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Bloomberg Businessweek
October 8, 2018
rom the road heading east, the apple trees of
Beekman Orchards unfold in waves, rising and
falling on a sea of verdant grass. Behind them,
basking in the June sunlight, are row upon row of
pinot noir, Riesling, and Traminette grapes. It’s
for the vineyard that I’ve driven to this 170-acre
estate in Berks County, an hour and a half
northwest of Philadelphia. Beekman Orchards is a fourth-
generation family enterprise, now carefully stewarded by
Calvin Beekman, a large
59-year-old man with a calm voice
and meat-hook hands.
“I told one fella one time I don’t need to go to Atlantic City,
because we’re the biggest gamblers there are,” he tells me out-
side his farmhouse. In
1999, Beekman planted the vineyard,
40 acres of red and white grapes that once brought in about
a quarter-million dollars annually. On this day, several rows
of vines in the middle of the patch are a lush green, close to
the fruit-set stage. Mid-June is usually when clusters of grapes
bloom, growing until harvest begins in mid-September. In
the rows farther out, though, no clusters are visible, and the
grape-shoot trunks are blackened, dead. Beekman gestures
toward a set of Riesling vines that went in just last year. “This
row contains 140 plants,” he says. “I don’t think you can ind
one percent that’s viable.”
A third of his vineyard has sufered a similar fate. Another
third is struggling. And the luxuriant middle third? It could
be at risk, too. He points to the woodlands surrounding his
farm and utters a word that’s been unnerving farmers, forest-
ers, public oicials, and entomologists alike: “lanternlies.”
The spotted lanternly,
Lycorma delicatula
, is a moth-
like insect about an inch long and a half-inch wide. Native
to Southeast Asia, it was discovered in Berks County in 2014.
Already it’s threatening to harm more plants and crops
than even the brown marmorated stink bug, discovered in
Pennsylvania around the turn of the century and now wreak-
ing havoc in 43 states.
Beekman points to a patch of terrain where, last August,
he counted 325 lanternlies in the span of a yard. Unlike the
stink bug and the emerald ash borer, another invasive insect
that arrived from Asia to the mid-Atlantic region, the lan-
ternly moves in hordes. Spot one lanternly, and lurking
nearby you’ll likely ind hundreds, if not thousands. They
can overwhelm a tree, coating it from root to leaf, feast-
ing on sap before disgorging a glutinous substance that dis-
rupts photosynthesis and kills plants. “You come outside,
and it’s just swarms and swarms and swarms,” Beekman
says, describing the scene from last summer. “You probably
would’ve had 20 of them crawl up you by now.”
In 2017, Pennsylvania’s lanternly population soared,
spreading across 4.5 million acres and prompting a quar-
antine that required businesses and residents to check
outdoor items for bugs before moving them out of any of
13 afected counties. “We thought the stink bug was bad,
because it feeds on a wide range of plants, can cause damage
to diferent crops, and has a nuisance factor,” says Emelie
Swackhamer, a horticulturalist with Penn State University.
“But the lanternly, it’s just much worse. It has this really
broad feeding behavior, and that’s unusual for an insect.
And it threatens so many of our high-value commodities.”
Quantifying or predicting the economic damage caused
by invasive pests is diicult, but Beekman’s tally of his farm’s
damages and expenses provides some insight into the dan-
ger: His 2017 losses, he estimates, were $100,000, with pro-
jected 2018 losses of $250,000. In June, the Pennsylvania
Department of Agriculture suggested the spotted lantern-
ly might cause $18 billion in damage statewide. Posting on
Facebook in mid-September, Penn State said the ly “could
be the most destructive species in 150 years.”
The state hasn’t come up with industry-specific esti-
mates, but the hardwood and fruit-growing industries are
especially threatened. “This is our No. 1 concern,” says Sarah
Hall-Bagdonas of the Northern Tier Hardwood Association,
which is hosting dozens of information sessions for lum-
ber companies from Virginia to New York. In New York, for-
estry is a $13.1 billion industry that supports 42,000 jobs. In
Virginia, it’s a $21 billion business with 108,000 workers. In
Pennsylvania: $19 billion and 66,000 employees. Hardwood
companies working in any of the 13 quarantined counties now
require a special permit from the state agriculture depart-
ment proving that they can identify the lanternly and have
a plan to contain the bug, which is thought to hitch rides
across state borders on the undercarriages of cars, trains,
and 18-wheelers.
This February, U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Sonny Perdue
announced that his department was committing $17.5 mil-
lion to stem the lanternly’s spread. In a sense, it was already
too late. The lanternly had been spotted in New York a few
months earlier and in Virginia weeks before. Three New
Jersey counties are under quarantine after conirmed sight-
ings in July. Delaware and Maryland are both on alert.
State and federal entomologists have recommended a few
containment strategies, but they don’t yet have a foolproof
way to kill, or even count, the bug. If they can’t ind a solu-
tion, lanternlies could infest forests all along the Atlantic
seaboard, giving communities from New England to Florida
an intimate look at what Penn State entomologist Tom Baker
weirdest, most pernicious insect I’ve ever seen.”
ach May, lanternly larvae hatch in groups of 30 to
50. The nymphs look like shiny, overgrown ticks,
with black bodies and white spots. Through July
they grow into luttering adults, developing wings
whose exterior is drab white with black spots, and
whose underside is bright red. When folded, the
wings resemble a cloak, draped over a yellow,
d abdomen marked by horizontal black bands. The
adults lourish through October, with the females laying eggs
starting in late September and continuing sometimes into
December, provided temperatures are warm enough. Come
spring, the cycle begins anew.
F