shadowbolt)

As you can imagine, this can be somewhat boring and lead you to zone out a bit. Shadowbolt was assigned to "Q"

So it went, "Q" "Q" "Q" "Q" "repeat 50 times" "Q--Crack, Smoosh,Goo, Scream on vent" "Click on Shadowbolt, shudder at goo"

Then there was the time I was sitting in front of the computer, smoking from a long stemmed glass pipe and zoning out after work. "Puff Puff" "Drink Beer" "Puff Puff" "Drink Beer" "Puff-HOLY SHIT THERE'S A STINKBUG HALFWAY DOWN THE STEM", it flies into my face before flying off to bang in to the lamp. Lucky I didn't drop the pipe.

It's honestly not as bad around here as it was a few years ago (Philly suburbs) but seriously, I kill these assholes on sight now. They don't get a chance to sneak up on me. Just smush them, the smell isn't that bad.
posted by furiousxgeorge at 11:09 AM on April 29, 2011

My brother in Frederick, Maryland says they look like dinosaurs. And yes, they have way too many. I'll be telling him about the lamp/water trick.
posted by Rash at 11:16 AM on April 29, 2011

My parents have a (non-commercial) apple orchard. Usually mom just makes more applesauce and pies than we know what to do with, but she does generally give away bushels of the nicer apples every year as gifts. The stink bugs have been really horrible for them (though much more so for the commercial orchard next door). Hearing her talk about the damage they do (drill a little hole into the fruit, suck out fruity goodness, leave gross sub-skin bruise that is not visible to the eye) means that there's going to be a lot of cider and sauce produced, because who wants to be known as the people who give away bug tampered fruit? It's made me paranoid about eating whole fruit now, I like to see the bruise and not just bite down into a surprise.

I have a coworker who woke up recently with one crawling on her cheek. She's a one woman crusade against the little buggers now. I'm going to send her the lamp/water trick.
posted by librarianamy at 11:26 AM on April 29, 2011

I helped my parents clean out their attic in Central PA last fall, and damn, there were a million of those things. The only good thing about them is that they don't actually smell as bad as domestic stink bugs. Just vaguely musty, not downright foul.

I don't think they've made it to Indiana yet.
posted by valkyryn at 11:29 AM on April 29, 2011

Two or three years ago, I had one stuck in my printer. I cut a hockey-stick shaped piece out of a soda can to dig it out because nothing else was thin enough and strong enough to get in there and do the job.
After crashing several sheets of heavy paper into it, and digging it out, I was amazed that the little fucker was still alive.
I can hear them falling off of stuff in my livingroom at night.
posted by Mister Moofoo at 11:32 AM on April 29, 2011

For any of you who have dogs, I just checked with my vet. My dogs seem to enjoy the crunchy little armor-plated fellas, but they are not toxic to dogs; their dog breath will be worse for a bit (first-hand knowledge, phew) and if they consume a bunch of them dogs might get a bit irregular. A blander diet will do the job.
This may be worthless episodic data, but so far (near Frederick, MD) they don't seem as bad as 1 and 2 years ago. That's probably a jinx. Even he worst stinkbug menace I've ever had is nothing compared to a blight of box elder bugs that covered the sun-facing sides my house (and me, when lawn-mowing) a couple of years ago. *shudder*
posted by nj_subgenius at 11:42 AM on April 29, 2011

They must know it was the stinkbugs; the slithering, scurrying stinkbugs whose scampering will never let me sleep; the daemon stinkbugs that race behind the padding in this room and beckon me down to greater horrors than I have ever known; the stinkbugs they can never hear; the stinkbugs, the stinkbugs in the walls.
posted by FatherDagon at 11:43 AM on April 29, 2011 [3 favorites]

I've found that a device like this is effective at killing them without causing that horrible smell.
posted by exit at 12:15 PM on April 29, 2011

Those were one of the things I was really glad to leave in Pennsylvania when we moved. Ugh. Crawling all over your walls, and the sink, and .... Ugh.
posted by leahwrenn at 12:18 PM on April 29, 2011

I've found that a device like this is effective at killing them without causing that horrible smell.

So is a device like this.
posted by infinitywaltz at 12:49 PM on April 29, 2011 [2 favorites]

Recently my dad attended a meeting of East coast grape growers to see what's new, discuss the latest trends, techniques, and issues and one of the major topics was stinkbugs. The problem wasn't that stinkbugs ate the grapes, but they'd typically hang out in the grape clusters and when the grapes were crushed you'd get stinkbug juice in there as well, giving your chardonnay a very unpleasant taste. One vintner's solution was to go through the rows with the sprayer, but with nothing in it so they'd get blown away- sort of like taking a can of compressed air to your keyboard.
posted by Challahtronix at 12:49 PM on April 29, 2011

They eat Japanese beetles?!?! Fewer apples, more raspberries, I guess.
posted by mneekadon at 12:49 PM on April 29, 2011

Do house centipedes eat these things?
posted by wondermouse at 12:51 PM on April 29, 2011

Sustainably raised crops have also been affected, in particular no-till corn.

