Lifestyle
Experts Say to Check Your Christmas Tree for Bugs
We’ve already seen a case of a black widow spider looming inside of a Christmas tree at H-E-B thanks to a social media post from reporter Paul Stephen. But KSAT reports that this isn’t an uncommon occurrence. “There could be as many as 25,000 bugs in your tree… Among the most common unwelcome guests are aphids, spiders and mites, adelgids, pine needle scale, sawfly, praying mantises and bark beetles,” the news writes.
An infograph with facts pulled from PennState, Virginia Tech, Science Daily, and Bugwood.org on the Safer Brand website says that bugs shouldn’t prevent people from lugging a big Christmas tree into their home. Even if some bugs do get into the home, they most likely will not be harmful to you or your home.
Safer Brand says there are measures one should take to ensure that bugs stay happily outside and you stay happily away from them while you hang your decorations. You can leave the tree in your garage for a couple of days before moving it inside, use a small vacuum to run through the limbs to catch any bugs or shake the tree as hard as you can back and forth outside to convince bugs to fly/fall off.
