Friends.....you can purchase

Anyone ever purchase anything like this? Sounds like it could be a natural deterrent against aphids and other bad bugs. I do wonder how much it would really help though.

Not helpful to you, but my brother purchases Mantids every year just for the cool factor. They certainly won’t hurt and in climates where they don’t normally live you have to replace them each year.

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I could find 100 Chinese Mantis cases (that is what they look like to me) in an hour if I look in the right spots, maybe I should if they are that expensive… They like unmowed meadows, vines and other plants 1/8 to 1/2 inch in diameter that get good sun exposure. The best time to look is in the fall and winter, but they may not have hatched out yet. They are a generalist ambush predator, when they are small they will eat ants, gnats and even each other. Later on they eat just about anything they can catch.

Ladybugs work best in a greenhouse, or sprinkle them on plants that have aphids. If you just release them spread out in the garden they will probably fly off looking for aphids. The larvae are really the best predators, the eggs look like little orange jelly beans standing on end and packed together on the undersides of leaves. There are a fair number of native ladybeetles here in addition to the Asian species that are pink instead of red and a little bit smaller.

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You don’t make these suggestions to your friends, just your neighbors :wink:

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I buy ladybugs almost every year and release in garden, the trick is to spray them with a 50-50 mix of water and coke to make them unable to fly for hours. As long as you have water available for them once you let them go they will stick around…and aphids.

Once I had to release 5000 in my grow room in the basement due to an aphid infestation on 2000 pepper seedlings that started from one overwinter ed pepper.

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The problem with lady bugs is that they have a tendency to find their way into your home like stink bugs. And they actually smell just as bad as stink bugs. My attic in my previous home was a haven for both of those bugs.

You may be speaking of Japanese beetles because I never smelled anything from a ladybug?

I tried mantis in my yard last summer, 2 out of the 3 cases I bought hatched but I never did find a grown, or even half grown adult, not sure where they went but Im thinking birds might have eaten them…

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No. Definitely lady bugs smell. Very similar stench as a stinkbug. In my old house I would vacuum them up and it would trash the filter . If I could keep them on my fruit trees I’d welcome them. But they aren’t cool in the house. We also get Japanese beetles every summer but I’ve never found any in the house. They terrorize my cherry tree leaves. I use carbyl to control them.

Here we have millions of the “asian lady beetle” that was intentionally released to control aphids on soybeans. I guess they probably do their job as is evidenced by their large population. In dry years when the aphids are worse, the beetles will aggregate on south facing walls in very large numbers. Those things really stink, and love to be inside houses.

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100% correct…lady bugs stink a LOT. But let me ask this…just this week I was having a good-natured argument with a co-worker who just swore that lady-bugs can either bite or sting (he wasn’t sure which, only that it hurts a lot). I told him he is completely crazy, I’ve never been bit/stung and never heard of such a thing. Anyone else?

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We have problems with some kind of ladybugs in spring and fall. I believe they are some kind of Asian (Chinese?) beetle @Levers101 is talking about. They swarm into buildings in the fall and try to get out in the spring. Lots don’t make it, and you have them all over the house. Our old and new sheds are littered with scores of dead ladybugs.

We had them so bad in 2014 (our first year here), we were vacuuming them off the floor, blinds, etc. And they stink something awful when you stomp them, vacuum, etc. They stink up our vacuum bags, but the smell eventually goes away.

Folks around here say they don’t know how to control them, and that there doesn’t seem to be a lot of animals that feed on them. Even tho we get them in the house a lot, they don’t seem to get into our food.

Yes, they do bite/sting sometimes, and it’s kinda painful. Happens in the fall a lot when they are swarming to get back into buildings. I will say we don’t seem to have aphid problems around here, which is one benefit of them.

@speedster1, our pear leaves got shredded by some kind of bug last year. I asked a neighbor who worked in the landscaping business, and he said it was likely Japanese beetles, different than these other Asian lady bugs.

maybe they just don’t stink up here then.

I just read, either here or on Facebook, that ladybugs can bite, and when they do it hurts. I am not sure if it’s a specific variety that does.

I’ve heard they bite as well but in all my years I’ve never had that happen to me. Lady bugs and lightning bugs are about the only two bugs I’ll voluntarily let walk across my arm. haha

Japanese beetles are easy to spot as they are copper and green colored. They love to eat leaves. Especially Cherry.

Mike McGrath did a Question of the week on that very question

http://whyy.org/cms/youbetyourgarden/are-indoor-lady-bugs-helpful-predators-or-just-a-nuisance/

Um, sounds like we traded one problem for another. Aphids are not hard to control naturally - at least I haven’t found that to be difficult. Controling this Asian beetle seems like a bigger unsoloved problem.
Maybe we should import its predator…, oh, wait.

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Too bad lady bugs don’t kill stink bugs and Japanese beetles. :slight_smile:

In my yard, ladybugs smell unpleasantly when I accidentally squish them. They have bitten me before. It is nothing, milder than a spider’s bite,. It just surprised me that they bite.
These are common ladybugs.