Page 29 2024 Spring Home and Garden LINCOLN DAILY NEWS April 2024 This is going to be an unusual year in Illinois, so unusual that it probably won’t happen again until the 2040s. Though this may sound familiar, we are not talking about the total solar eclipse that occurred on April 8, 2024. We are talking about the invasion of two broods of cicadas. Brood XIII (13) and Brood XIX (19) will both be emerging at about the same time in Illinois, and for four to six weeks afterward our days and nights will be filled with the weird sound of the bug as the males release their mating call, bringing the ladies to the party. The first brood (19) is said to emerge from the ground every 13 years. The second brood (13) is a 17-year emergence. It is rare for two such significant broods to emerge in one year, which is why we are going to see unusually large populations of the bug in Illinois this year, but only in certain places. According to experts, brood 13 will be prominent in the northern part of the state while brood 19 will be more prevalent in the south. However, there is one little caveat to that statement. There is an overlap of north and south, and guess where it falls? Right in the heart of Central Illinois. It is predicted that in our part of the state the double dose of cicadas may occupy an area from Sangamon to Peoria and McLean counties, putting Logan County right in the middle of the noisy mess. Throughout history there is a bit of confusion about what a cicada is. Some recall the locust of biblical times. There was also an invasion of locust in the United States in the late 1800s. In both cases the ugly bugs wreaked havoc on agricultural crops and created terrible hardships everywhere they invaded. Cicadas and locusts however are not the same thing, thankfully. Cicadas are not harmful to agriculture thus they will not destroy food crops. However, they can be harmful to young trees. Locusts are reported to be swarming insects, which cicadas are not, therefore one should not fear running into large swarms like we often see in those tiny little buffalo knats. What one can expect is to find dozens if not hundreds of the crusty outer skin shells lying around the bases of trees and other woody plants. So where do these bug bugs come from, and where have they been for the last 13 or 17 years? View this video by the Weather Network https://www.youtube.com/ watch?v=2NKHNG0i_W4 The life cycle of the cicada is someone lobsided. It spends its first 13 or 17 years submerged underground. While there in its larval stage, it feeds on the nutrients found in the roots of trees and shrubs, growing until it reaches that pubescent stage that we see above ground. When the time is right, large Continued --
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