Hemlock woolly adelgid
The hemlock woolly adelgid is a tiny brown bug, smaller than a pinhead. You hardly ever see the bug itself, but you can see its egg sacs. They look like little tufts of white cotton wool stuck under the branches of hemlock trees.
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Fun facts
Its sucking mouthpart is three times as long as its whole body.
In North America they are all females. Each one lays 100 to 300 eggs in its woolly sac.
A sick hemlock turns greyish green, drops its needles and can die within 4 to 10 years.
To fight it, people let loose a tiny black ladybird from Japan. One ladybird larva can eat about 500 adelgid eggs.
The babies can travel to new trees on the wind, or by riding on birds and other animals.
Most asked questions about Hemlock woolly adelgid
?What does the hemlock woolly adelgid look like?
The bug is tiny and brown, but you notice its white woolly egg sacs under hemlock branches.
?Is the hemlock woolly adelgid harmful?
Not to people, but in eastern North America it kills many hemlock trees.
?How big is a hemlock woolly adelgid?
Only about 0.8 millimetres long, smaller than a pinhead.
For bug experts
- Scientific name
- Adelges tsugae
- Group
- True bugs and cicadas
- Family
- Adelgidae
- Classification
- Insecta > Hemiptera > Adelgidae
- Lives on
- Asia, North America
- Also known as
- HWA
Where the facts come from
- Hemlock woolly adelgid (Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0): what it looks like, where it lives, what it eats, sizes and fun facts, retold in simple words.
- Picture by Connecticut Agricultural Experiment Station Archive, Connecticut Agricultural Experiment Station. CC BY 3.0 us, Wikimedia Commons. The round sticker of this bug is cut from the same picture.
If we got something wrong, sorry, we are bug fans, not a science journal. Tell us at [email protected] and we will fix it.
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