Change of the seasons brings bug migrations

By Teri Lessig

The coming of fall means a change for many of the outdoor creatures.

Migrations have begun for some with many more to come. The migrations I am talking about aren’t the birds and animals that most people think of, but insects. Creepy crawly bugs looking for food, a cozy place indoors or moisture. We have had reports of millipede migrations in our area over the past two weeks.

The first report that I heard of was from the Madison area nearly a month ago when a gentleman couldn’t figure out why the water wasn’t flowing through his culvert. Upon closer examination, the culvert was clogged with millipedes. After shoveling them into 5-gallon buckets, the water was able to flow freely again, at least until a couple of days later when it happened again.

Sound unreal? Ask a few of the residents of our own Wood County that have noticed a dramatic increase in the number of the worm-like creatures that plaster themselves on the sides of their garages, house foundations, and patios over the past two weeks. This is the millipede migration.

Millipedes are generally not considered to be a pest, but in numbers of this magnitude, they are certainly a nuisance. They are small, worm-like critters with two pairs of legs per segment of their body. These legs are so small they look like hairs. The millipede will curl into a ball if touched. They are nocturnal and feed on decaying matter and rarely young plants. They are usually found under the forest floor where there is a build-up of leaf matter, in old fields or vacant grassy areas. As the weather begins to change, they leave those areas and crawl into lawns and toward buildings seeking moisture and a cool place to hide out. They will accumulate in cool damp areas overnight such as basements, crawl spaces, cement stoops, and garage floors. If they make it indoors, they will die in two to three days because of the lack of moisture. These can simply be vacuumed up. Caulk around windows and doors and along the foundation of the house to keep them out and stop them from getting under the siding.  

If large numbers of millipedes migrate to your home from adjacent land, consider applying insecticides outside as a barrier treatment. You can apply a 3- to 4-foot band of granular or liquid insecticide along the foundation. However, a 5- to 10-foot band applied at the edge of the lawn next to the site from which the millipedes are migrating may be more effective.  

Millipedes are just one of the many critters we will be seeing migrate over the next month or so. The grasshoppers have moved in to yards looking for food, box elder beetles have been congregating on the south sides of trees in the sun, and the Asian lady beetles are yet to come.  Luckily the Japanese beetles are almost done.

If this wonderful world of critters, diseases and plants is appealing to you and you would like to learn more about them and do some volunteer work in the community, consider taking the Master Gardener Volunteer Level 1 training beginning this fall in Marshfield.  This is a 12-week course, held on Tuesday evenings from 6 p.m. to 9 p.m., beginning Sept. 6.  Contact me at the Wood County Extension office at 715-421-8440 for more details.