After reading the fruit fly thread, I wondered where the heck all the lady bugs at my patio door are coming from.
Since the weather started warming up there have been an increasing number of these things at the sliding doors. At first we were grabbing 5 or 10 per day with a Kleenex. Then we resorted to vacuuming them up 20 or 30 at a time. The quantity seems to have decreased back to the 5 or 10 per day level now, but for the life of me I can’t figure out where these are coming from. There’s no nest-like object. They’re not available in large numbers elsewhere in the house, yet whenever we get rid of them within minutes more seem to be right back again.
Anyone else have this issue? Is there a poison or other way to eradicate them for good?
Ladybugs hibernate. One customary place for them to have spent the winter is inside the walls of your house, if they can find a crevice to get in there. And it sounds like they did, last fall. One at a time they marched in there, and now that it’s spring, one at a time, they’re marching back out again. Look around for a ladybug-sized crevice where the patio door assembly meets the walls of the house, and squirt bug spray around there liberally.
If they’re Asian lady beetles as Folly suggests (and they probably are), just vacuum them up every day and don’t worry about it until next fall. The ones you’re seeing now are trying to get out, not coming in, and eventually all that survived the winter in your walls will be gone–for now. If you don’t want to share your house with them next year, you will have to find every miniscule opening on the outside of your house and seal it up. It would probably just be easier to buy a bigger vacuum.
Oh, and that stinking yellow fluid they emit when they’re mad/scared/squashed will stain fabrics, so don’t smash them on your sofa.
Oh, and they bite–or rather, they pinch. It’s rather a shock when you’re accustomed to the kindler, gentler ladybugs of yore.
But if you have the kind of vacuum that runs stuff through an impeller, you will not be happy when your vacuum reeks of Eau de Squashed MALB (Multi-colored Asian Lady Beetle). Put a knee-high stocking over the end of the hose to capture them.
Around these parts, the MALB populations fluctuate dramatically depending on how serious the soybean aphids are (soybean aphids being the pest the MALBs were imported to control). We’ve had years when we’ve had tons of MALBs, and for the last few years, virtually none.