Stink Bug Facts | How To Kill Stink Bugs

Are Stink Bugs Poisonous?

Among the numerous fears that entomophobics (people who have a fear of insects) harbor toward insects is that they might bite, and that if they bite, their bite might in fact be poisonous to some degree, whether it results in a minor irritation, or worse it might be debilitating, or in the worst case it may inevitably prove to be fatal. Unfortunately, stink bugs are also lumped together into the category of such frighteningly creepy insects that are believed to bite humans and that they might be poisonous.

The good news is that stink bugs are not poisonous at all. In fact, stink bugs are not even known to bite human beings, not even when they feel threatened. What stink bugs do actually do, however, when they are attacked or when they feel threatened, is release a pungent odor which is noxious enough to drive away and repel most any predator.

So could it be said that this odor that stink bugs release might be poisonous? The good news is that it is not the case. The foul stench that stink bugs release isn’t such that exposure to it might irritate your respiratory system or poison you if inhaled. At worst, it is merely an annoying odor that is strong enough to cause you to step away from the bug and react with repulsion, this giving the stink bug enough time to get away.

In fact, generally speaking, stink bugs are not harmful to human beings in any way… at least not physically to humans. (They cause harm to humans in other ways indirectly…financially for example. For example, they can wreak financial havoc on a farmer’s crop production when it is infested by a swarm of stink bugs that have to come to feed off of the fruits the farmer is growing.) Otherwise, stink bugs don’t pose any sort of direct physical threat to human beings themselves. They sure may not exactly be the most attractive insects that anyone has ever laid eyes on (but then again, is there any?), given their reptilian visage. And without a doubt nobody actually likes having them around. And there are many people feel downright threatened and intimidated by their mere presence in a room.

But the fact of the matter is that they are in fact benign and harmless. If you see one crawling on the wall somewhere in your house, you need not worry. They are not going to bother you. They are not wont to crawl on people. They are not likely to go fly buzzing around your head aimlessly (although they do make a buzzing sound when they fly). They aren’t out to sting you or suck your blood like some other insects do. In fact, stink bugs are actually herbivorous. They thrive exclusively on fruits and vegetables, which is what makes them such a threat to the crops that farmers grow. (Now if you are an etomophobic person, they may extremely frightening to you. But you can rest assured that this particular species of insect is harmless and is should not be a cause of fear in your mind.)

And the bottom line is that stink bugs are not poisonous at all.

Everything You Never Wanted To Know About Stink Bugs And How To Get Rid Of Them

Stink Bug Facts

You’ve no doubt seen them. You probably noticed them once or twice a few years ago and didn’t give them much thought. At the time, they just seemed to pass by unnoticed, like any other unusual bug. You don’t want to know them. And you certainly don’t ever want to know them. Nor do you care. But if you have been noticing them a lot more recently, then you are not imagining things. These little critters are seemingly everywhere now. And try as we might, we just can’t seem to ever shake them.

What Are Stink Bugs?

What on earth (or are they really even from earth!?) are stink bugs? Where did they come from? How did they get here? Why did they get here? Why has no one ever heard of these little critters before? We don’t want to bore you with the textbook definition (that’s what this section is for) of what a stink bug is. (Entomologists click here.) In a nutshell, the scientific name for this category and classification of insects is halyomorpha halys. And if you think that these stink bugs are out of place and don’t look like they belong here in North America, then you are right. That is because they don’t belong here.

Where Did They Come From?

In fact, stink bugs are native insects from the Asian subcontinent. These “illegal immigrants” are native to Japan, China, Taiwan, and Korea, where they are a common pest. If you live in one of these Asian countries, then stink bugs are a common, every day nuisance, posing as a threat particularly to the indigenous agricultural industries of that region. Up until recent times, stink bugs had remained confined to the Asian subcontinent. It was only recently that they accidentally made their way to the North American continent. And once they got here, they began to multiply in numbers very rapidly. Stink bugs were first discovered in Pennsylvania. And then gradually, over the course of time, reports of stink bugs began emerging in the adjacent states. Year after year, the number of states reporting stink bug infiltrations is increasing as the population of these little buggers continues to spread out in all directions. After years of sitting back and watching helplessly as they began to infiltrate our homes and our crops here in North America, government agencies commissioned to study pest control are just now beginning to get a grasp on understanding these bugs.

How Did They Get Here?

