The spotted lanternfly has descended upon grape vines, fruit orchards, and maple trees in more than half of Virginia's counties, including the entire Shenandoah Valley. One local vineyard is arming their patrons to help swat out the invasive insects. WMRA's Randi B. Hagi reports.
[crickets chirping in the vineyard]
Wolf Gap Vineyard and Winery is tucked into the hills outside of Edinburg, with expansive mountain views on either side of their tasting room and pavilion. While other parts of the valley have been swarmed by spotted lanternflies for the past few years, owner Janel Laravie said they've been spared – until recently.
JANEL LARAVIE: We harvested – oh gosh, what were we harvesting? Chambourcin, which is the next set of vines down, probably four weeks ago, and I saw two that day. That was the start.
Now, as we walk along five acres of rows of grapes, every single vine has lanternflies crawling on it. The inch-long adults have grayish forewings with black dots, which hide bright red hind wings underneath. They're native to parts of Asia and were first found in the U.S. in Pennsylvania in 2014, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
LARAVIE: This is cabernet sauvignon, and they're not only down here –
HAGI: Oh, they're – oh yeah, all up in there.
LARAVIE: They're in here, they're breeding, and they're going to lay eggs. … This is my cabernet sauvignon. This is my favorite product. So it's scary.
Laravie carries an electric fly swatter.
LARAVIE: Look low. [racket crackles] So what they're doing right now is they are feeding on the sap within the vines, and left untreated, without action, they could actually kill the vines. And when you look at this, even after a frost event last night, right here – one, two, three, four, five, six – so there's so many in here. [racket crackles] And so it stuns them. They're much easier to squish.
Last week, the winery announced a contest – a crusade, really. For the rest of the month, patrons are invited to take one of the electric fly swatters – donated by Randy's Do It Best Hardware in Mount Jackson – and patrol the vines during their visit, stunning, squishing, and bagging the carcasses of as many lanternflies as they can. They keep track of their own kill count on the honor system, and whoever has the highest tally at the end of the month gets $100 cash.
When I visited on Friday, Laravie said one regular customer was already up to 200.
LARAVIE: We love all animals and insects, but this is invasive, and it's not just a problem for grape vines. It's a problem for orchards. It's a problem for lots of crops, and in our agriculture-rich Shenandoah Valley, we need all eyes on this, and we need everyone squashing out every single one they can. We need to fund the research at our universities, because that is where the best solutions and the best ideas are coming from, are out of universities.
One of those researchers is Drew Harner, who teaches viticulture, or the science of grape cultivation, at Virginia Tech, and is the viticulture extension specialist for the Virginia Cooperative Extension.
DREW HARNER: There's still so much we don't know, and, you know, research is slow. It takes time. … The academic research is really starting to concentrate on grape vines as being the primarily threatened plant species.
A team at Virginia Tech is working with other universities and the USDA's Agricultural Research Service to identify management strategies. Right now, the most effective thing they know to do is apply insecticides, targeting them on the edges of vineyards where the lanternflies often congregate.
HARNER: In many cases, wine growers don't use many insecticides to begin with. This has become a very uncomfortable process because many people are having to use products that they maybe don't like using. They're very expensive, too, and it's difficult to know when exactly is the right time to spray products.
Laravie has considered using pesticides at Wolf Gap, now that they're finished harvesting grapes for the season.
LARAVIE: But, like all vineyards, you want to have as little intervention as necessary … but we are in a good spot now to be able to take care of things because we are through the harvest, because you can't be spraying and then harvesting the grapes and making wine out of them.
Harner said he started receiving reports from Virginia wine growers in early August about high numbers of spotted lanternflies.
HARNER: We had wetter, more humid conditions earlier in the season, which we think maybe made it better or improved the conditions for their development, which then resulted in the populations that we're seeing now in vineyards.
He hasn't heard of the bugs causing vine mortality here – yet.
HARNER: I have received reports of reductions in fruit sugar accumulation and fruit ripeness. … We're worried about what the lanternfly can do for next year's yield.
As far as predators, people have sent Harner photos of wildlife such as blue jays, mockingbirds, praying mantises, and assassin bugs eating the lanternflies. He's heard anecdotally that Runner ducks like eating them, too.
This summer, Rutgers University announced that Erin McHale, a PhD candidate studying bats, found pieces of spotted lanternflies in bat guano. So, Laravie plans to install some bat boxes on the edge of her vineyard. Until then –
[racket crackles]
LARAVIE: Two down, two million to go.
… Wolf Gap's wine lovers will be taking them out one sip and smash at a time.
