09/02/2026

Spotted Lanternfly: A Nuisance Pest with Few Easy Answers

By Richard Kramer, Ph.D., BCE, Kramer Consulting

The spotted lanternfly is a recently introduced pest of trees, primarily tree of heaven, although they will attack other trees and ornamentals. Research is ongoing on methods to eliminate this plant pest and human nuisance. There is little to offer currently.

Key Facts:

• They feed on plant juices, just like aphids, whiteflies, etc.
• They produce a sugary substance called honeydew that may attract ants, wasps and other insects (this only occurs outside where the SLFs are feeding on plants and trees).
• They can’t bite humans or pets.
• They carry no diseases.
• They don’t overwinter in structures like some pests (lady bugs, boxelder bugs, brown marmorated stink bugs, cluster flies, wasp queens, etc.).
• The overwintering stage is the eggs that are laid on trees and plants in the fall, and they hatch in the spring when the cycle begins again.
• The adults and nymphs will die off when there is a hard freeze.
• There are no traps or sprays that will effectively prevent or eliminate the adults and nymphs.
• The traps seen on the internet are designed to capture the nymphs that have fallen out of the tree, and they are attempting to climb back up and feed.
• The only practical things to do for adults (the only life stage that can fly, although nymphs actively move) is to swat them or remove them with a vacuum.

Educate your customers, although many may already have found ineffective home remedies through AI:

• Let nature take its course. They will die out after a hard freeze.
• Arborists can inject trees with systemic insecticides and use traps for nymphs, but this will not affect adults flying in from untreated trees.
• The adults fly at the least provocation, and this seems to be the activity disturbing customers the most.

• Spraying.
• We can spray areas for adults and kill the few we’ll contact at the time of application.
• Because they have sucking mouthparts, residual sprays will have no other effect except perhaps some repellency.
• Furthermore, adults can fly in after the application and will not be killed by the previous treatment.

• If your customer insists, you can make a pesticide application with the understanding that the effect may be minimal.
• A product you successfully use for mosquito treatments would most likely be the most successful.

As long as we continue to import massive amounts of products from foreign nations, we can reasonably expect to see the introduction of pests. Hopefully most will be of little consequence other than being a nuisance. But often these can be the greatest challenge in educating a customer.

Richard D. Kramer, Ph.D., BCE