While nobody can pinpoint exactly when or how stink bugs first infiltrated the western hemisphere, the most prevalent theory is that they may have accidentally come over in one of the millions of boxed crates that gets shipped into North American harbors, carrying imports from Asia. While there are indeed very strict standards to inspect shipments that are brought into our borders, it is highly probable that a cluster of stink bugs must have some how inadvertently slipped through the cracks (literally) during the freight inspection process and become stowaways on their journey overseas (the old “hide in the baggage compartment trick”).

Characteristic Traits of Stink Bugs

Bearing a resemblance to the dinosaurs from Jurrasic Park, stink bugs have a uniquely reptilian appearance, which makes them unsightly and frightening to most entomophobists. But apart from their appearance, they are actually harmless to humans. They don’t bite. They don’t suck your blood. But the one distinguishing characteristic that makes stink bugs unique is their patented defense mechanism: the foul stench that they emanate from their bodies when they become frightened. This odor is unmistakably rank enough to drive away just about any predator, including human beings! If you have ever tried to squash a stink bug, then you know from first hand experience what it smells like. (Some people liken the smell of the stink bug odor to that of cilantro. I used to love the smell of cilantro until I came into contact with my first stink bug. Now I tend to lose my appetite when I smell either of the two!)

Their Impact On Domestic Human Life

So if stink bugs are purportedly harmless to human beings (apart from being the stuff that nightmares are made of, for those who can’t stand the sight of bugs), then what is there to be concerned about? Why all of the fuss? It seems that for the average every person, the issue with stink bugs is that they are just plain annoying and unsightly. Most people will not even bother to think twice, flinch, or even bat an eyelash when they come across an ant or a common housefly. But when it comes to stink bugs, these little critters can wreak havoc on many a person’s psyche. What is worse is that stink bugs can often show up in clusters. And just knowing the fact that squashing them (the preferred method of dealing with most other types of insects) will yield in foul odors that can often leave permanent traces on the surface where said squashing occurred can render some of us humans to feel defenseless against them.

Stink Bugs Are Heat Seekers

More often than not, you will find stink bugs congregating on window screens during the autumn season. This is because as the weather begins to turn cooler during autumn, stink bugs instinctively search for warm places where they can escape from the cooler air. When they fly by your home and detect the heat emanating from within, they will quite naturally gravitate toward your windows, on the hopes that they might be able to try to get into your house. And guess what? If you have any rips or tears in your window screens, or if you have any cracks in your window sills, then stink bugs who are determined to get into your house for the sake of the warmth, will find a way in. Perhaps this itself is one of the most frightening characteristics about stink bugs: how they somehow manage to infiltrate your home despite your best efforts to keep the house sealed off.

Stink Bugs Have Infiltrated Your Home – Now What?

And once stink bugs get into your home, they will either generally tend to gravitate toward sources of heat and light (if you have ever noticed, once stink bugs get into your home, they like to linger on your windows, because they want to bask in the sunlight). Fortunately, stink bugs are not known to reproduce indoors, so at least you need not have to worry about that. Perhaps one thing that can be extremely frightening and annoying about stink bugs is their characteristic “kamakaze” style manner of making an entrance into a room. They will “dive bomb” from their hiding places into the middle of the room, making a distinct buzzing sound, and land on whatever surface they are interested in.

Agricultural Impact

While stink bugs may not have an impact on urban populations, they do pose a threat to agriculture, as they are known to destroy crops. Fortunately, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has been working with scientists to develop standards for safe and effective pesticide solutions as a deterrent against stink bugs. However, further research and development is still needed and continues to be an ongoing effort.

Known Predators

So much still remains unknown about stink bugs as of yet: Stink bugs have no known predators who can attack and kill them in the wild (at least in the Western Hemisphere anyway), thus restoring balance in nature to keep their population growth in check. As a result, their numbers are believed to be steadily increasing in our environment. Fortunately, scientists have discovered that there is one species of insect that may pose as a potential threat to stink bugs: wasps. It has been observed that wasps will prey upon and eat the eggs of unborn stink bugs. Therefore, wasps may be our only hope at natural population control. (Though it is highly unlikely that anyone would advocate unleashing wasps into the wild in order to eat stink bug eggs, only to experience a rise in the wasp population!)

How Can We Get Rid Of Them?

So this begs the question: How can we get rid of stink bugs? There are a number of ways how to kill stink bugs:

– Insecticides specially designed to kill stink bugs are being brought to the market.

– You can set up “stink bug traps” in your home, which basically are sources of heat and light designed to attract stink bugs and then zap them.

