Great video! Thanks for sharing. That cross section was cool. I hope everything comes out of it ok.
Sorry to see all your damage on young trees. That is where I was 17 years ago and I had to prune most of the wood off. If it makes you feel any better I have about 5x the density of bugs on my trees compared to your video. When I was spraying deer repellant I also sprayed a bunch of the cicadas just out of annoyance, and they all seemed to pee in response to the spraying and my tree trunks now look like 101 Dalmatians with pee spots on them!
In your video you mentioned you had some new wood also damaged, I have some of that as well. 17 years ago I don’t think my trees were vigorous enough to have big enough shoots on the new wood. In terms of the size it is pencil to fat pencil, I haven’t found anything bigger than that where they damaged.
I am sitting in the middle of the swarm as near as I can tell and they are tearing up everything… peach in particular, but also apple, bush cherries, filberts, and even a little damage on persimmon.
I think it is time for you to take out the fryer for some free protein!
My wife was all keen for me for me to harvest some “land shrimp” for her to cook up, but when I told her they were pus bags and not meaty like sea shrimp she quickly lost interest
So sad. They have heartlessly ravaged many of my young trees. . (Here is a pink kousa).
One tree that flummoxes them is:
Monkey puzzle.
Sounds like fried is the way to go! Nature’s gushers
They have attacked new wood less than half pencil-width. I think they just don’t have enough tree cover, and they get everything they can.
I’ve seen ovipositor marks on my raspberry primocanes, but it doesn’t seem to cause them to whither or slow down in growth at all.
Far as my trees, the biggest concern is that I try to prune mine “low“ to avoid ladders, busy it’s mostly the low growth that is damaged, and the high/vertical growth that I normally prune off anyway which is left unscathed.
A idea …?
I wonder if the cicadas could be used to multiple …
Beneficial nematodes …?
And or
Beauveria bassiana the insect eating fungus.
Either In place in the orchard, or in a culture bin inside to be spread latter ?
There are few other opportunities to find such a biomass of insects
Than a major brood of cicadas .
If this works ? It may multiply , many fold the application. May help control things such as plum cucurlio, chestnut weevils , etc. and the cicadas them self’s. As they hatch from branches and fall to ground ?
This is all pure speculation on my part ,have no evidence this would work. Just a idea.
I don’t have brood x here this year, but may try something like this when the big brood hatches here in 2025 ?
The cicadas are finally winding down here. Boy did they make a mess. I’m not going to lose much of this years crop but it is going to require a lot of careful pruning.
I think I can say that the Surround ended up being a (relative) success. The trees with Surround still got a lot of scars but they don’t seem as deep and there are not as many broken limbs. My guess is the Surround impeded mamma from drilling into the wood… kind of like how Surround just slows down the curculio. I also noticed that my trees with sticky sap fared similarly, there is not a single flagging branch on the figs in spite of there being quite a few cicada tracks. And the tracks don’t look all that deep there either… the sap was probably unpleasant enough.
Here for example is a picture of a peach tree I had in my nursery which I neglected to spray with Surround, and a peach tree nearby in my orchard which I hit well:
You can see a lot of flagged shoots on the former which means the cicada cut a really deep groove in the branch.
In retrospect I wished I had refreshed the Surround more than I did.
Scott,
Here in Indiana, we had heavy Cicada emergence. Our three peach trees had some flagging but not so bad. I do spray for insects every 10 days though and I think that slowed them down
My parents are in Indiana and it seems more spotty there… none around where they are at all. You are on the western edge of the brood. I think I am more or less dead center, everywhere here is completely covered.
Looks like I came out unscathed. The sound of cicadas was deafening in my yard but I live basically in the middle of a forest.I think they had so many options around that they declined my fruit trees and shrubs. Now i’m busy sweeping their corpses off my deck every few hours. They’re falling from the trees in droves.
I’m glad to not be in the brood zone but it’s been all over my various news feeds.
I figured this was the place to share my fabric scrap sculpture tribute.
It’s part of a group of bug pins I did this summer.
Everybody remember to rake up the dead ones and put them in your compost. If they’ve hurt the trees this year they can help us regrow them next.
You could make a lot of $$$ if you sold them in Provence. The cicada and olive are our two mascots!
I think in central Jersey we are just getting to the main wave. Although I could hear them in the woods 1/4 mile from our house I would typically only see a hand full every day for the past couple of weeks. Today we actually have a swarm in which the large (and unnetted) peach and hazels are covered with dozens and dozens. Based off of the other experiences that our more southernly located members have posted I and guessing we have 2 more weeks of this??