Why are billions of cicadas getting ready to crawl from the Earth in an emergence not seen in the U.S. since Thomas Jefferson was president? Let's Ask the Experts.
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00:00 (upbeat music)
00:02 - Welcome to AccuWeather's Ask the Experts.
00:14 I'm your host, Dean DeVore.
00:15 Here we go beyond the forecast to give you the how and why
00:19 on all the cool and interesting stuff you've wondered about
00:22 and even wanted to ask in weather, space, and science.
00:25 And as we go through spring and summer,
00:27 we start getting bugged by insects
00:29 as they start affecting our quality of life
00:31 and even our health and safety.
00:33 Today, we're gonna explore all of that
00:34 and get some of your answers to the questions
00:37 that you are asking so you're not constantly bugging
00:40 about those bugs.
00:42 And joining us as our expert today is an old friend of mine
00:45 who I've talked to many times over these years about this
00:48 as we welcome in my friend, Dr. Jim Fredericks.
00:50 He is a board certified entomologist
00:53 who now has a couple of decades experience
00:55 studying insects and pests.
00:57 He is the senior vice president of public affairs
01:00 and the chief entomologist
01:01 for the National Pest Management Association.
01:04 It's a nonprofit agency which helps keep people safe
01:07 and informed, educating them about all kinds of pests,
01:10 including bugs.
01:11 Jim, it's been a while.
01:12 It's great to see you again.
01:14 I'm sure one of the first questions you always get
01:16 is how and why did you decide to be an entomologist?
01:20 Were you that kid who the parents were always telling,
01:23 Jimmy, keep your hands off those bugs, right?
01:25 When you were growing up?
01:26 (Jim laughs)
01:27 - Well, that's a great question.
01:28 Thanks for having me.
01:31 It turns out that as a kid, I didn't necessarily love bugs.
01:35 I did have a real interest in everything nature.
01:38 I wanted to be outdoors.
01:39 I loved to get out and see the world.
01:42 I had a really extensive rock collection
01:45 for a short period of time. - I love it.
01:47 - But it turns out in college,
01:49 I had just a fantastic teacher.
01:51 One of my professors was an entomologist
01:53 and he just kind of turned on the lights for me
01:56 with regard to the amazing world of insects
01:59 and I haven't looked back.
02:01 - Well, today we're gonna talk about a wide variety of bugs
02:03 and the problems they cause and how we can prevent them.
02:06 Or if they're already at our house,
02:08 what can we do about them?
02:10 So I want us to first start with an insect
02:12 that's receiving a ton of buzz, pardon the pun.
02:16 And it's one of the weirdest creatures,
02:17 I think, in the insect world.
02:18 It's the cicada.
02:20 Now this is garnering tons of headlines
02:22 because of a once in a lifetime convergence
02:25 and emergence of two separate broods
02:28 that will generate millions of these bugs
02:30 coming into the lives of folks
02:32 over the course of the spring and summer of 2024.
02:35 Now, Jim, these are interesting creatures
02:38 whose lifespan actually above ground is a matter of days,
02:42 but they spend years underneath the ground.
02:45 And there are some annual varieties that come out.
02:47 Those are the sad songs of the end of summer
02:50 when we hear those cicadas at the end.
02:52 But these are broods that come in cycles, right?
02:55 Of 13 or 17 years.
02:57 And we've got an area in the country,
02:59 you can see up there in parts of Illinois and Indiana
03:02 and down into those areas where two of these broods
03:05 that are 13 and one is a 17 year brood,
03:07 they're gonna come out basically almost at the same time
03:10 during that spring and summer of 2024.
03:12 Pretty rare event, right?
03:14 - It's a very rare event.
03:16 And first of all, cicadas are just absolutely amazing.
03:19 And with the way they're able to synchronize
03:21 these emergences, multiple species of periodical cicadas
03:25 emerging at the same time.
03:27 But what we are getting ready to see in Illinois
03:32 is this simultaneous emergence of adjacent broods.
03:37 And this hasn't happened
03:39 since Thomas Jefferson was president.
03:42 And so having two broods that are next to each other
03:46 emerging simultaneously is really amazing.
03:49 We're not gonna see this again for over 200 more years.
