Adult chigger swarm??!!??

[Bonefreak]

Went to go check a camera today and was walking to my spot.....as I passed a pile of stacked wooden fencing ......which is always the area I pick up them chewy bastuds in early season.....i noticed a bunch of small bugs sunning themselves in the warm, January sunlight and jumping off the edge of the fencing towards me!!  They didn't land on me but I did use a knife to scrape some into a Ziploc bag to study em further, or maybe even take em to the Rutgers extension center for an entomologist to examine. I think they are adult chiggers.....which I know eat plant matter and do not feed on a host, cuz it's larva stage that "evaporates" our skin cells that is so bothersome to us (see this link - http://itsabouttheecology.blogspot.com/2012/06/chiggers-making-field-work-less-fun.html?m=1 

Anyone confirm what these things are??!!??

[Bonefreak]

Btw.....there were tens of thousands of these things!!!

[Stewey]

Holy crap 

[Nomad]

What state were you in?  Never seen any in NJ.

[Live to Hunt]

They look nasty

[3Blade]

Keep those suckers down in south jersey!!

[amaraziti]

F-ing gross that’s what they are

[Buck154]

I dont think they are chigger. Never seen them before mid summer into early fall. Friend of mine just to me hw has thousands of small bugs around his house now. He said they are some kind of Aphid.

[Bonefreak]

2 minutes ago, Buck154 said:

I dont think they are chigger. Never seen them before mid summer into early fall. Friend of mine just to me hw has thousands of small bugs around his house now. He said they are some kind of Aphid.

Gotchya!  Will try n hav em IDed n keep u posted

[Devil Horns]

If they are chiggers, you need to go back there with a flame thrower.


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[Swamprat]

Chiggers > Devil spawn. 

[bushden]

OMG there are enough there to KILL YOU (suicide)

[Wallew]

I highly doubt that they are chiggers. I have had them a few times over the years and they are almost impossible to see.

I have also never heard of anyone getting or seeing them in January. They are usually done for the year after the first good frost and don’t come back out until early spring.

[Bonefreak]

3 minutes ago, Wallew said:

I highly doubt that they are chiggers. I have had them a few times over the years and they are almost impossible to see.

I have also never heard of anyone getting or seeing them in January. They are usually done for the year after the first good frost and don’t come back out until early spring.

Its the larvae stage that bites you and are so small you can barely see them.... adults feed on plant material

per the below study...

Chiggers are the larval stage of a trombucid mite, sometimes called “red bugs.” The nymph and adult stages eat plant material and do not interact with host animals. The larvae are very small and are difficult to see with the naked eye. One of my lab-mates did see one crawling on her leg and scraped it off onto a microscope slide and then we could look at it under a microscope. This was the first time I actually saw a chigger, it looked very similar to the picture above.

 

 

Unlike ticks, these mite larvae feed on the skin cells of their hosts. They use their mouthparts to burrow into the skin of the host and uses a specialized enzyme to liquefy the outer layer of skin so it can be ingested, creating a stylostome (kind of a tube into the host’s skin). This is probably why the bites are sooo itchy and stick around for a long time, because there is more damage or manipulation of the host skin, as opposed to insertion of the mouthparts of a tick or mosquito.

[hammer4reel]

Im no chigger expert but in the same reading your quoting from they said adults are always RED .

And all the pics of adults on line are showing them as bright red .

If they are chiggers i would be spraying that spot while your able to get them