Syracuse.com - Will Syracuse's deep freeze take out the emerald ash borers? Ask the Outdoors Guy

[HuntingNY-News]

Fierke said the ash tree-eating bugs were first reported in Onondaga County last summer, but she suspects they've been here for six to eight years when one looks at the level of infestation.

Readers are constantly asking me questions about the outdoors and wildlife. Sometimes I can supply the answers myself. Other times I go to experts.

This week Patty Weiss, former executive director at Baltimore Woods Nature Center in Marcellus, asked me the following: "Hi Dave. Is there any truth to the rumor that this bitter cold weather in CNY will knock back the infestation of emerald ash borers?"

Answer: I called Melissa Fierke, associate professor in forest entomology at SUNY ESF, and she told me "it will kill off some, but we don't know how many. We'd have to peel back the bark of ash trees to find out."

Fierke said the ash tree-eating bugs were first reported in Onondaga County last summer, but she suspects they've been here for six to eight years when one looks at the level of infestation.

"There's some right now about a mile from where you're sitting in downtown Syracuse," she said. "You have infestations around Carrier Circle, within the city limits down in Meadowbrook...and there's a pretty big one on the town of Dewitt line on Townline Road."

Fierke talked about the life cycle of an emerald ash borer. The adult beetles mate and lay eggs in late June, early July and then die. The eggs hatch and the larvae chew into the bark of the trees. They feed through the summer and fall and then go into a sort of hibernation underneath bark of ash trees throughout the winter. By spring, they pupate and emerge as adults.

The cycle then starts again.

She said the sub-zero temps will take out some of the larvae during the winter. The ones that survive are "ones that are a little more cold hardy." They'll turn into adults and produce babies that will be a little more cold hardy, too.

"Then they'll start expanding (population-wise) further and further north," Fierke said, adding the ash borers, originally from Asian, are no strangers to cold environments.

View the full article on The Syracuse Outdoors Blog