Forum Discussion
It's so quiet...
Gabe and I live in the same region and I can tell you it most assuredly is NOT garment rendering season yet! It's a late spring, for sure. I usually hear peepers in our swamp by now and it's still quiet as can be when I step out at night.
Gabe, you don't like ladybugs?! They're like, the most awesome, gentle bugs, ever! LOL! My daughter had a pet ladybug, "Scottlyn Rose" (the name we had picked out for our youngest, whom I was pregnant with at the time, had he been a she), when she was a toddler. We raised a bunch in a ladybug habitat kit that we had bought for her...and that one particular ladybug we kept after the others were released. Kept it for over a year! Fed her soaked raisins, etc.
Now spiders...those I don't abide by. My youngest wants a pet tarantula. There's a CountryMax local to us that sells them. I try to be a good boy mom...and let them have their creepy pets (the oldest had a corn snake). But a tarantula? That's a big ol' pile of NOPE!
Sweetpea3829wrote:Gabe, you don't like ladybugs?! They're like, the most awesome, gentle bugs, ever! LOL!
Regular lady bugs, sure, but not these. These are an invasive species, and they bite. Not very hard, and they can only bite really soft skin, like on your neck or the back of your arm, but they're annoying, nonetheless, and I have a nest in one of my walls. If I could figure out where they were coming in I could take care of it, but I have yet to be able to find it.
If it was one or two once in a while it'd be one thing. I'm getting upwards of fifty a day... in March. SMH.
The exterminator needs to be called this year.
- 😂😂😂
I never knew ladybugs could bite! We get tons of them in the house every year, but they don't bother me.
Twice a year (fall and spring) they swarm.
The flies, on the other hand, drive me nuts. Hasn't been as bad since the horses left next door. I've never had a ladybird bite me, but I have heard people say they've been bitten by them. I always get them in the house in late fall, when they come in to spend the winter. Most of them congregate in a corner of the laundry room and mostly stay there till the spring, but others roam around the house and land on things. I'd never heard of raising them in their own habitat! Must be fascinating for the kids, I'm sure!
maratsadewrote:I've never had a ladybird bite me, but I have heard people say they've been bitten by them. I always get them in the house in late fall, when they come in to spend the winter. Most of them congregate in a corner of the laundry room and mostly stay there till the spring, but others roam around the house and land on things. I'd never heard of raising them in their own habitat! Must be fascinating for the kids, I'm sure!
Most of them don't bite, but these kind are just awful. These aren't the cute little kind you see in kids stories and find sitting on flowers in the spring. These are darker and nastier. They must just like something about my house. All homes around here deal with these things, but most are like yours, where you see a few toward the fall and that's about it. My folks' house is the same way. They have a few in their laundry room windows, and then they're gone until the next year, where again, there are only a few.
But, in my home I'm just lucky. I get to deal with thousand upon thousands of them over the year. Since they started "stirring" at the end of January, I wouldn't doubt that I've dispatched nearly 1000. If I have a day where I only deal with 20 I'm lucky. And they're attracted to lights, so the windows have them during the day, then the lights at night, and if I have the TV on after all the lights are off, it's inevitable that, within a few minutes, one will be crawling on the screen.
They also swarm once or twice a year, so during those days it's just best to not even go outside, lest your covered with them in no time. My house is small, but during these times I wouldn't doubt that there are 5000 or more sitting on it at any given time. It's awful. I'd rather deal with termite swarms, to be honest.
The ladybirds I have look like this:
Here's a closeup of one. You can see the upside down M shape (in the white) at the top of its head. That's how you can tell that it's an Asian Ladybug. This one pictured doesn't have any spots on its back, but most of them do.
That's a great pic, Gabe. I think I have the same type of beetle.
GabeUwrote:Here's a closeup of one. You can see the upside down M shape (in the white) at the top of its head. That's how you can tell that it's an Asian Ladybug. This one pictured doesn't have any spots on its back, but most of them do.
These ARE actually the ones I get every winter -- they come in, congragate in corners, and slowly die off, though I guess some go out in the spring.
Oh yes. I think they come in to reproduce, so we'll always get more. I read somewhere that once they get into a home, they always come back.
- In the meantime, in the Sweetpea household, we just hatched a mantis ootheca and have a jar of fruit flies to feed the two surviving nymphs, lol.
While Gabe hopes to eradicate his home of pests, we invite them in, lol! Ask Gabe to supply you with ladybirds -- he's a dealer. LOL
Sweetpea3829wrote:
In the meantime, in the Sweetpea household, we just hatched a mantis ootheca and have a jar of fruit flies to feed the two surviving nymphs, lol.That's cool. You've got to post some pics!
- Lol, when they are big enough to eat ladybirds, I'll have Gabe send me some of his stock😂😂😂
Gabe, I promise to post pics if they get large enough, lol. Every single one died within hours of hatching, except two.
They are cool, though. We usually have hundreds of nymphs in our field. GabeU, I thought you might be interested in this document about how to build a trap for Asian lady beetles: https://www.ars.usda.gov/ARSUserFiles/oc/br/lbeetle/001030.trap.pdf
"We usually have hundreds of nymphs in our field. "
Do they look anything like this?