Are you using no-till as an example of sustainable agriculture?
posted by The 10th Regiment of Foot at 12:53 PM on April 29, 2011

So working in a movie theatre and dealing with these is fun.
Like every other theatre on the east coast, we've been checked for bedbugs like...once a month. It's insane. But a clean bill of health every single month. We're oddly proud of that.
BUT the town the theatre's in is known to have stinkbugs all over the the place. Including in the theatre.
There's nothing we can really do to prevent them getting in, with the doors constantly being opened throughout the day, so it means that one of the staff (usually me) sees one and we just toss it into the bushes across the street and let THAT store deal with them.
Occasionally, we're not the ones to spot them, and we have a customer come up to us and go "hey, I saw a sitnkbug in (PLACE X)"
Like I said, the whole town's dealing with it, so most of the people are cool about it.
But dear LORD if we get some idiot who doesn't know their bugs.
TWICE, we've had people call the corporate office saying we had bed bugs.
This of course, sends off every damn alarm in HQ possible, and pest dudes are there within a day to...find a few stink bugs and nothing else.
The latest time, they called HQ after bringing in a baggy WITH the bugs in it.
"I looked them up on the internet! These are bed bugs"
And then she left in a huff when we assured her they were not.
Lady, there isn't a current theatre employee alive right now who hasn't become a minor Entomologist. We know what bed bugs look like.
Oh, one time I was changing a bulb in the projector. A dead fucker was inside of the bulb casing. So if you're REALLY looking to kill these things, get a bunch of 4200 watt bulbs in your house. That seems to do the trick.
posted by WeX Majors at 1:05 PM on April 29, 2011

Do house centipedes eat these things?

And, presumably, when winter comes, the house centipedes will simply freeze to death.
posted by Copronymus at 1:12 PM on April 29, 2011 [5 favorites]

I apparently can't smell them at all. My sense of smell is perfectly fine, maybe a little keener than average on normal things, but I can sniff an immediately-smushed stinkbug and...nothing. Which makes disposal really easy, I guess, but it kind of freaks me out. I mean, what other gross smelling bugs am I missing out on?!
posted by wending my way at 1:29 PM on April 29, 2011

I live in southern Virginia and have been dealing with these things for a while now. They seem strangely laid back. Not once have I smelt the dreaded stink.
posted by cropshy at 1:53 PM on April 29, 2011

Despite the cripplingly stupid politics here in Arizona, at least we don't have problems like this. Granted we have a few semi-dangerous insects, but other than ants (which aren't really that common or problematic), nothing that swarms like that. So yeah, there's something not totally horrible about Arizona.
posted by Godspeed.You!Black.Emperor.Penguin at 1:54 PM on April 29, 2011

I don't smell them either, wending my way. I wonder if it's something in their diet that makes them stink, which the ones around here aren't eating.
posted by stavrogin at 2:00 PM on April 29, 2011

Are you using no-till as an example of sustainable agriculture?

I was, as I've mostly read about organic no-till methods but on re-reading that link it discusses using herbicides, so it's probably not the case. My mistake.
posted by electroboy at 2:25 PM on April 29, 2011

I moved from eastern PA to central Michigan last month. "No more stinkbugs" was actually on my list of pros and cons for moving. Finding them under my toothpaste in the morning or crawling across my keyboard, and dodging their clumsy dive-bombs on a constant basis had me getting wound a little tighter than I like to be about bugs. Plus, I didn't notice them taking any seasonal breaks, which is just not fair.
posted by pajamazon at 2:27 PM on April 29, 2011

Ew ew ew, now I have to go shower.
posted by FunkyHelix at 3:25 PM on April 29, 2011

Aagh! I knew these things were not natural! They are everywhere and always on our windows and finding their way into my house!
posted by brenton at 3:28 PM on April 29, 2011

You fools!! Just squash them inside a paper towel and seal the bug+towel in a Ziploc bag. (You can keep adding more bugs to the same bag until trash day.)
posted by paigette at 3:58 PM on April 29, 2011

As introduced plagues go, the stinkbugs could be worse: they don't bite, they're not poisonous, they don't destroy stuff in the house, and as mentioned above they're incredibly stupid and easy to catch.

The bad thing about them is mainly the grody-factor. (And the crop destruction, but I mean on a day-to-day level.) The grody factor is pretty intense when you come back to your car and find that the whole driver's side - doors, side of hood and trunk - is a single seething mass of them, and as someone mentioned above, they don't get blown off at sub-highway speeds. Shudder.
posted by LobsterMitten at 8:21 PM on April 29, 2011

I really dislike killing spiders, but I don't know what'll happen if my cat tries to eat them.

