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Cicadas: Brood XIV Emergence in the Bluegrass
- TreesLexington Staff
- May 30
- 2 min read
If this were a movie, it would be a sequel. Call it “Brood XIV: Return of the Teen-aged Orange-Eyed Insects.”
Brook XIV (also referred to as the "Bourbon Brood") 17-year cicadas (si-KAY-das), are now making their first appearance in Kentucky and a dozen other states since 2008, when George W. Bush was president.
They have been subsisting on the sap from tree roots for all these years, waiting for some strange alarm clock to ring. They probably will break the surface after a rain, when the soil is soft and, at a depth of 8 inches, has reached 64 degrees. “We’ll probably see them come out of the ground between May 10 and May 15," said Dr. Gene Kritsky, a cicada expert at the College of Mount St. Joseph in Cincinnati.
If it seems as if you hear of cicadas more often than every 17 years, that’s because different species groups appear at various and sometimes overlapping places and times. Some come out every 13 years, such as Brood X, which emerged in Kentucky four years ago. There are also cicadas that appear annually.
Cicadas don’t bite or sting, but the sound made by millions of them can be maddening. Most of the noise happens when mating begins. Sucking sap from roots while in the ground doesn’t hurt trees. For the few weeks they are above ground, they don’t eat. They can cause damage to trees, especially small ones, when the females cut slits on twigs to lay eggs. This shows up as broken branch tips with brown leaves, which is called flagging. Kritsky said flagging on most trees can be considered to be natural pruning, but people planting very small trees might want to cover them to keep the females away or wait until the egg-laying passes.
When cicadas emerge from the ground, they are moist white nymphs. They crawl up a vertical surface and in a couple of hours have transformed into adults, leaving the nymphal skin behind.
A female can lay 400 eggs which will hatch in six to eight weeks. The next generation of nymphs falls to the ground and burrows toward their own 17-year nap.
By Andy Mead, Trees Lexington Board Member
Want to learn more about the Bourbon Brood? Check out these additional resources:
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