Mysterious purple boxes bug reader

Dan Hartzell | The Road Warrior

August 11, 2008

This trap for the emerald ash box borer, a beetle harmful to ash trees, is set in a tree on Geissinger Road in Upper Milford Township. (DAN HARTZELL/TMC / August 11, 2008)

Q: This may not be a typical Road Warrior question, but maybe you can help. While driving around the Valley, I've noticed purple 'boxes' hanging in trees in various locations. I spotted two on Limeport Pike, one on Geissinger Road in Upper Milford Township, and I saw one on a side road trip to Kempton. They're not always easy to spot -- they hang high in trees -- but when I did see them, it piqued my curiosity. Are they bat boxes, or insect control, or what? Any ideas?

Lisa Bowers

Upper Milford Township

A: Being an atypical and curious kind of motorist, the Warrior found this question intriguing, Lisa. He had no idea what the purple box was used for when first spotting one hanging in one of Beulah Miller's trees on Geissinger Road.

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The triangular, rigid-plastic box was suspended high on a branch, with what seemed like thousands of black dots painted on the exterior walls.

Those dots turned out to be insects of all sorts, caught on the sticky surface of the contraption intended, by its color and its location, to lure a specific pest: the emerald ash borer, a beetle that's been devastating the ash tree crop in the north-central United States and into Windsor, Ontario.

Estimates vary widely, but by some accounts as many as 40 million ash trees have been killed by the insect in Michigan, Ohio, Illinois, Virginia, West Virginia, and, so far, a limited part of western Pennsylvania.

Officials suspect that the beetles, native to Asia, probably hitched rides on ships or planes across the Pacific; ash is widely used for shipping crates and packing. The native range of the bug is eastern Russia, northeast China, Japan, Korea, Taiwan, and Mongolia, according to information from Penn State University.

The beetles never were seen in North America until June 2002, though officials suspect they may have been here for a decade by then.

They first were discovered in the Keystone State in June 2007, in Allegheny and Butler counties; by the same time this year they had made their way into Mercer County.

State forestry officials and biologists are trying to find out how far they've spread into our state, and that's the main purpose of the unusual box-like devices, Lisa. Emerald ash borers are attracted to the color purple, and the traps do double duty by killing any borers that contact them.

Fortunately, the insects haven't turned up in Lehigh County, said Monica Bugbee, a Penn State junior working on the trap project as an intern for the state Department of Agriculture.

Bugbee and Tom Huff, a grad student at East Stroudsburg University, hung about 150 of the boxes in 1.5-square-mile sectors throughout the county in late May, and were collecting them last week after several checks over the summer. The boxes might be gone by now.

About 10,000 of the traps were put out this year in 35 Pennsylvania counties, according to the state, each with an information label.

The bugs can kill a tree within three years. Scientists are working on insecticides and looking for natural enemies or other control methods. As one official put it, if we don't get a handle on this problem, ''You can just kiss your ash goodbye.''

The Emerald ash borer invasion should be of note to baseball fans, as many major league bats are made from ash.

Hillerich and Bradsby Co., which makes the Louisville Slugger brand of bat, reports no supply problems attributable to the borer yet, because most of its ash stands are in the border region between Pennsylvania and New York, still a long drive from the insect's known whereabouts.

Emerald ash borers are dark metallic green in color, about a half-inch long and an eighth-inch wide, and are capable of flight. Anyone who thinks they've seen the pest should call the state Agriculture Department's toll-free pest hotline at 866-253-7189.

There's a Hummer's worth of information on the insect available on the Internet. Just put Emerald ash borer into gear on a search engine and step on the gas.

Road Warrior appears Mondays and Fridays. E-mail questions about roadways, traffic and transportation to hartzell@mcall.com. Please include your name and the municipality where you live. Or, write to Road Warrior, The Morning Call, 101 N. Sixth St., Allentown, PA 18101-1480.