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Along the Natchez Trace

Wednesday, October 30, 2013

Lady Bug, Lady Bug, Fly Away Home...... Please!

We have been invaded!
Asian Lady Beetle

The Asian lady beetle (not to be confused with the indigenous American ladybug) is an invasive species of theCoccinellidae family introduced into the United States in 1988 for the purpose of reducing native aphid populations. Since 1988, they have spread throughout North America, in most places displacing the native ladybug populations to become the dominant Coccinellidae beetle. Because of their destruction of plant life and their aggressive tendency to bite, Asianlady beetles are commonly considered a nuisance pest.
(Wikipedia)
That photo above I took of a Minnie Winnie (not ours) that is parked in our driveway....    but our Lazy Daze is equally infested.
Another outside photo of the darned things...
Inside...  on our screen door....
More than 30 years ago Bill actually bought a package of ladybugs to help control aphids and other pests on the farm.  He was certified organic and used whatever methods it took to grow crops without chemicals.
Now, as the blurb from Wikipedia states, these guys were introduced and they have decided to take over. 
They seem to like white or light colored surfaces.  Our motorhome attracts them as did the khaki pants I had on yesterday.  They love sunshine....  but tend to creep into hidden spots and emerge for months afterwards.
We didn't even open the car doors yesterday....  but today, as we were running our errands we were constantly opening the windows to let these guys out.
I suppose we infested the whole county by the time we got back home.
More of these...

They stink really bad...  someone recently was complaining about stinkbugs...  hey, stink bugs are nothing compared to these guys!  Before we "left home" and still had cats, the cats wouldn't even touch these guys...  they just aren't palatable even to cats.

The temps today started out as 50*...  got down into the 40's....  then in mid-afternoon got to 61*...  so it wasn't really very warm today.

But... the sun was shining...  and these guys really loved it!

There is a huge pile of them laying at the base of the door in the barn....  I don't know their lifespan, but these guys weren't there when we left 2 weeks ago...  now the pile numbers in the hundreds.

Do you have them where you're at?
Just wondering.....

We're thinking we'll be heading back to Texas next week...  I suppose we'll take a whole herd of them with us and invade the whole state of Texas.....

Yikes!

That's All For Today!



19 comments:

  1. ok, DO NOT BRING THEM HERE!!! Wow, that's awful. And thank you for explaning the differences. I guess so far all we have is the american kind then. I've never seen hoards of them like that. But then, everyone that has any sense avoids Houston ;-)

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  2. I agree with TexCyn, leave them at home!! We got enough bugs down here.

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  3. In Nov. 2011 when I camped in the driveway on my friends property in Star City, Arkansas the same thing happened to me. I was finding them for months afterward. I don't recall any odor and I am very sensitive to chemical smells.

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  4. We had an infestation of the them a couple years ago in Norman, OK at Lake Thunderbird State Park. There must have a couple thousand of them on our slide out and we brought the slide in, the bugs came in with it. What a mess. We used the broom to sweep them off the motorhome and they were with us for months afterwards.

    This year the stink bugs came out about a week before we left our cabin in PA and we are still killing them every day a month later. Gerry hates them and as soon as she see one, it is a goner.

    Always something out there to make life interesting.

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  5. I hate those things!
    Say what you will about winter, but at least it gets rid of all those little buggers. Whether they die or not, I don't know, but whatever happens, they're gone.

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  6. We are slightly less overloaded with them this year. Slightly. They swarm the light colored siding and bask on the warm vinyl. Baskards! I would invite you to take them to Texas, but 1) your rig isn't big enough and 2) my cousin Ellis would not permit me south of the Red River ever again.

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  7. I'm still dealing with the swarm that attacked me in Minnesota about three weeks ago. I've left them in nine states so far. :( P U !

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  8. Wow, very interesting! I was driving Skyline Drive last weekend in Shenandoah National Park, when I stopped at one of the overlooks for a photo. I made the huge mistake of leaving my RV door open long enough to jump out and take a photo, and when I came back, I was under siege of the ladybug! It all happened so fast! Interesting to find out they are invading others, not just me! Now, I am finding them everywhere, scratching around behind the blinds, flying around the skylight, etc. I am glad to know about the stink ahead of time, as I will be careful to dispose of them in tact!

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  9. So far they haven't made it to our part of california. Hope they don't

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  10. We were swarmed today in Campbellsville KY. My trailer looked like your pictures! Its awful, wehad the same thing happen here last year and I've been finding little carcasses all year here and there...now I'll have more!

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  11. It seems there's always unintended consequences when man starts messing with the natural order of things. Case in point: Introducing a species that isn't native, and then they take over and cause a lot of havoc.

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  12. We had them bad in Elgin one year. When we pulled in our slide there were millions of them on the side! Mark got out the vacuum cleaner, that's the fastest way to get ‘em before they take off.
    Teri

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  13. Please get them out before you get to Texas...we have enough NON NATIVE species!!!

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  14. I agree with Montanagirl. It would seem that the biologists / entomologists could have a better grasp on the long-term effects of introducing new species in the hopes of curing a problem. But, no, it appears they only look at what good it will do in the short-term. Okay aphids are controlled - but at what cost?

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  15. Yes, we have them here in Minnesota. A few years ago, they were so bad some people couldn't work outside. They also would get in the house and crawl everywhere.

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  16. I'd never heard of these. Whose brilliant idea was that?!? "We have native lady bugs that do a great job. Let's bring in non-native ones that destroy flora and stink."

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  17. We've got them here in the U.P. There seem to be a couple days every fall when they're especially bad and then they vanish for another year.

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  18. We vacuumed HUNDREDS of them from the inside of our camper a few weeks ago. It got so I wasn't even grossed out by them - now if they had been spiders... whole different story, and I wouldn't have even gone into the camper!

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  19. I loved ladybugs growing up i thought there was only one in the world little did i know there are millions of them now. Over this past weekend I was picking apples off my apple tress with about 6 other people and we were all getting bit like crazy

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