This Bug In Michigan Is About To Wreak Havok Over Your Garden This Summer

With the return of warm weather, people are excited to be able to get back into their gardens and decorate their yards with beautiful flowers and vegetation. But there is a bug that is not indigenous to Michigan that is causing some serious problems, and has been over the last few years.

The bug is the box tree moth, which is an invasive species that originally traveled from Europe to Canada, but nobody knows exactly how it made its way across the Atlantic and into the United States.

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But one thing they do know is that this invasive species first appeared in Michigan in Washington County in 2003, and since then they’ve been destroying box wood plants.

This is an issue that has been going on for a few years and is only increasing, as Dean Darin, an employee of English Gardens in West Bloomfield, told Fox 2 Detroit.

We’re seeing a big concentration in the Farmington Hills, West Bloomfield area right now. Once they hatch they’ll be on the plant for a week before they start eating. If you see them, that’s when it’s time to spray.

As he continued, conventional means of killing bugs isn't going to have the proper affect on these suckers:

You’re going to spray a product called BT or bacillus thuringiensis. Squishing them isn’t going to help. You really want to kill them with the BT, that’s the most effective way.

Have you had negative experiences with this bug, and if so, where are you located? Send us a message on the chat button of our app.