![]() Once they warm up inside your home, hundreds of eggs can hatch. ![]() Occasionally, a real Christmas tree might be hiding a praying mantis egg case. ![]() But ticks typically don't attached themselves to trees, and when in doubt, you can always inspect the bug: Ticks have eight legs, while aphids have only six. Jill says people have mistaken Cinara aphids for a more problematic critter: ticks. Aphids reproduce quickly, but they don't bite or cause diseases. Most growers treat Christmas trees for aphids before harvest, but some colonies hide in branches, making it difficult for scouts to spot. These insects are brown or black with large bodies and feed on the sap from conifer trees. Here are some more common (but still very rare!) types of Christmas tree bugs to watch out for. "People think of some big, monstrous spider, but these spiders are barely visible." What kinds of bugs are in Christmas trees? An insecticidal soap brand started quoting the number, and soon everyone was putting "getting rid of Christmas tree bugs" at the top of their holiday to-do list. "The bugs they were talking about in this Norway study were microscopic," she explains-insects like mites that you would never be able to see. So what about all those scary headlines that pop up every season, warning that up to 25,000 bugs could be hiding in your real tree? Jill says that number did appear in a research study conducted in Norway, but the results don't actually suggest that your live tree is teeming with beetles, spiders, and bed bugs. Chal Landgren, resident Christmas tree specialist at the Oregon State University Extension Service, agrees: "It's a very minor problem." The odds that your live tree is carrying an unwanted hitchhiker is about one in 100,000, says Jill Sidebottom, Ph.D., an extension specialist at North Carolina State University who has been studying Christmas tree bugs for 30 years. Should you be worried that your natural tree is bringing a little extra nature into your home? The short answer: Not really. If there's one thing that might convince us to switch to team artificial Christmas tree, though, it's the thought of-ew-Christmas tree bugs. For many of us-Ree included-putting up a real Christmas tree is a cherished holiday tradition.
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