03:53 - Yeah, you do the math on it.
03:54 If I remember from my mathematics class,
03:56 if you have one thing that's happening every 13 years,
03:58 one thing happening every 17 years, you multiply that.
04:01 That means the same thing happens simultaneously
04:03 every 221 years.
04:05 So this is amazing.
04:06 Now, I think one of the concerns was that
04:09 these simultaneous broods were gonna overlap.
04:11 In some areas, we're gonna get billions of these bugs.
04:14 But it looks like they're just kind of budding up
04:16 right against each other in terms of
04:18 where these are coming out in the spring and summer of 2024.
04:22 - That's right.
04:22 We shouldn't see very much of a kind of
04:25 overlapped double emergence.
04:27 It turns out that the geographical range of these broods
04:31 is pretty well-defined.
04:32 There could be some overlap in these areas
04:35 that do bud up against each other,
04:37 but there's not gonna be very much.
04:40 - Now, we're gonna see and hear these bugs,
04:41 but I guess the average person
04:43 doesn't need to be concerned, right?
04:44 Cicadas don't seek people out.
04:46 They're not really truly dangerous, right?
04:49 - Cicadas are not dangerous.
04:50 They don't bite, they don't sting.
04:52 Unlike a lot of the other insects that we think of
04:55 as pest-like ticks or cockroaches,
04:59 cicadas are really not dangerous at all.
05:01 They could cause some damage to some very young seedlings
05:06 because when the females lay their eggs,
05:09 they actually cut a slit into the small twigs on trees
05:12 where they insert the eggs.
05:14 But otherwise, there's really no danger at all
05:16 from these cicadas.
05:17 - Well, as we're watching that,
05:19 you can see the abdomen of the cicada moving,
05:21 and that really causes the biggest thing
05:24 that people notice about these bugs.
05:26 It's the noise.
05:27 You know, in recent years,
05:28 when I've been living in areas
05:29 that have large cyclical broods like this,
05:31 sometimes it's sounding like you're next to an airport
05:34 with tons of jets running at their full engine throttle.
05:37 I mean, have you ever measured the amount of noise
05:40 these kinds of broods can manufacture?
05:42 It's gotta be pretty amazing.
05:44 - Well, I remember the first time
05:45 that I encountered these cicadas
05:48 and didn't quite expect it.
05:50 And I was driving down the highway,
05:51 and as we were driving, I could hear this sound.
05:53 I thought something was wrong with my car.
05:55 So we pulled over, got out of the car,
05:57 and then that's when we realized
05:59 that it was the buzz of thousands or millions of cicadas.
06:03 And it has been measured.
06:05 That noise level can get up to 100 decibels.
06:09 And so you're right, the sound of a passing jet plane
06:12 or the sound of a lawnmower.
06:14 This is really loud because it is literally
06:17 hundreds of thousands or millions of individuals
06:20 singing at the exact same time.
06:21 - They're telling me in the control room,
06:23 they actually have an example of this.
06:24 Let's see if we can, ooh.
06:26 (cicadas chirping)
06:28 So that's one.
06:31 And you can then imagine if you multiply that by millions,
06:35 and they're not timed, anything.
06:36 It's not like they have, although I swear,
06:38 sometimes it sounds like they're in cahoots with each other.
06:41 They can like ramp up and slow down
06:43 in terms of the intensity at times.
06:45 It's just incredible.
06:46 - Yeah, they will sync up.
06:47 And it turns out that each species
06:49 of these periodical cicadas has a different song.
06:54 And so entomologists who are familiar with that
06:56 can tell the sound of the species
06:59 and know which species are singing in different areas.
07:02 - Crazy and amazing stuff.
07:04 We're all looking forward to this amazing event
07:07 during the spring and summer of 2024.
07:09 I think we'll be buzzing about this for a long time.
07:11 I wanna switch our focus to an insect
07:13 that has more capability to do harm,
07:15 especially to our property, and that's termites.
07:17 I know your organization, MPMA, has an amazing website,
07:21 pestworld.org, and on there is a great section
07:24 to help people plan, prevent, and deal with termites.
07:26 So let's talk quickly about the five signs
07:29 for people to look to determine
07:31 if they have a termite infestation.
