Cicadas Are Going To Make It A Big Bug Summer in North Carolina

CHARLOTTE, NC — Parts of North Carolina will soon have a dramatic insect show as Brood VI cicadas emerge from the ground, where they’ve lived unseen for 17 years.

The bugs, which, in large numbers, can do serious damage to young trees, shrubs and various crops, are always around. But huge broods of them occasionally hatch all at once, usually in 13-year and 17-year cycles.

There are few things in nature as dramatic as the emergence of a brood of cicadas, said Clyde Sorenson, a professor of entomology at North Carolina State University.

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“You could have, in any emergence, a density of millions per acre and 3 miles away, essentially none,” Sorenson said.

Brood VI, which is on a 17-year cycle, hasn’t been seen since 2000, he said. This year, they are expected to be most abundant in the foothills of the Appalachian Mountains.

“It’s something worth experiencing,” Sorenson said, recommending that looking for them would make a good weekend trip in late May and early June. “See if you can’t hear them and then see them,” he said.

According to The Gardener's Network, a 17-year brood is expected to hatch this year in North Carolina, as well as Georgia and South Carolina.

The broods are expected to start hatching in our state around May.

The area that a brood impacts can vary widely from one hatching to the next. The adult life span of a cicada is short. The young nymphs often land on trees to shed their skin and become adults.

After that, they spend only about four to six weeks above ground before dying.

Contrary to popular belief, adult cicadas do not eat the vegetation that comes into their path.

Rather, adult females cut slits into twigs and small branches to lay their eggs. The eggs hatch, creating tiny nymphs which fall to the ground and burrow, feeding on underground tree roots for years until it's their time to emerge.

Fruit trees are particularly vulnerable to damage by cicadas, along with ash, beech, dogwood, hickory, oak and willow, among others.

Pines and firs, along with most flowers and vegetables, are generally not bothered by the bugs. They also do not bite or sting humans or other animals.

The best defense against cicadas, according to The Gardener's Network, is 1/4-inch mesh netting spread all the way around the tree or plant you want to protect.

Insecticides are useless against cicadas.

But who would want to kill them when you can enjoy their song?

“If you get in the midst of a good aggregation of them, it’s pretty amazing,” he said.

It’s magical, when you think about it, he said.

“For 17 year, these things lay quiet in the ground, sometimes three or four feet under the soil surface, completely out of our consciousness. Then, in the right spring, in May, they get the signal and they all come up together. For a few weeks, if you happen to live where one of these broods comes up, your environment is dominated by these hordes of completely harmless insects.”

“The mass emergence, the system where all of them emerge simultaneously every 17 years or every 13 years, this happens nowhere else in the world except Eastern North America. It’s a pretty special thing.”

Listen to the Cicada’s Song

Patch Editor Doug Gross contributed to this story.

Photo via Pixabay