Our cat eats whatever creepy crawlies he can find in our basement, which includes -- I think -- house centipedes, spiders, stink bugs, and other. So far no bad effects. (Although I live in an area with not too many Very Poisonous spiders; it would be a different story in Australia or whatever)
posted by LobsterMitten at 8:24 PM on April 29, 2011

Nooooo! I hate the brown marmorated stink bug. I don't even hate the centipedes that come out of hiding at this time of year as much. You can squash them without feeling like you're being asphyxiated. Stinkbugs enter your house and, from that point on, they seem to intuitively know where they're least wanted: crawling on you, stumbling around dumbly in your food, managing to get in the refrigerator, in your bed... And, they're STUPID. They fly right into you and knock themselves out. Just... UGH!!!! And now, now they're getting all over my MetaFilter?!!?!? Die, you ugly fuckers.

(Finally, I came up with a minor solution. Directions: I wear one latex glove when I kill them -- because if you get the stink on your hands, nothing gets it off.. I usually end up pouring Listerine on my hand to mask the stench -- and I trap them in two tissues. Try not to crush it. Shake tissues over toilet. Watch with sadistic grin as it struggles to swim in the toilet bowl. Feel a little weird that I enjoy killing something so much. Flush toilet. Hope it goes down and that there's not a little army of them waiting beyond the bend to attack me when I'm at my most vulnerable. And repeat, a couple times a day for several months.)
posted by Mael Oui at 8:34 PM on April 29, 2011

Eww stinkbugs.

Didn't know these nasties were proliferating.

Adult bugs live several months and lays hundreds of eggs outside in the spring. They tend to return to the same indoor hideaway because even uncrushed, the previous tenants leave behind a “Welcome” sign of sorts in the way of an undetectable scent to us humans.

European Starlings eating Asian Marmorated Stinkbugs

A new weapon in the war against stink bugs If you have stink bugs, find a place to teach the birds they are good to eat. It could make a big difference in your garden next year.

Interesting deterrents
posted by nickyskye at 8:36 PM on April 29, 2011 [2 favorites]

Do house centipedes eat these things?

Nope. I've got both house centipedes AND stinkbugs. In spades.
posted by Mael Oui at 8:48 PM on April 29, 2011

A few additional snippets from this comprehensive article on the efforts to find a way to control the brown marmorated stink bug:

Brown marmorated stink bugs reach maturity in 50 days, so in the south where the warm temperatures hang around the longest, they're capable of birthing six generations per year.[...]

Leskey said another USDA researcher based in Beltsville (MD) may have isolated the brown marmorated stink bug's aggregation pheromone which is released by male stink bugs and the reason that large groups of stink bugs congregate in a single areas, such as on the side of a house or in part of an orchard. If the pheromone can be replicated, it will greatly improve researchers' ability to attract stink bugs to the monitoring traps, making their research more useful. [...]

[They tested insecticides, so see if any worked on these new stink bugs.] The results of the lab insecticide tests were fascinating, Butler said, because they demonstrated just how frustrating these creatures are.

"Normally when you spray an insecticide, dead is dead," Butler said. "Not this time." With the majority of the insecticides tested, a portion of the stink bugs, often in the range of 15 to 50 percent, appeared to be dead right away. However, over the course of a week, they came back to life. Scientists call the coma-like stage that the stink bugs are exhibiting "moribund," Butler said. It seems that while they are knocked out, their bodies are actually actively working internally to break down the insecticide, he said, after which they are recovered and wake up.

"It takes seven days to figure out if you've really killed them or not," Butler said.

[...] Allgeier warns people about purchasing any product that says it can wipe out stink bugs. Some of them are plain old fakes, he said, and others mean native stink bugs, which there are products available for but that probably won't work on the brown marmorated stink bug.

posted by LobsterMitten at 8:59 PM on April 29, 2011 [2 favorites]

Parasitic wasps don't look or act like the kind that sting people, they're tiny and don't loom around being all menacing.

Bring 'em on.
posted by desuetude at 10:41 PM on April 29, 2011 [1 favorite]

I would HAPPILY spray horrific, cancer causing, terrible genetically-altering chemicals all over the place if I knew that it would wipe these little fucks out. I am typing this and I heard one of the little kamikaze's bang into my bathroom mirror. That SON OF A BITCH.

Whoever the fuckface, asshole Chinaman who let it get on a shipping container can kiss my ass.

So, anywho, my crazy uncle claimed that he "heard on the internet" (seriously) that if you get a brown cardboard box and cut a hole in it, they will be attracted to it and end up inside of it, then you shake them over a pail of soapy water. Sounds sorta like this in a box, but that's just me.
posted by kakakakarl at 7:14 AM on April 30, 2011 [1 favorite]

The soapy water kills them because it suffocates them from what I understand. The best way to get rid of them when you have thousands of them in your house is to vacuum them up. Luckily I don't have a problem with them at my house yet.

They must have laid eggs in the walls of my Dad's house this past winter because, seriously, about 20,000 of them started oozing from the walls a few weeks ago.
posted by zephyr_words at 8:12 AM on April 30, 2011

European Starlings eating Asian Marmorated Stinkbugs

You are now welcome in my bird feeders, you annoying assholes. What a great combo of "What the hell are you doing here?" critters.
posted by furiousxgeorge at 9:19 AM on April 30, 2011