Stink bugs damage plants by piercing them with a straw-like mouthpart and sucking out the juices, injecting saliva that breaks down the tissue as they feed.
Growers know it well. When stink bugs start feeding on fruit and vegetables, they leave dimples, discolored spots, and corky scarring. On developing produce, they cause “cat-faced” deformities. And it’s awfully annoying to deal with after you’ve put all that effort into the growing season.
Stink bugs don’t chew. Instead, they have a needle-like beak, called a stylet, that they insert into plant tissue, fruit, pods, stems, leaves. Through it they pump in digestive saliva and then draw the liquefied contents back out. It's like a straw that comes with industrial solvents.
That's why the damage shows up the way it does. When they feed on young, growing fruit, they distort how it develops, producing the dimpled, lumpy "cat-facing" you see on apples, peaches, and other tree fruit, plus tomatoes. And on seeds and pods, in beans or corn, feeding can shrivel or abort the developing seed entirely.
It’s an annoyance when it happens to a few pieces of fruit at a time. But large populations can cause a lot of financial damage because they feed on a wide range of crops and a single bug feeds many times over. This is the exact reason why the brown marmorated stink bug is treated as a serious farm pest rather than just a backyard annoyance.
Summer is when all of this peaks. Both nymphs and adults are active on plants through the warm months, doing the feeding damage and building the populations that later head indoors in fall.
If you're tired of watching stink bugs tear through the garden every summer, Mosquito Squad of Leominster can help. Mosquito Squad offers perimeter treatments that help reduce stink bugs around your home and garden. These are applied by a trained technician alongside the barrier service that delivers up to 90% reduction in mosquito activity on a 21-day cycle.
