Week of October 19, 2025 – October 25, 2025
by Elizabeth Suzedell, Environmental Educator
There’s a white tree branch off of the Boundary Trail that I’ve pointed out to many students on field trips for the past few weeks. When I ask them what they think is going on with the branch, they ask, “Is it snow?” I tell them we haven’t had snow yet, and upon closer inspection, they see hundreds of little white bugs swinging back and forth. This branch on a beech tree is home to a colony of beech blight aphids!
Beech blight aphids are small insects that eat the sap of beech trees when they are nymphs (or juveniles). They emerge in late summer, and they become more and more visible into the early autumn as they grow. Their fluffy, waxy, white hairs that they secrete is what makes them look like snowflakes. When they are disturbed, they swing their abdomens and white fluff back and forth, possibly to scare or confuse predators. This dance that they do also gives them the nickname “boogie-woogie aphid.”
While beech blight aphids may damage some individual branches, there is little evidence that they harm the beech trees as a whole. Instead, these aphids actually allow a few other species to thrive. Their excrement, known as “honeydew,” is very sugary, since the sap that they eat contains sugar. When a colony has hundreds of aphids, honeydew accumulates quickly on branches, plants, or the ground below. Ants and yellow jackets are common visitors to this sugary oasis; students are always shocked to hear that other insects are eating the aphids’ poop! With time, a fungus called sooty mold will move in, growing on the honeydew and leaving a black, soot-like coating below the aphids.
The boogie-woogie aphids and their interesting role in the forest ecosystem always inspires curiosity about nature, and there are dozens of other weird and cool things to find out there. Have you seen these aphids around? What other interesting things have you discovered in nature this fall?