BANGOR DAILY NEWS • October 21, 2024
To successfully reproduce, the female tick needs a male tick to fertilize her eggs, a full meal of blood and a spot under the leaf litter to spend the winter in a dormant state. The female tick can survive the entire winter without a host. The Lyme disease-carrying black legged ticks feed on large forest mammals such as deer, moose, raccoons or foxes. Typically the female ticks lay several hundred eggs in a small cluster or mass, but they can lay up to 2,000.