There are no fewer than 35 of these stupid bastards on my window screen at the moment, thudding around like the oafish morons they are.
I know they’re an invasive species, I’ve read about some hypothetical efforts to introduce wasps to kill them (and then snakes to eat the wasps, and then gorillas or something), but that doesn’t seem like it’s going to happen.
I want to do my part to eradicate them. I don’t want a cute little trap – I want there to be a stink bug apocalypse outside my house. I want stink bugs to fear my presence and drop dead at the sound of my name.
I hate stink bugs. Had one on my shoulder this afternoon from stepping outside. I’ve not heard of, nor seen, any effective strategy for bringing on the stinkbug apocalypse but I’m open to ideas.
When we lived in North Carolina, even our exterminator confessed that their office had a stinkbug population that they couldn’t control. So far, they seem to have no predators on the North American continent.
About all that worked for us was physical removal of the bugs by sucking them up with a vacuum cleaner. Just be sure it’s one where the filter bag is in front of the motor (most canister vacs are like this). You really don’t want to send the bugs through the impeller on their way to the bag. (EEEEW!)
I’ve had great results with a product called Onslaught I get from doyourownpestcontrol.com it’s made for indoor and outdoor use for food and non-food area and lasts for 12 months after application. It’s expensive but one little bottle makes 30 something gallons of the product. Make sure you read the whole label and the MSDS, this isn’t the crap you get from Home Depot.
Most normal pesticides will kill stink bugs. The trick is to prevent them from getting into the structure in the first place. Stink bugs are overwintering pests - they look for a warm place to go dormant during the cold weather. During the summer, they are out and about, but as the cooler weather of autumn comes on, they enter buildings in search of a place to hang out for the winter. They will be active for a while in the fall as they are getting established in the building, then the activity will disappear until spring, when they are getting ready to leave as warm weather approaches. Sometimes if there is an unusual warm spell during the winter, the bugs will temporarily get active again.
So the solution is to treat the exterior of the structure with a repellent pesticide during late summer, just prior to the onset of cool weather. When the bugs come looking for a winter retreat, they will be, um, repelled by the repellent and will probably go infest your neighbors’ houses instead of yours. Obviously, it’s too late to do that for 2015, but it might be something to keep in mind for next year.
Read this some time back. All the studies in the world showed there was little to nothing that was effective when it comes to killing stink bugs. They said the one thing that worked best is also the cheapest tool. Really only for indoors though.
Fill a pan of some sort with water and dishwashing liquid. Place under a lamp and leave the light on. The bugs are attracted to the light and fall into the soapy water. They then drown as they can’t escape the soapy mix.
I hate those little bastards with the fiery hate of a thousand suns. I lived in Baltimore for almost six years, and saw them get progressively worse each year. I tried poisons and diatomaceous earth, but nothing seemed to help. Eventually, I just went manual on 'em- gently pick them up in a tissue and flush them if inside the house, shop vac 'em up by the thousands if outside. That, at least, seemed to put the brakes on their spread.
I moved here to Utah last year, and I was *very *careful to not bring them with me (but still, I imagine some managed to sneak in with my stuff). Still, though, haven’t found one in the house yet.
Just today, though, my officemate up on the ninth floor in downtown Salt Lake City climbed up on his desk and said, peering out the window, “Hey, I’ve never seen a bug like this before.”