Bug invasion

[captpackrat]

It's been pretty cold the past week or two, but today was quite warm, up in the 70's.  The bugs have absolutely exploded outside.  There's several dozen flies buzzing around on the porch, but it's the ladybugs that are the real problem.  There are several hundred ladybugs just on the porch.  There are clouds of them zipping around outside.  And they're somehow getting through the weatherstripping on the front door so there's a couple dozen ladybugs crawling around the walls and ceiling in the living room.  I don't particularly want to kill them, because ladybugs are a beneficial insect.  Hopefully the weather will take care of them naturally, it's supposed to be much cooler and rainy the next few days.

At least it's not mosquitoes.

Comments

[mondhasen.livejournal.com]

Every October the ladybugs appear. Hundreds of them. You don't want to kill them because they're beneficial: I don't want to kill them because they emit quite a rank odor when crushed. Even vacuuming them up causes them to emit that smell, and the vac bag has to be emptied right away.

[captpackrat.livejournal.com]

These ladybugs don't appear to give off any odor when you kill them, fortunately. Or maybe my perpetual sinus congestion has killed my sense of smell.

[fangwolf57.livejournal.com]

Yes those lady bugs I know what you are talking about. We don't have them in the city but yes in the country they get everwhere.

I am told they are not actually lady bugs called something else. Anyway farmers have used them to help with their crops to kill off someother bugs that were harmful to their crops. But now their population just exploded and they are everwhere.

[captpackrat.livejournal.com]

I'm no entomologist, but I think these are Harmonia axyridis, the Asian Lady Beetle.

[mondhasen.livejournal.com]

http://www.ipm.iastate.edu/ipm/iiin/ladybeetles.html

We get those orange colored ones as well. The above site has pics as well as descriptions of their habits. They started showing up here in RI in the late eighties: I thought they came into my home via the insulation I had put in the upstairs.

They like to cluster in the kitchen around the damned circline lamp and buzz around annoyingly. bleah.