Wow !
That’s a lot !
I’m in Anne Arundel county just south of Annapolis and we don’t have many by us. that being said, my parents are in a more wooded area north of Annapolis and have a lot, but not nearly as many as you.
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Currently in northern AA county, just south of the Baltimore line. I’ve seen maybe half a dozen in my neighborhood, but you can hear them in the woods.
We are moving to Howard. @PatapscoMike w kidding about ground zero. When we did our home inspection, they were falling out of the trees at us.
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Every dot on this sycamore.
Gonna have a lot of yard cleanup once we move
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Thats impressive Mike! I think you have my yard beat. I had an old maple 17 years ago which was approaching that but it got chopped down in the intervening 17 years and the remaining big pines oaks and locusts are not nearly as infested.
Our house is also next to a very large wooded area which is also making a great deal of noise. It seems to draw out the cicadas from my orchard over time, they appear to have some clustering instinct. My backyard orchard has 1/4th the cicadas it had a few days ago and not enough dead bodies to account for that.
They have pretty much stopped coming out of the ground here, I saw one straggler molting two nights ago.
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Yeah the clustering is pretty amazing. I paddled a long way down the Monocacy this past weekend. We would paddle half a mile without hearing any at all, then you’d hear them in the distance and we’d paddle past a spot that was absolutely covered with them. Then we’d get beyond the cluster and it would be quiet again. Super interesting! But no slow-down here yet. There were thousands of them on my trees molting last night. It’s mind boggling that the tree can withstand the pressure from all those feeding nymphs.
Cicadas definitely don’t like pine trees. I have 4 70+ year old white pines in my yard with very few cases on them while every hardwood of mine is beyond loaded.
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Unfortunately now it looks like they are clustering in my orchard 
The apricots used to be relatively clean but here is a shot I just took:
There is a bug or two there…
As an experiment I sprayed one apple with a heavy coat of Surround. It still has the same number on it, but the neighboring trees now have a lot more so it seems to align with the studies which showed a 50% reduction in damage. Note that they are clustering more on the trunks, I was not targeting the trunks as much with the Surround sprays.
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The flagged branch is the same branch in the previous picture with the damage to the twig.
So far at worst damage I have is actually on a Maple. It’s a 15 foot tall sapling, about 2 inch caliper, and it has probably already lost about 50% of its canopy because the twigs have literally just snapped right off.
I started to wonder if that was what it was after I posted… I also have several of those flagged branches, mainly on my apples.
I hope the trees don’t lose too much of their fruiting wood for next year.
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Son, who lives in Silver Spring MD, sent a video today of himself and granddaughter… the singing of cicadas is overwhelming…
An oak and surprisingly, a Metasequoia of all things, also hit hard.
They are definitely hitting my ornamentals more so than my fruits.
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Interesting that your trident maple is getting hit. I have one about 8 or so feet tall and don’t see any real damage on it. But it is in a shaded spot under some oaks, so that might be part of it. My large Japanese maple in the front yard (about 20’ tall) is definitely getting some hits. Back in 2004, when it had only been in the ground a couple of years it was really tortured by them.
My biggest question now is about leaving the growth on that has fruit, but is cut up. With small trees I don’t get a lot of fruit, so I’d like to keep them, but wondering if the best course is to cut away most of the damaged wood as soon as the cicadas are done in the hopes of getting new fruit buds on the new wood before fall. If I can salvage a reasonable crop this year, I might do that but I’d hate to have fruit drop and branches die back later in the summer and not have enough time for good regrowth before frost.
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I think I’m gonna wing it and see how vigorous the growth is on those particular branches, and how healthy it looks as a way to judge.
Some branches may callus over quickly enough so as not to really pose much of an issue.
Besides, if I actually remove all damaged growth from some of my trees, they would look like this:
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Looking at my trees I currently plan to deal with them case by case. Some trees already have a lot of fruit and I will remove the cut-up limbs there. If it is more sparse I will probably keep. The nymphs drop in 4-6 weeks so it is good to get a bunch of the eggs out to limit the size of the population underground.
On the ones I keep I am thinking of experimenting with hitting them with a mini propane torch I have (which is for cooking - creme brûlée kind of thing) to kill the eggs.
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Another quick report just to say they’ve found my muscadines, which are just in their second year. The arms are the perfect width for the cicadas and they have gotten into them pretty good. The end of one arm is already wilted. I wish I had known since the arms would have been pretty easy to wrap some protection around. But I think I may just have to cut the arms off when the bugs are done and hope to regrow them by the end of the summer. The vine up to the arms is closer to 1/2 inch so I’m hoping they stay out of that.
Here’s the top of a Callaway crab showing how the thinner wood just breaks once they’ve dug in.
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Yes, they are definitely going to leave a lot of damage. I’m starting to think it may be close to a complete loss of fruit this year if I leave the damaged wood. Seeing how bad it is getting I’m leaning toward a major late June prune of everything to cut away all the damaged wood, which will be pretty traumatic for some of the trees. But I’d rather do that than leave weakened branches behind that might snap when carrying fruit.
I’ll be happy not to see them for another 17 years.
Here is a little visit with the evil blighters. At the end of the video I cut one of the damaged pear branches in half to show the damage. It is pretty amazing how strong and sharp their ovipositors are.
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