07:34 - Gary, it's important to think about termites,
07:36 especially this time of year.
07:37 Termites cause up to $6.8 billion in property damage
07:42 across the United States each year.
07:43 And so as spring approaches,
07:45 we often start to think about termites
07:47 because one of the most spectacular things
07:49 that termites will do in the spring is swarm.
07:53 So swarming termites are the reproductive termites
07:56 that are emerging, looking for a mate,
07:58 and looking to found a new colony.
08:00 And so what people might find is thousands
08:03 of swarming, flying insects inside their home.
08:08 If you encounter lots of flying insects
08:10 that just kind of seem to emerge out of nowhere,
08:13 it's probably a good time to call a professional
08:16 to get a full inspection.
08:17 So that's the first thing that you would look for,
08:20 and probably the most spectacular thing,
08:22 but it doesn't always happen.
08:24 Termite evidence is often hidden,
08:26 and so you could be looking for the damage.
08:28 As termites come up out of the soil,
08:30 they're feeding on the wood in your home.
08:33 They're actually able to digest cellulose in the wood
08:35 with the help of microorganisms in their gut.
08:39 You may also look for mud shelter tubes.
08:43 When termites are traveling from the ground
08:45 up into a structure,
08:46 they'll build these tubes out of mud from the ground,
08:51 and they use these tubes to hide from predators
08:54 and to keep from drying out.
08:56 So you'll see these tubes on foundation walls.
08:58 You might also encounter bubbling paint
09:01 where termites have fed on the wood behind some paint,
09:05 like on a baseboard.
09:06 That bubbling paint indicates
09:07 that there's damage behind there.
09:09 And you may also, in certain regions of the country,
09:14 find termite fecal pellets.
09:17 And this is typically gonna be in the coastal regions,
09:20 South Florida, Southern California,
09:22 where drywood termites are active.
09:25 This is the only termite that will leave these pellets,
09:27 but if you see a pile of little wood-colored pellets
09:31 underneath some wood,
09:32 that might indicate a drywood termite infestation.
09:35 - Let's get to our first viewer question here.
09:37 It comes from John in Maine.
09:38 And is there anything homeowners can do
09:41 to prevent termites before they become a problem?
09:44 We got about 30 seconds.
09:45 What can you do to prevent things in 30 seconds
09:48 before they become a problem, John?
09:50 - Well, there's a couple of things that you can do.
09:52 First of all, call a professional.
09:54 Have a professional termite inspection.
09:56 As I mentioned, a lot of the signs are often hidden.
09:59 So schedule an annual inspection.
10:01 Make sure that the downspouts around your house
10:04 are diverting water away from the foundation.
10:07 Termites are attracted to moisture.
10:09 Make sure that any firewood that you have
10:10 is not stacked against the house,
10:12 because you don't wanna put a food source there.
10:14 Get it away from the house.
10:15 And then also, as you get outside
10:17 and do your spring cleaning and spring work in the yard,
10:20 make sure that mulch isn't piled up above siding,
10:24 because that gives termites an easy access point.
10:27 - All right, thank you, Jim.
10:28 We've got so much more to talk about
10:30 when we come up next in our next segment.
10:32 Dr. Fredericks and I will talk ticks
10:34 and what makes them so dangerous
10:36 and what different weather conditions does to them
10:39 and where we should be most vigilant
10:41 in preventing them from affecting us.
10:43 We'll also answer more of your questions,
10:45 all that and more, when "Ask the Experts" returns.
10:49 (upbeat music)
10:52 (upbeat music)
10:55 Welcome back to "Hank U Weathers, Ask the Experts."
11:07 I'm your host, Dean DeVore,
11:08 and today we're talking with Dr. Jim Fredericks.
11:11 He's vice president of public affairs
11:13 at the National Pest Management Association,
11:15 whose website, pestworld.org,
11:18 is a treasure trove of information
11:20 about planning, prevention, and treatment
11:22 about a plethora of pests, from insects to rodents.
11:25 And today we're talking about bugs.
11:28 Dr. Fredericks, I want to turn our attention
11:30 to an insect who, over the last couple of decades,
11:31 is getting increased scrutiny,
11:34 and rightly so, because of their health impacts.
