If you have noticed a strange gray moth-looking insect with red under its wings clinging to a tree in your yard, you are not imagining things and you are not alone. The spotted lanternfly is now established in every Rhode Island county, and populations have grown sharply over the past year.
There is a lot of alarming information circulating about this insect, some of it accurate and some of it not. Here is a straight explanation of what spotted lanternflies are, what they actually do to your property, what you can handle yourself, and the specific situations where it makes sense to bring in a professional.
A Quick Rhode Island Timeline
Spotted lanternfly first turned up in the United States in Pennsylvania in 2014. The first Rhode Island sighting was a single insect in Warwick in 2021. The following year, Rhode Island’s first confirmed breeding population was found in Smithfield along Route 7, which is a short drive from our shop in North Smithfield.
Four years later it is established statewide, with the heaviest populations in Providence County. In Massachusetts the insect has been confirmed in more than fifty cities and towns across nine counties. If you live in northern Rhode Island or just over the Massachusetts line, you are in the thick of it.
How to Identify a Spotted Lanternfly
This insect looks completely different depending on when you see it, which is why so many people do not recognize it. Here is what to look for through the year.
Egg masses: fall through spring
Flat, grayish brown patches about an inch and a half long that look like a smear of dried mud or cracked clay. Each one holds thirty or more eggs. They turn up on tree trunks, rocks, fencing, patio furniture, grills, trailers, and just about any hard surface, anywhere from an inch off the ground to seven or eight feet up. These are easy to walk past without noticing, which is exactly the problem.
Early nymphs: May into July
Small, entirely black, covered in bright white spots. They jump hard when you get near them, which is often the first thing people notice about them.
Late nymphs: July
About the size of a nickel and much harder to miss, with striking red bodies marked in black and white. This is the stage most people photograph and send to us asking what it is.
Adults: late July through November
Roughly an inch long. At rest they are drab, with tan gray forewings covered in black spots, which camouflages them well against bark. When they open their wings or jump you see the scarlet red hindwings and the yellow banded abdomen. That flash of red is the giveaway.
What Spotted Lanternflies Actually Do, and What They Do Not
This is where most of the panic comes from, so it is worth being precise. According to Rhode Island DEM, spotted lanternflies do not:
- bite or sting people or pets
- infest or breed inside homes
- cause structural damage to houses, fences, or decks, since they feed on sap rather than wood
- carry anything toxic or harmful to people or animals
- kill large, mature, healthy trees
The only plants they are known to kill outright are grapevines, tree of heaven, and black walnut saplings. They feed by piercing bark and stems and drinking sap, which stresses a plant but rarely finishes it off.
The real damage is agricultural. Vineyards, orchards, and nurseries are where this insect does serious economic harm, which is why the state is taking it as seriously as it is. Grapes, apples, cherries, peaches, plums and hops are all at risk, along with maple, oak, walnut and willow.
For a typical homeowner, though, the honest answer is that spotted lanternfly is a nuisance rather than a threat to your house. That does not mean it is nothing, because the nuisance itself can get genuinely unpleasant.
The Real Problem for Homeowners Is Honeydew
As lanternflies feed, they excrete a sugary liquid called honeydew. When a large group is feeding in a tree, that honeydew rains down steadily onto everything underneath it, your deck, your patio furniture, your car, your walkway.
Two things follow. The first is sooty mold, a black fungus that colonizes the sticky residue and coats surfaces and plant leaves. The second is other insects.
Honeydew draws wasps, yellow jackets and ants in numbers. This is the part that surprises people, and it is the most common way a lanternfly problem turns into a phone call to us. You do not mind the lanternflies much, but you do mind that you now cannot sit on your own deck in September because it is full of yellow jackets working the sticky railing. If that is what is happening at your place, our stinging insect control page covers how we handle that side of it.
The ants that follow honeydew indoors are a separate nuisance, and our general pest control program is usually the right answer for those.
What You Can Do Yourself, For Free
Most homeowners do not need to hire anyone for this, and we would rather tell you that than sell you something you do not need. Here is what actually works, and all of it is free.
Scrape egg masses from fall through spring
This is by far the highest-value thing you can do, because every mass you destroy is thirty or more insects that never hatch. Walk your property in late fall and again in early spring and check tree trunks, fence posts, stone walls, the underside of patio furniture, grills, and anything parked outside. Scrape each mass off with a plastic card or a putty knife into a bag or bottle of rubbing alcohol or hand sanitizer, or crush it thoroughly. Scraping it onto the ground is not enough, the eggs can still hatch.
Squash the ones you see
Unsophisticated, and genuinely effective at the property scale. Nymphs and adults both jump when approached, so come at them from above. A shop vacuum with an extension cord clears a cluster off a tree trunk or siding quickly.
