Asian Lady Beetles invade Rainy River area

Ken Johnston
Editor

Have you been “bugged” by a “lady” lately?
It seems like lady bugs or the Asian Lady Beetle is everywhere lately.
The beetle or Lady Bug as it is more commonly called was originally brought to North America around 1916 to eat other insects. It feeds primarily on soft bodied bugs like aphids and mites. Over the decades since its introduction it has become a popular choice as a natural pesticide. There were other major releases of the Asian Lady Beetle in the late 1970s and 1980s.
This year they seem to be very high in numbers and lately have become very annoying for people. A largely dry summer provided excellent breeding conditions for aphids and other soft body insects. Hence, the beetles multiplied to feed on them. Now that the cold weather has started to arrive the “ladies” are looking for a place to keep warm for the winter.
Unlike the approximately other 5,000 species of lady bugs, the Asian beauty congregates near doors and windows looking for ways to get into houses where they will hibernate for the winter. They will fly in if the door or window is open or they will crawl in through cracks, so to keep them out be sure to have all cracks caulked. On the other hand, their cousins tend to disperse over winter individually under bark or in leaf litter.
The Asian Lady Beetles are generally attracted to lighter coloured buildings. In the spring they often have forgotten how they got in and end up inside the house rather than outside.
Pesticides can also be used to kill the little buggers, but for the most part the beetles are quite harmless.
They can range in colour from light orange to red. Most have spots but some do not. They can not reproduce in doors and will leave if they are able to find their way back out in the spring.
There have been reports of them biting humans. However, they are not trying to draw blood. In fact they are just biting to see if you are something they can eat.
If squished they tend to stink and stain. So it is either put up with them, kill them with chemicals or you can vacuum them up and then empty the vacuum outside. If it is not emptied they will find their way back out.
Wasps will kill them for food, but with the colder weather they too go into hibernation.
While they multiply naturally in the wild, some home and garden stores sell them by the jar full in the spring so that people can use the natural pesticide on their gardens, rather than chemicals.