Dear Bugman,
Hi. I’m getting married May 1, 2004 in lovely N. Virginia and am planning an outside reception. Someone mentioned recently that the secadas are due to come out this year and they start right around that time. Please advise if you think this is the case or if there are certain treatments you can have done or certain candles or lights you can have to turn them away. Please help me 🙂 BTW – what exactly is a secada?
Many thanks.
MK
Dear MK,
According to our sources, Brood X of the 17 Year Cicada or Periodical Cicada, Magicicada septendecim, is due to emerge this year. They are noisy, but will not attack your wedding guests. Nothing will keep them away. Here is information I am reprinting from the National Geographic website:
“Get ready, Brood X is coming. This May billions of black, shrimp-size bugs with transparent wings and beady red eyes will carpet trees in the U.S. from the eastern seaboard west through Indiana and south to Tennessee. By the end of June they’ll be gone, not to be heard from or seen again for 17 years. “Many people view them with horror or as an aberration and don’t appreciate that they are a natural part of our eastern forests,” said John Cooley, a cicada expert at the University of Connecticut in Storrs. The bugs belong to the largest group, or brood, of periodical cicadas-insects that spend most of their lives as nymphs, burrowed underground and sucking sap from tree roots. They emerge once every 17 years, transform into adults, do the business of reproduction, and then die.”
Thanks. The Washington Post and NYT have both printed recent articles.
Thanks again.