Deal with tree of heaven
Tree of heaven, Ailanthus altissima, is this insect’s favorite host, and if you have one on your property it will concentrate lanternflies there. It is an invasive tree in its own right, with long compound leaves and a strong unpleasant smell when the leaves or twigs are broken. Removing it is often worth doing.
One caution, and DEM makes this point specifically. Simply cutting it down can scatter the lanternflies to other trees on your property where they are harder to find and manage. In some cases a licensed professional will treat a tree of heaven as a trap tree instead, deliberately leaving it in place to concentrate the insects. If you have one, ask before you cut.
Clean up honeydew before the mold sets in
Warm water with mild dish soap and a soft brush takes sooty mold off decking, furniture and siding. On vehicles use a gentle car wash solution rather than anything harsh that could damage the finish. For garden plants, rinse the leaves with a hose on a gentle setting. Staying ahead of it is far easier than scrubbing it off in October.
Check your vehicle before you travel
Lanternflies spread mainly by hitchhiking, not by flying. Egg masses get laid on trailers, campers, mowers, firewood and landscaping materials, and then travel to a new town. A thirty second look over your vehicle and equipment before a trip does more to slow the spread than anything else on this list.
Should You Report a Sighting?
Yes, and it takes a minute.
In Rhode Island, report through the DEM spotted lanternfly reporting form. DEM reviews every report but does not respond to each one individually, simply because of the volume, so do not wait to hear back before acting.
In Massachusetts, take a photo and submit it through the Department of Agricultural Resources at mass.gov/slf.
DEM also runs free public information sessions around the state through the summer, including at libraries and state parks in our area. If you want to see the insect up close and ask questions of the people running the state response, they are worth an hour.
When Spotted Lanternfly Treatment Is Actually Worth It
For most homes, the free steps above are enough, and the state’s own guidance is that insecticide treatment is usually not necessary for homeowners. We will tell you that on the phone too.
There are real exceptions, though, and DEM points people toward a licensed arborist or pest control professional in each of them:
- You grow grapes or fruit trees. grapevines will die from sustained lanternfly feeding, and fruit trees take a genuine hit. This is the clearest case for treatment.
- You have valuable ornamental plantings under heavy pressure. a specimen tree or a mature landscape planting under heavy sustained feeding is worth protecting.
- You have tree of heaven on the property. as above, this is worth handling deliberately rather than cutting it down and scattering the population.
- The honeydew and sooty mold have gotten away from you, or the wasps and ants that follow it have. at that point you are not really solving a lanternfly problem anymore, you are solving a wasp and mold problem caused by one.
- You run a commercial property where it affects customers. heavy populations near outdoor dining, entrances, or seating areas are a business problem, not just a nuisance.
Brinx treats spotted lanternfly both actively, knocking down current populations, and preventatively ahead of the season. Timing and placement matter a lot with this insect, and so does keeping treatment away from flowering plants where pollinators are working. That is most of the reason it is worth having someone who does this for a living make the call rather than spraying broadly and hoping.
Frequently Asked Questions About Lanterflies in Rhode Island
Are spotted lanternflies dangerous to people or pets?
No. They do not bite, they do not sting, and they are not toxic to people or animals. A dog that eats one is not in danger. The concern with this insect is plant and property damage, not health.
Will spotted lanternflies get into my house?
No. They feed on plant sap and stay on plants and outdoor surfaces. They will not infest or breed indoors. You may find the occasional one that came in through an open door, but they cannot establish inside.
Will they kill the trees in my yard?
Almost certainly not. Spotted lanternflies are only known to kill grapevines, tree of heaven, and black walnut saplings. Large, mature, healthy trees survive them. Heavy feeding stresses a tree and can make it more vulnerable to other problems, which is worth watching, but the tree is not doomed because lanternflies landed on it.
What should I spray on spotted lanternflies?
For most homeowners the honest answer is nothing. The state’s guidance is that insecticide is usually unnecessary at a residential scale, and scraping egg masses does more good than spraying. If you do have grapes, fruit trees or valuable plantings under heavy feeding, that is when a professional treatment makes sense, and the placement matters because broad spraying kills pollinators along with the target.
When are spotted lanternflies most active in Rhode Island?
Nymphs appear in late spring and through July. Adults show up from late July and stay active until the first hard freeze, usually late October into November. August and September are the peak, which is also when the honeydew problem is at its worst.
Do spotted lanternflies come back every year?
They do not survive the winter as adults, they die off after the first hard frost. What survives is the eggs. That is why scraping egg masses through the fall and winter is the single most useful thing you can do, because you are cutting next summer’s population before it hatches.
Not Sure What You Are Looking At?
If you have found an insect or an egg mass on your property and you are not certain what it is, send us a photo. We will tell you what you have got and whether it is something you need to act on, including when the answer is that you can safely leave it alone.
Brinx Professional Pest Control has served North Smithfield, Woonsocket and communities across Rhode Island and nearby Massachusetts for over 25 years. Call (781) 428-4616 or schedule a free inspection.