– You can squash them. However, this is perhaps the least desirable method how to get rid of stink bugs. There is a theory being floated around that when you squash a stink bug and it emits that foul stench, other stink bugs flying by can detect the odor and will flock toward it, thereby actually resulting in an increase in the number of stink bugs attempting to infiltrate your home.

– You can spray them with dish soap. Yes, you read correctly: You can spray them with dish soap. Just grab a squirt bottle and fill it up with dishwashing detergent. When you see a stink bug, spray it. But here’s a tip: Spray it in such a way that the soap makes contact with its underbelly and not its “armor plated” side. Studies have shown that the chemical composition of dish washing detergent is extremely lethal to stink bugs and they can become paralyzed and / or die within minutes after coming in contact with it.

Stink bugs are more of an annoying nuisance than a veritable threat to the average person. The good news is that scientists, government officials, entomologists, and other people who make it their business to know this stuff, are making leaps and strides in their efforts to keep the stink bug population under control. The bad news is that the stink bug population is on the rise and the problem doesn’t seem to be going away any time soon.

How To Kill Stink Bugs – Employing a “Scorched Earth Policy”

Extermination Methods, How To Kill Stink Bugs, Stink Bug Facts

Do you remember the 1999 box-office hit movie “The Matrix” in which mankind’s only hope to win the war against the machines was to use nuclear weaponry to permanently scorch the sky, creating a permanent, massive cloud layer too thick and too dense for adequate sunlight to penetrate, for the robots to be able to draw their solar energy from? Well (spoiler alert), that strategy didn’t work too well and it actually backfired, as the robots learned to quickly adapt, and then enslave the human race to draw upon their body heat for an endless, abundant source of energy to power themselves.

Mankind’s quest to figure out how to kill stink bugs is beginning to follow a similar plot line. Or at least it will, if certain scientists within the federal government have their way. Indeed, if the government is getting involved in solving a problem, then you know it has got to be serious! The stink bug epidemic is something that was brought upon by accident not too long ago, perhaps within the past decade. Initially, it was just a handful of stink bugs brought here from overseas through some shipping crates where they may have gone through customs inspections unnoticed, the first report of their presence here being in Allentown, Pennsylvania. Now fast forward to today, and stink bugs have officially been confirmed as having spread out to over 33 states in the continental United States alone.

What is the big deal about stink bugs? After all, there are thousands of different species of insects present in North America at any given moment. What is so special about them that has got the government funding research projects to investigate and thwart the spread of these bugs? Why is the government spending taxpayer dollars to learn ways how to kill stink bugs? Stink bugs are not known to be harmful to human beings in anyway. They don’t bite. They don’t sting. They don’t suck our blood. They don’t even attack other animals or insects. They are peaceful vegetarians by nature. (Looks can be deceiving. They may look like eerily menacing reptilian bugs, but in reality they are harmless, no matter how annoying they may be.) The threat that stink bugs pose to our way of life is purely economic: Stink bugs, in large numbers, are known to destroy farms.

Yes, stink bugs pose a major threat to the agricultural industry. Stink bugs eat all kinds of fruits and vegetables. And they do so by piercing the skin of the food and then sucking the juices out while injecting it with their saliva. So if swarms of stink bugs were to do this on entire farms, it goes without saying that entire crops can be destroyed in this manner. Even in their native domicile of southeast Asia, where stink bugs originate from, they pose a significant threat to agricultural crops there as well. Damage to the agricultural industry has the potential to result in a loss of millions of dollars per year, if the situation is left unchecked.

So what exactly is the government doing to thwart the spread of stink bugs? They are looking at the problem from all angles. They are researching everything from the use of pesticides to seeking to gain an understanding of whether or not stink bugs have any natural predators who pose a threat to them. They are not only looking into how to kill stink bugs but also into how to simply keep the stink bug population under control.

Scientists have not been able to find any evidence that stink bugs are under attack from any other animals or insects in North America. However, by doing a study of these bugs in the context of their natural habitat, in the Far East, they have managed to develop a clearer picture of where they fall in the natural hierarchy of the “food chain”.

