The brown marmorated stink bug - seen one yet?

The bug is a herbivore, and both nymphs and adults suck sap out of leaves and fruits. The stink bug has more than two hundred reported host plants. It’s difficult at this point to estimate exactly what kind of damage the insect will cause here. Fruit sectors in other countries have reported damage to crops such as apples, pears and cherries, but also to blackberries and raspberries and to vegetables such as tomatoes, peppers and aubergines.

• The adult bugs hibernate during the winter.
• In the Netherlands, egg laying starts from late May or June and continues throughout the summer.
• Eggs are laid in clusters on the undersides of leaves.
• The young bugs, or nymphs, go through five stages of development.
• In the autumn, adult bugs look for hibernation sites in houses, sheds, and dead trees.
• In their original habitats, the bugs would produce up to five generations per year. In the Dutch climate, one generation develops per year.

The brown marmorated stink bug is native to China, Japan, Korea and Taiwan. In 1995 it was spotted in Pennsylvania in the US for the first time, having presumably been introduced unintentionally through packaging materials. Since then, the species has successfully established itself in 41 US states and in Canada.

It was first found in Liechtenstein in 2004, and in Switzerland, France, Italy and Germany in 2007. It was first sighted in the Netherlands in the summer of 2018, in Limburg. It was first spotted in Utrecht and Amsterdam in the spring of 2019.

Adult bugs can move around through flight. Long-distance movements occur when the bug hitches a ride in packaging materials, cargo or in holidaymakers’ caravans.

So far, no effective measures have been found. Biological controls such as ichneumon wasps and predatory insects might be a solution.