All About Oak Itch Mites
You may not have known about the small Oak Itch Mites which are super itchy and are hard to control. They can explain a lot for people who have had very itchy little bites that don’t seem to be from mosquitoes. What makes Oak Itch Mites so hard to control is that there really is not a treatment that you can put on your Oaks or plants to eradicate them.
Oak Itch Mites live on Oak trees, are smaller than a flea and are hardly visible to the human eye. They have a short life span and typically feed on the larvae of tiny flies called midges. The Oak midges lay their eggs on Oak leaves or other soft tissue in the tree and form a nest called a gall. (1)
These galls are the Oak Itch Mites favorite place to dine. If they clear out the entire gall, then they move on to other things to eat such as the larvae of cicadas. Remember those? Well, not only were they annoying, but the cicadas would lay their larvae close to the tips of tree branches, so if the Oak Itch Mites runs out of galls to eat, they work on the larvae of the cicadas. That means that we have an extended itchy season in our area because the Brood X was out and about this year giving the Oak Itch Mites the chance to live longer than usual in our environment. (2)
These mites are light enough that the wind can blow them from their location up to several miles away! So even if you are cautious and are trying to avoid these mites by keeping your distance from Oak trees, you are still capable of having them land on you. But don’t fret, even though they are crazy itchy, there is no evidence that they cause a health threat to humans and they will not be around for much longer. (3)