As it turns out, bats are confirmed as being avid, hearty eaters of stink bugs. According to one study, a brown bat can eat as many as one thousand brown marmorated (marmorated means having a marble, or streaked appearance, according to the dictionary ) stink bugs within a single hour! How is that for population control? How does this sound: You set up traps for stink bugs – cages filled with bats, that also contain fruit, light and heat (the three things that stink bugs are attracted to) as bait. So when the stink bug is lured toward the cage, the bats are there to eat them up. No need to call an exterminator! No messy stink bug corpses to clean up. No stink. And best of all: free food for bats! Nature will take care of how to kill stink bugs on our behalf, without any intervention from us humans.

Of course this is highly impractical! How many people does the government think are going to be willing to keep bats as pets in our back yards, to keep the stink bugs away? If you think stink bugs are scary looking enough, you haven’t really gotten a good look at bats! Bats, as portrayed in “Batman”, are cute little birds. But if you have ever seen a real bat, then you know that they look like giant, oversized, flying rats!

And then there are other studies that have been done, that reveal that stink bugs do in fact have another predator, which happens to also be in the insect kingdom: wasps. However, the interest that wasps have towards stink bugs is not between the wasp and the living stink bug. Rather, wasps are interested in eating the eggs laid by stink bugs! Yes, wasps pose a threat to the stink bug population at large, by consuming their unborn eggs, but do not pose a threat to the living stink bug population.

Therefore, the introduction of wasps into the environment wherein stink bugs can be found would only be beneficial in terms of population control of the latter. Does this mean that the government might actually be exploring the possibility of introducing wasps into environments where stink bugs are in proximity, as a means of population control?

This sounds good in theory, doesn’t it? We want to keep the stink bug population under control, so therefore we sic wasps on them. But then what happens when the stink bugs are gone? Will we have inherited a new problem? An overpopulation of wasps in our environment. That would seem to be the ironic, “catch 22” of the situation, wouldn’t? Trading our stink bug problem for a wasp problem?

It almost seems as though the mere idea of introducing wasps into our environment would be somewhat akin to the “scorched earth” policy, where in order to destroy the stink bug population, we make the environment worse – not only for them, but also for us humans too!

Not exactly the type of scenario would ever hope to have to play out. But if some scientists have their way, then we might actually be seeing the controlled release of wasps into our environment as a means to quell the explosive growth of the stink bug population in North America. While their aim may be to figure out the best and most efficient way how to kill stink bugs, they may actually be exchanging one problem for another.

How To Kill Stink Bugs – Can Wasps Be The Answer?

Extermination Methods, Stink Bug Facts

For many years, it was believed that there was no way to control the explosive growth of the stink bug population that has begun to plague the North American continent over the past few years. Each and every year, the population of stink bugs in North America has been rising at an alarming rate. Initially clustered in the northeastern regions of the United States, you can now find stink bugs spread across the entire continent, all the way to the west coast. Carrying their infamously nefarious stench with them wherever they go, this menace has been a source of major annoyance for the general population, while at the same time it has proven to be a ruinous force for the agricultural population.

Up until recently, there was no known way to keep the stink bug population in check. There had been no known predators in our environment that could kill stink bugs.

Researchers in the United States who have been commissioned with the task of studying stink bugs and identifying ways of how to kill stink bugs and keep their population under control have determined that there are indeed natural predators in the food chain that can be used to threaten the stink bug population:

Stink bugs, meet the Asian wasp.

What is interesting is that Asian wasps don’t attack stink bugs directly. Even if they were to try to, the foul stench that stink bugs emanate would be enough to drive the wasps away. Instead, what Asians wasps do is infiltrate the nests of stink bugs and attack the eggs that they lay. By doing this, the Asian wasp is able to keep the stink bug population under control, keeping new baby stink bugs from ever hatching.

Of course, this is not to say that the Asian wasp is a benign creature in its own right. We obviously don’t want to see the stink bug problem be replaced by an Asian wasp problem. But by introducing these wasps into the environment where stink bugs procreate and create their nests, it is hoped that we can keep the population from growing any larger than it has.

Left unchecked, we may find that the stink bug problem will only get worse in the upcoming years to come. This is only one way to address the problem of how to kill stink bugs: Let nature take its course.

In the meantime, of course, we need to do our part to address the stink bug problem. Other methods for how to mitigate the stink bug problem include taking measures to prevent stink bugs from entering your home by sealing it properly, setting up stink bug traps, power washing your home.

If you aren’t sure what to do to address the stink bug problem on your own, or you just don’t have the stomach to deal with the problem by yourself because stink bugs make you squeamish, then you can always enlist the help of a professional extermination service and sic them on these annoying creatures. A professional extermination service will be able to advise you as to what is the best way how to kill stink bugs.