Spotted lanternflies will be back in a few weeks. Here's how to spot and scrape their egg masses
PITTSBURGH (KDKA) -- As warmer weather soon creeps back into our lives, so too will our least favorite invasive insects.
We only have a couple of weeks until spotted lanternflies return.
"We still have some time before the lanternflies hatch. Every year they've hatched somewhere around early May," said Shannon Powers, the Pennsylvania Department of Agriculture's press secretary.
Shannon Powers with the Pennsylvania Department of Agriculture says the unhatched babies are already lurking, you just have to find them.
"If there are egg masses laid on your trees, rocks, outdoor furniture, boats, boat trailers, anything in your -- anything that's stored outside," Powers said.
If you're a doer, walk your yard or even around your work.
"It looks kind of like a smear of wood putty or kind of like dried gum on a sidewalk," Powers explained. "It's this sort of dull putty gray color. And that's the protective coating. You scrape that off, which is easy to do, no special tools required. You scrape that off, you'll see tiny little rows of eggs underneath, and there's a lot of them in each egg mass."
Another thing to check: make sure there isn't a tree of heaven around. It's invasive just like the lanternflies.
"It's been here a long time. It's established, and it is everywhere. It spreads rapidly because it has a lot of seeds, but it also sends out runners. So it's a tough tree to get rid of, but the lanternflies really do love it," Powers said.
If you're looking to protect the plants in your yard, Powers says they're now suggesting an improvement over the sticky tape strips to protect what we don't want to kill, like pollinators and small birds.
"We're recommending now a circle trap. It's basically a screen wire that wraps around that sticky tape. The sticky tape is still there. It's kind of like flypaper. It's still there, but it keeps from trapping other things, and it's very effective this time of year, when the insects hatch. They hatch out and walk up the tree. They can't fly yet. They walk up the tree, and that circle trap catches a lot of them before they can go anywhere else."