Black Flies Making Garden Life Miserable

September 15th, 2015

Maybe you’re lucky enough to garden in an area where you have no idea what I’m talking about when I say, “Aren’t the gnats horrible?”

Notice the black flies landing on and swarming around this fist in the air.

But if you’re anywhere within 20 miles of one of the Pennsylvania streams and rivers where gnats – black flies, to be more accurate – breed, you’ll know exactly what I mean.

Black flies are tiny flying insects that bite, fly up noses and swarm so relentlessly around people’s heads that you really can’t stand to stay outside for long.

If you think they’re worse than usual this year, you’re not imagining it. They really are because the state’s spraying program that has controlled them so well for nearly 30 years is no longer funded well enough for good control.

Spraying has been starting later and ending sooner for several years, and it’s to the point now where it’s under-funded enough that the bugs are winning again. And gardeners, golfers, farmers, outdoor diners, and really anyone who works or enjoys the outside are losing.

The problem has been getting so bad since August that I’m hearing from people like Andrea Blauch, who asked me the following: “Can you suggest a deterrent for gnats? I can no longer be outside because I have become a magnet. I am covered with bites. I am at the point I would cut down our trees if I knew it would help. I’m seriously considering moving.”

People who haven’t experienced black flies don’t understand how a little bug can be such a big enough deal to make someone stay inside or think about moving.

I understand completely. I live within a half-mile of the Conodoguinet Creek, and when the state stops spraying, it’s noticeable… and miserable. The thought of moving has crossed my mind, too.

The black flies bother my poor wife even more. She can’t go outside more than a few seconds without getting swarmed and bit repeatedly.

Besides being enormously annoying because of their swarming propensity to fly up noses and into eyes, female black flies bite. They often cause welts, tiny itchy wounds and sore red eyes when they lodge in the lining of an eye.

Some people are allergic to the saliva coagulant that black flies inject when they bite – an aid to make our blood flow better. People with allergic reactions can suffer nausea, fever and dizziness.

Fortunately, the four different species of black flies found in Pennsylvania don’t spread serious diseases like encephalitis and river blindness, as do some of their tropical cousins.

The sad part is that this is one of the few problems we had managed to solve effectively and efficiently. Ever since the state Department of Environmental Protection’s Black Fly Suppression Program started in the mid 1980s, black flies had become a nightmare from the past.

I remember when I first started as a municipal reporter for The Patriot-News working on the old Answer Line column, every other question we’d get was about how to cope with the awful gnat problem.

Back then, people were carrying around smoky punk sticks, wearing netted hats and smearing themselves with all kinds of stinky, gooey repellents to avoid the swarms and bites.

Ultimately, a citizens group called NAG (Neighbors Against Gnats) garnered enough attention from legislators and government officials to get funding for a spraying program.

The natural soil bacterium Bti (Bacillus thuringiensis israelensis) turned out to be highly effective at controlling black-fly larvae without harming people, mammals, birds, fish and even most aquatic life.

The state pays for 80 percent of the spraying cost with the rest coming from participating counties (i.e. the ones close enough to black-fly breeding waterways, such as Cumberland, Dauphin, Perry, York and Juniata).

Starting in 1983, the state began treating affected creeks and rivers with Bti via helicopter and back-pack spraying. Spraying began as early as mid-April and sometimes continued as late in the season as the end of September.

All was fine in black-fly land, and people could garden, golf and go outside again in peace for 25+ years.

Then funding started to lag behind costs. One year, the Rendell administration even proposed eliminating it. Local uproar prevented that, but to make the most of the available money, DEP has been spraying less and in shorter time frames.

This year, spraying began in late April and ended in mid-June.
“At that time, the program’s funding that was allocated for July 1, 2014, through June 30, 2015, was exhausted, and control efforts ceased,” says Douglas Orr, a water program specialist with the state Department of Environmental Protection. “Two more sprays were conducted statewide in August prior to the program shutting down for the season.”

The problem is that black flies produce multiple generations from spring through late summer. We stop spraying, but they keep breeding. And they’re so prolific that numbers balloon almost within a few weeks.

“Black flies will continue to emerge from streams and rivers into October,” says Orr. “Sustained cold weather at that time will stop the black-fly breeding cycle and kill off the existing adults.”

Black-fly adults live, on average, for 28 days and can fly as far as 20 miles away from the water source where they were born.

Males and females mate in the air (in a matter of seconds), and females lay 150 to 500 eggs in at least 49 Pennsylvania waterways, including the Susquehanna and Juniata rivers and Conodoguinet, Swatara, Yellow Breeches, Mahantango and Sherman creeks.

This bug needs flowing water to survive. Unlike mosquitoes, black flies don’t breed in still ponds, standing water sources or your back-yard birdbath.

Any trees, damp shade, water gardens and rain gardens in your yard also don’t play a role. If you have lots of black flies, they’re coming from a flowing creek or river.

Ironically, black flies became such a big problem because of steps we took to clean up those waterways.

Back in the days of unchecked industrial pollution, acid mine drainage, untreated sewage and other pollutants, the water was too toxic for pollution-sensitive species like black flies to survive.

Once water became cleaner, black flies multiplied. They started reaching annoying levels here in the 1950s and 1960s, and became intolerable during the 1970s.

Unless legislators and the governor somehow come up with funding to restore spraying, you’d better get used to more and more black flies.

That means fending for yourself by retrieving the netted hats from the attic, learning what “punk” is, and stocking up on products such as Vicks VapoRub®, which I smear on my hat, ears and cheeks during black-fly season.

For what it’s worth, here are other anti-black-fly tips from the state’s Black Fly Suppression Program:

1.) Avoid black-fly infested areas during daytime periods of peak adult activity. They’re less active in the early morning and late evening.

2.) Stay indoors on warm, cloudy, humid summer days, and before summer thunderstorms, when gnats are most aggressive.

3.) Wear light-colored clothing. Black flies are attracted to dark colors.

4.) Cover up as much as possible, i.e. hats, long pants, tucked-in long-sleeved shirts, and glasses, goggles or netted headgear for eye protection.

5.) Use repellent products, such as DEET, citronella oil, punk sticks or mentholated cream.

6.) Avoid perfumes, colognes, deodorants, hairsprays and other toiletries that attract black flies.

To report unacceptable black-fly problems, the state’s Black Fly Suppression Program fields complaints through its website.

If you want to urge the Legislature to bump up funding to get black flies back under control, go to the state’s Find Your Legislator website to get local contact information. I’ve already written my legislators and Gov. Wolf.

And if you’d just like to commiserate and stay up to date with follow black-fly victims, check out the Friends of the Pennsylvania Black Fly Suppression Program group on Facebook.