Aparently, they are not real or true ladybugs. This link has some information, but I found part of this very useful as to why they are swarming the front of my white, southern-facing, two-story home that is in the Blue Ridge Mountains.
Thousands of the bugs also find ways into my walk-out basement. I have swept them up by the snow-shovel-full (literally). My basement faces south, and the insects are attracted to light-colored structures with southern, sunny exposures that are on a hillside.The beetles come in around the screen door upstairs, too, and the next thing you know, I've got hundreds of them crawling on the walls and across the ceiling.
Okay...thank God I don't have them THAT badly! But I don't like that I've already vacuumed up more than 100 of them today.
Weather stripping and insecticides with either pyrethrins or permethrin are also helpful, says this woman.
Part of her five steps to help tame the swarms had this:
Vacuum up the beetles with the vacuum cleaner attachment.
This may be somewhat time-consuming but it is a non-toxic and safe method to remove the bugs. As far as I'm concerned, time-consuming doesn't seem so important when thousands of lady beetles are invading my house.
When vacuuming up large numbers of Multi-Colored Asian Lady Beetles, be sure that you don't leave the attachment hose draped across the vacuum cleaner in preparation for the next vacuuming session, otherwise the beetles will soon find their way out of the vacuum bag and will be crawling around the house again. One woman from my hometown says she solves this problem by stuffing a paper towel into the end of the vacuum hose.
When I read that last part, I grabbed a couple of paper towels and sent Big Girl up to stuff it into the wand, which is draped across my vacuum cleaner, ready for the next vacuuming session
.More information on the Multicolored Asian Lady Beetle can be found here. (That's also where I got the nifty picture.)
2 comments:
I wrote earlier, but I don't think it took. LOL.
These critters infested my school a couple of years ago. I heard the dorms were hit by them especially bad . They sent out bulletins about things to do to prevent them and such. I remember once sitting doing my macroeconomics midterm my sophmore year and half of one of these buggers fell out of my hair. Half. The other half would fall out later. Apparently he had fallen into my hair from the lighting fixture above dead. I was watching them crawl around the walls today in Con Law. They haven't been as bad as that one year though, at least around here. I hope you get them taken care of. I understand they stink and stain when smooshed, so be careful with that.
BTW I don't think I've seen a real lady bug in years, just these things.
Well Chris, just send them over to me. I love ladybugs. They would be so much help with my lanai container gardening. They would the pesky little aphids and ants that are plaguing me.
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