Have you seen red insects with white spots in your garden, on your car, or climbing up the side of your house this past spring? Those harmful bugs were the red nymph stage of the spotted lanternfly, an invasive pest that reaches its winged adulthood in July.

The insects are not dangerous to humans or animals, but they can significantly impact a variety of plants. Scope News spoke to Amy Michael, an entomologist at the North Carolina Department of Agriculture, to learn about the origin of these pests, how Kernersville played a vital role in detection, and why they should be killed on sight. 

“The spotted lanternfly is actually not a fly. It’s also not a moth, even though it’s very brightly colored. It’s something called a plant hopper, which is more closely related to things like cicadas,” Michael explained.

The insect does not glow like a lantern as its name suggests, but rather its adult wings are reminiscent of painted paper lanterns.

“It’s originally native to Eastern Asia all the way from northern China down to Vietnam. So if you rotate the globe, North America lines up pretty closely with that in terms of habitat,” Michael said. 

The first sighting of a spotted lanternfly in the United States occurred in Pennsylvania back in 2014. In 2015, after seeing the population explode in Pennsylvania and Virginia, Michael and her team conducted the first of what would become over 15,000 surveys monitoring the spotted lanternfly’s presence, knowing it was not a matter of “if” but “when” the insect would make its way into North Carolina.

That moment came right here in Kernersville. In June 2022, a citizen reported what would later be confirmed as the first spotted lanternfly population in North Carolina. 

Michael and her team reacted aggressively to the report, creating lethal host zones around the areas most heavily established by the spotted lanternfly. 

“But as we continued to grow our team and continued to survey, we realized that [the infested areas were] several miles apart from one end to the other. Then we started finding infestations in Greensboro and Oak Ridge and even a few in High Point and Winston-Salem and at that point, we realized that it was just going to be too much to put back into a box,” Michaels said. Now three years after the initial sighting, several hundred Kernersville reports flood her team each week. 

“The issue is that they’re in such big numbers and they don’t have any natural enemies here in North America,” she said.

But they do have a natural friend: the Tree of Heaven, their favorite host. The Tree of Heaven was brought to the United States in the 1700s from the same natural habitat as the spotted lanternfly. It has been planted widely throughout the East Coast as an ornamental — a tree used for its aesthetics rather than fruit or timber production. 

“This plant has had like a 250 year head start to kind of lay out the red carpet for the spotted lanternfly,” said Michael. “It really likes disturbed areas like the edges of waterways or railways or highways, edges of parking lots, abandoned lots. … So basically, wherever somebody driving anywhere on the East Coast might stop, there’s a very good chance that its favorite food is right at that same stop.”

Economically, the spotted lanternfly most significantly impacts the grape-growing industry. Michaels is particularly worried about the Yadkin Valley — North Carolina’s premier wine region. 

Plant nurseries with ornamentals and woody plants are also expected to be negatively impacted.

Other plants affected include roses, fruit trees like apple, cherry, and peach trees, and walnut, willow, and birch trees as well. 

“The way it feeds is by it’s piercing, sucking mouth parts,” Michael said. “Basically they have a straw for a mouth and they tap into over 100 different hosts and by doing that, they try to concentrate the sugar that flows through the plant and expel the water out of the other end.”

This excess sugary water is known as honeydew and it covers everything underneath them in a sticky substance.

“It attracts this type of mold called sooty mold, which covers everything in a black powder. That can block photosynthesis for ground story plants. [Honeydew] can also attract ants and stinging insects and then over time, it builds up and can create gross fungal mats,” Michael explained. 

This combination of sucking sap and blocking photosynthesis weakens the plants and makes them much more susceptible to diseases and other pests, sometimes resulting in death. 

Though the spotted lanternfly does not harm humans, it can be a nuisance. 

“They have what’s called a mating swarm that happens normally August to September, where hundreds of thousands of them will all descend in certain areas at a time,” Michael said. “And they’re really clumsy flyers, so they tend to get stuck in people’s hair… They feed kind of constantly and they’re passive feeders, so people will say ‘It looks like it’s raining in my backyard,’ but it’s just spotted lanternfly poop.”

The Forsyth County Extension of the North Carolina Department of Agriculture says homeowners are the first line of defense against the spotted lanternfly. 

“Right now homeowners can tackle nymphs and adults by spraying them directly with insecticidal soap or using a wet/dry vacuum to capture and drown them in soapy water,” their website says. 

Fortunately, there are many different products found at a local hardware store that can be used to kill these pests, just make sure it specifically indicates it kills the spotted lanternfly. 

“Pesticides that are formulated to kill specific insects normally … have been tested for environmental impact whereas things like vinegar and dish soap can actually harm the environment and can have broader environmental impact,” Michael said. “So that’s just something to keep in mind when you’re looking for remedies online, you always want to make sure that whatever you’re using has the least environmental impact.”

She and her team pivoted from trying to eradicate the spotted lanternfly population to trying to prevent further spread to other states. Now, they focus on treating commercial areas used in interstate shipping and public areas like parks that have a lot of potential for spread. 

Kernersville is no longer required to report sightings since it is in the known infested zone. Any questions about the spotted lanternfly should be directed to the Forsyth County Extension office. Visit their website or call them at 336-703-2850.

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