11:37 Ticks, especially with their ability
11:40 to transmit debilitating disease,
11:43 are really on everybody's radar.
11:45 How many different types of ticks are there
11:47 and are they potentially as dangerous
11:49 as you may think they are?
11:52 Yeah, so it's really important to talk about ticks,
11:55 and you're right, there are numerous tick species
11:59 that cover the entire United States.
12:02 It turns out that each of those species
12:04 has a different variety of pathogens
12:08 that can be transmitted to humans.
12:10 The one that's on top of everybody's mind
12:12 is Lyme disease, of course,
12:13 but there's also ehrlichiosis and babesiosis,
12:17 Rocky Mountain spotted fever.
12:19 Ticks are really one of the most important vector-causing
12:22 arthropods in the U.S. right now.
12:24 And they seem to be, is it that there are more of them?
12:28 Is it now that we know the problems
12:31 that they're starting to get so much more attention?
12:35 I mean, you talk about the different types.
12:37 I mean, there's Lyme disease, which everybody hears about.
12:40 There was also a new virus or a new tick-borne situation
12:44 that was getting people sick when they ate meat, right?
12:47 Was that another one I heard in the last couple of years?
12:49 All kinds of things going on.
12:50 That's right, there is another one that's an allergy
12:53 called alpha-gal syndrome that causes people
12:56 to develop an allergy, an allergic reaction to red meat.
13:01 And so, you know, it's not quite clear.
13:04 In some places, there are just more ticks.
13:06 So for instance, in New England,
13:07 there's been a conversion of old farmland
13:10 into reforested areas.
13:12 That's caused an increase in the white-tailed deer.
13:15 That's caused an increase in mice and rodents
13:17 that are living in the woods.
13:20 And all of those things are food for ticks.
13:22 And so, in fact, we see more ticks in certain areas.
13:26 As weather patterns change,
13:27 we also tend to see differences in tick distribution.
13:31 We've seen already that ticks, as well as mosquitoes,
13:35 have increased their ranges into areas
13:37 where they might not have been as prevalent before
13:40 because of shorter winters and longer summers.
13:44 Yeah, I was gonna say, to me,
13:46 it seems like the ticks are out earlier and longer.
13:49 So what are the weather conditions
13:51 that promote ticks from jumping from vegetation to humans
13:54 or from animals to humans?
13:56 Sure, well, as soon as it becomes 50 degrees Fahrenheit
14:00 or warmer outside, people, ticks will be seeking hosts.
14:05 They need a blood meal, and that's their food.
14:08 And so the host might be a mouse or a rodent in the woods.
14:12 It could be some other animal.
14:14 But it might be humans.
14:15 And so as the weather warms,
14:17 you'll tend to see more tick activity.
14:20 But it doesn't have to be warm for very long.
14:22 Even cool days, even warm days in the winter,
14:25 ticks can become active.
14:27 And so if the winter is particularly mild,
14:32 you'll see larger populations of ticks
14:35 surviving through the winter
14:36 and then getting a jumpstart in the spring
14:38 as populations really begin to ramp up.
14:41 And I think obviously with the warmer climates,
14:44 and you said that we've been seeing that more and more,
14:46 especially recent winters,
14:48 haven't been very much wintry at all up in the Northeast.
14:50 So I think we're seeing that for sure.
14:52 Let's go to our next viewer question, Dr. Fredericks,
14:55 and this comes from Sally in Pennsylvania.
14:57 And Sally writes, "Stink bugs
14:59 always tend to be a problem in my house.
15:02 What's the best way to get rid of them once and for all?"
15:06 If I'm a stink bug, I say to myself,
15:08 "Why would I be named like that?
15:10 I might have to go on a campaign to change my name."
15:13 But talk about prevention.
15:15 How do I get rid of stink bugs?
15:16 'Cause yeah, I have them, especially in the fall
15:18 when it's getting colder and they wanna come inside.
15:20 It seems like I get a lot of them, right?
15:23 - That's right.
15:23 And yeah, the stink bug is aptly named.
15:26 And stink bugs are actually a very large family of bugs.
15:31 Many of them are,
15:32 many different species are agricultural pests.
15:34 Some are predators, so they're actually beneficial insects.
