Ok, where are all the weather experts and the bug guys?
I’m here in central Wisconsin, and there are Ladybugs freakin’ everywhere. I just went outside on break and was dive-bombed by a bunch of them. Then, I get inside to find a few decided to hitch a ride on my clothing!!
There are swarms of them. Flying around. Clinging to sides of building and windows. What’s going on here? On the weather front, we had a cold snap last week and are now experiencing Indian (Native American?) Summer (temperature in the 70s today). Anyone have a theory? The guy on the local weather mentioned it last night but he had no idea what was up either. In the meantime, I’m starting to prepare for the coming apocolypse.
Well, it’s been awhile since the Big Guy Upstairs smacked us with a plague. He’s a bit out of practice; don’t worry, the rivers will turn to blood next Thursday.
My daughter has been complaining about the ladybugs also. They are joining the spiders in the bathroom in competition to take a shower with her.
I am also finding a lot of them on the outside screens; maybe they are looking for warmth.
I think we are too far in town for frogs and locusts. I haven’t heard any explanation for it either.
For 3 year growing up. We had a lady bug infestation. Millions of them in my house. We would have to vaccum them off the ceiling before dinner and bed. I always woke up with at least 20 dead lady bugs on me. It was nasty. We finnaly got rid of them one year, my mother found a bivouac of them about a 1 foot high mound of lady bugs in one of our closest. it was nasty. We had to vacuse the up nad toos them out side.
Lucky lady bugs indeed, I say kill the bastards,all of them.
Come down South and enjoy the annual plague of Lovebugs. In case you aren’t familiar with them, they are small black flying bugs similar that lock together when mating. They can even fly when joined, but they fly at slower speed. No imagine thousands of these things flying and your vehicle slaughtering hundreds of them, leaving a messing bug residue all over the front of your car. Messy, messy, messy…and not fun to clean up after.
Problem is, they’re a protected species. I can’t target them as pests and go after them specifically. They’re a beneficial insect, as they eat aphids, so gardeners like em. And they don’t infest your food or bite or sting anyone or do damage to the wood members of your house. They’re harmless, really (albeit a pain in the 'nads when there are a jillion of them clinging to the screen on the sliding glass door).
So don’t try hiring a professional pest control guy to get rid of them because, at least in New York, we’re not allowed to.
Has something to do with their mating habits and weather, would be my guess. These things tend to run in cycles. About 4 years or so ago, New York had bunches of ladybugs all over. Not so many since. Maybe we’ll get hit with a bunch of them later this fall. Keep in mind that the conditions leading up to the main burst of activity are important too. Certain types of insects thrive in certain types of weather during the summer, and that can lead to a real population explosion in the fall or the following spring.
The ceiling lights in my house all have a little pool of ladybugs insides the light cover-thing. I just cleaned the one in this room half an hour ao, and its full again.
And they stink when you try to wash them off. During my one and only summer in Mississippi, I was driving a WHITE Honda. As my job required driving all over MS, LA, and the FL panhandle, that car got washed once a week, minimum. They seemed to be worst around Bogalusa, LA and McComb, MS.
Luckily, they don’t seem to have moved into the Atlanta area yet, though they are present a bit south of here.
I visited my Dad in Wyoming this summer, and the place was absolutely CRAWLING with grasshoppers! I mean, no joke, in one square foot of his yard there were probably 50 or so… any time you walked outside, you were preceeded by a CLOUD of the little hopping freaks…
My Dad, incidentally, is an entymologist (spelling?); a bug doctor… he had no insightful insights (he he!) into why there were so many of the hopping little so an sos… other than that nature will kill them all off when they exhausted the available food supply (and hopefully before they turned carnivore!).
My guess (remember, I am an English teacher… tho I did spend one semester as a biology major…) is that the weather is changing due to global warming; and that this is causing subtle shifts in insect fertility/hatching rates/survival of grubs/ survival of natural predators/ etc… and as a result, we’re seeing weird blooms of different insects in different regions.
A sign of the Apocalypse? Maybe… where’s my sack cloth? I had it right here… Damn!
and wish I could find a way to keep them for next summer to eat the red aphids that infest the black-eyed Susans. But I’m glad all those huge mosquitoes are dead for the year.
Have you visited Minnesota, Annie-Xmas? It sounds like you have first hand experience.
Hey, these D*** ladybugs bite! They’re swarming all over the place along the shore of lake Michigan, and I’ve been nipped 4 or 5 times just walking outside!!! This is new behavior, at least for our usual local ladybugs. I’ve read Cecil’s discussion about these bugs, but does anyone have any straight dope on the biting stuff?
Maybe you smell like an aphid.
Actually, I’d rather have ladybugs around me than some of the others: Cicadas, Junebugs, and Horseflies are some bugs I hope die off in droves somewhere over the South Pacific. Ladybugs are nothin’ and they eat harmful (well, annoying) bugs.
