by Christina Roche

Everyone who is from the Worcester area probably remember the scare of the Asian Long Horned Beetles. These beetles were feasting on maple trees all over the city. I experienced the after math first hand when I was driving and was forced to come to a screeching stop when I was met by a Maple Tree blocking the road. I found out later that the tree was a result of the beetles feasting.

On November 16 Carolyn Johnson wrote about a different species of beetle that people will welcome.  The “ally beetles” do not eat trees,they eat the enemy! Unfortunately they do not dine exclusively on the Asian Long Horns but they eat another bad bug. The adelgid, who eat hemlock trees.

Entomologist David Mausel has been collecting the friend beetles  since 2007 and distributing them around New England.  Now it’s time to see if there has been a decrease in the hemlock eating adelgid beetles.

Adelgid Beetle

The National Park Service calls the adelgid killers, bio control beetles. They have released around “350,000 beetles to treat 100,000 trees.”

According to the NPS the females adelgid leave bundles of wool that attach to the hemlock. In the wool are larvae that will hatch and begin to destroy!

David Mausel hopes that the beetles have not been released too late.  ”It’s going to take time for the beetle numbers to add up., he said.

New England’s winters usually slow the adelgid growth because of the cold but if winters become warmer there may be a problem. The adelgid’s growth needs to slow down so the beetles can catch up.

Of course in the warmer states, there is no slowing down period. The good  news is, according  to Johnson, in areas where the ally beetles were released in 2003 the adelgid problem is almost gone. The bad news is that New England still has another five or six years to go until the problem subsides.

In the mean time,watch out for trees in the middle of the road!