15:38 But the stink bug that I think that the viewer is referring
15:41 to as the brown marmorated stink bug,
15:44 that stink bug is the one
15:46 that will overwinter inside structures.
15:49 It turns out that it is an invasive species.
15:52 It's not native to the United States.
15:54 And when it's out doing its thing during the summertime,
15:58 we don't really notice it in homes,
16:00 but that's when it is a pest,
16:03 particularly in agricultural situations.
16:06 So orchards, vineyards, multiple other crops
16:11 are impacted by brown marmorated stink bugs.
16:15 Now, as the winter approaches
16:16 and cool weather begins to creep in,
16:19 those stink bugs are looking for a place
16:21 to spend those cold winter months and overwinter.
16:25 In nature, that might be behind some loose bark,
16:28 but homes tend to be a great place.
16:30 So any place that there's a crack or crevice
16:32 where they can crawl in,
16:33 they will crawl in by the hundreds
16:35 or thousands in some cases.
16:37 And so you're right, when you see them in the fall,
16:39 that's when they're congregating oftentimes
16:41 on the walls of the house that have a southern exposure.
16:45 Those are the warmest walls.
16:46 And then they'll spend the winter.
16:48 In the spring, when temperatures begin to warm,
16:51 then they'll emerge.
16:52 Most will go out.
16:54 Some find their way into the structure.
16:57 So if we were thinking about how to prevent stink bugs
17:00 once and for all, there's no kind of magic formula for this,
17:05 but you can do a couple of things.
17:07 Seal up any cracks and crevices
17:09 that might there where stink bugs
17:11 might be able to come into the house.
17:13 Vacuum up any that you find inside.
17:15 Get rid of that vacuum bag.
17:17 Empty that canister.
17:19 But then in the late summer, early fall,
17:22 it's a good time to call a professional
17:24 to have a treatment to prevent stink bugs
17:27 from getting in in the first place.
17:30 Believe it or not, bee-leave it or not,
17:32 I didn't mean to do that, time has flown by.
17:34 We gotta get going here.
17:36 So much, thanks.
17:37 We're gonna have you on again, Dr. Fredericks.
17:39 We'll talk more about bugs.
17:40 Friends, if you've got a question
17:41 about weather, space, or science,
17:42 write us or send us an email
17:44 at asktheexperts@accuweather.com
17:46 or give us a call at 1-888-566-6606.
17:50 Still to come, bees on our latest focus on weather-wise.
17:54 (upbeat music)
17:58 (upbeat music)
18:00 Welcome back to AccuWeather's Ask the Experts.
18:07 Time for weather-wise and a segment
18:10 we call Weather by the Numbers.
18:12 Today we look at bees and we start with the honeybee,
18:15 which is the only insect that produces food eaten by humans.
18:20 Our first number is 300 because there are more
18:22 than 300 unique types of honey created by bees
18:26 in the United States.
18:28 Different flowers make different honey.
18:29 The color, the flavor, the aroma of each honey type
18:32 depends on the nectar source,
18:34 meaning honey that's made by bees collecting pollen
18:37 from orange blossoms will taste different
18:39 than pollen from other wildflowers.
18:42 Our second number set is two to three.
18:46 Two to three is the numbers of years
18:48 that a queen bee can live.
18:50 During that time, she can lay 2,000 eggs a day.
18:54 She is mother to all the bees in the hive
18:56 and she's also attended by worker bees
18:58 who only live about five weeks in the active season.
19:02 Finally, our last number is 500,000.
19:06 That's a number that shows the downside of bees
19:08 because half a million people are stung by bees each year
19:11 in the United States.
19:13 Of that number, about 3% of adults
19:15 and less than 1% of children suffer bee sting allergies.
19:20 Bees are amazing creatures.
19:21 They are the world's top pollinators
19:23 and we rely on their hard work for our survival.
19:27 We thank you for joining us on AccuWeather's Ask the Experts.
19:30 I'm Dean DeVore.
19:31 Don't forget, if you have a question
19:33 about weather, space, or science,
19:35 you can write us or send us a video question
19:37 at AsktheExperts@accuweather.com.
19:40 You can also call us with that question
19:42 at 888-566-6606.
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