BANGOR (AP) – If you’ve noticed more biting deerflies swarming about your head and neck this summer, you’re probably not imagining things.

This time of the year, a step outside or into the woods would typically attract two or three of the biting pests. But this summer, it’s more likely to be a dozen or so on the attack.

Maine Forest Service entomologist Charlene Donahue said a lot of people have been noticing the increase in deerflies, and she believes weather conditions earlier this summer have something to do with it.

A cold spell this spring may have delayed the maturation of several of Maine’s 76 species of deerflies, meaning they are thriving at the same time as other species.

“That’s the thing that makes sense to me,” the insect expert said.

But another factor may be that conditions in general this spring and summer have been especially good for several species to develop in large numbers.

The average person wouldn’t be able to tell one species of deerfly from another. Donahue said not much research has been devoted to the deerfly, and there are no easy ways to deplete the population.

“Insect repellent doesn’t seem to work for them,” she said, but applying double-sided tape to a hat seems to be effective catching them as they dive-bomb for the head area. Like mosquitoes, only the females bite, so they can get blood to lay their eggs.

About the size of a fly, the deerfly has a striped body and spotted, yellowish wings. They seem to be attracted to movement or dark shapes, and when biting, “they stab you with their sharp mouth parts, and they lap up the blood,” Donahue said.

Known formally as the Chrysops species of the Tabanidae family, deerflies hatch earlier than the much larger horseflies. Both are suspected of transmitting Lyme disease, according to a fact sheet of the New England Journal of Medicine.

Copy the Story Link