The picture you see is not the kind of stink bug we get around here. At least, not usually. That is the brown marmorated stink bug, an invasive species that has been causing some problems along then U.S. East Coast. While there may have been rare sightings around here, most of what we generally see are very different.
The brown marmorated stink bug is not good for fruit trees. They like to destroy fruit, so people have been trying to get rid of them. But like a lot of non-native species, they are not easy to get rid of.
What we generally see around here is the Western Conifer Seed Bug. They don’t generally eat fruit trees. They prefer to suck the sap off pine cones. But they still smell bad when you squash ’em.
Really, they smell a bit like cilantro, so if you’re amoung the half of the population who hates cilantro, these bugs do stink. For the other half of us, they just smell a bit annoying.
But they still like to try to get inside our homes at this time of year.
Apparently, these bugs originated west of the Rockies and have just started spreading slowly east. Over the last few years, they have started to appear in annoying quantities around here. They don’t bite. They don’t really do anything to us. They just want to move in for the winter. And fly around bumping into lamps and be annoying.
Since they seem to want to try to become warm at this time of year, I like to help as much as I can by directing them to my fireplace. I’m not sure they appreciate my concern. But they could always just stay outside.
