Ladybugs in house...happens every winter

Discussion in 'HortForum' started by kia796, Feb 3, 2007.

  1. kia796

    kia796 Active Member

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    Found three inside on the window yesterday. I cannot understand where they are coming from. And to have them in the house EVERY winter!

    I moved them to a Calamondin Orange (which has spider mite, misting it four times daily), hoping they'd eat their fill. Within an hour they were back on the windows.
     
  2. Junglekeeper

    Junglekeeper Esteemed Contributor 10 Years

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    They have chosen your house to overwinter. I welcome them inside my home every fall in doing my part to help out these beneficial insects. They disappear into nooks and crannies and don't come out until warmer weather arrives.
     
  3. kia796

    kia796 Active Member

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    Oh I agree. They don't bother me. I just hope they can survive until it's nicer outdoors...they aren't spending any time eating the spider mites on the orange tree.
    With them always on the windows, thought they wanted out.

    Each year, the farm across the street grows cow-corn. When their machine is harvesting (takes several days to do their approx. 100 acres), we are inundated with ladybugs. It's too much of a coincidence, so I believe the ladybugs live happily in the corn plants until harvest. Not uncommon at that time to have 10 on one's clothes when outdoors.

    Ladybugs, good. Stinkbugs, awful.
     
  4. fern2

    fern2 Active Member

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    I spent some time in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan a few winters ago and one of the cabins I stayed in had apparently been a long-established ladybug refuge. There must have been a few thousand of them, a mix of over-wintering & dead, piled up around the tiny two room cabin. And as much as I love ladybugs, encourage them, care for those I find, etc, I do have to admit being more than a little creeped out by the thought of spending a long cold winter sleeping next to 2000 of their hollowed out little shells (& the crunch crunch crunch sound whenever you walked to the bathroom in the middle of the night). Luckily we moved to another location after about a week, so I didn't have to cope with them for very long.

    So Kia796, just be glad you only found 3... :D
     
  5. kia796

    kia796 Active Member

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    Fern2, crunch crunch, yes that would be unsettling. Bet you slept with your shoes on!

    Ladybug update...it's warmer and sunnier, and there are at least 10 ladybugs on each window, very active, almost running on the windowpanes. I spent two hours one morning gathering up as many as I could and setting them free...each morning there are another 10 on each window.

    Good I'm retired...
     
  6. DandyLioness

    DandyLioness Active Member

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    This happened to me a couple of years ago. I had lots of them in one bedroom. Someone told me that ladybugs in your home, brought luck. Well I don't know about that... cuz it was unlucky for them. They all ended up dying. It was pretty sad.
     
  7. kia796

    kia796 Active Member

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    Then I'm having a very lucky winter, and will buy a lottery TQ tomorrow ; )

    There are a lot of dead ones on the floor, too. I just can't figure out where they're coming from. More of nature's mysteries.
     
  8. chimera

    chimera Well-Known Member 10 Years

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    They like some attics, here anyways. maybe inside the walls,too, entering by getting in behind the siding. Seem to come out from behind the window and door moldings.
     
  9. trh

    trh Member

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    Kia.. i live in Ga, and we have lady bugs too.. they don't bother me either.. i have always heard they occupy a happy home.. thought they wanted out was funny.. i would have never thought of that.. by the way .. what is cow-corn??? Tom
     
  10. trh

    trh Member

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    just read your update.. you are a saint.. i can't kill anything.. i just get rid of it..lol Tom
     
  11. kia796

    kia796 Active Member

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    I think chimera has hit the nail on the head!
    On one side of the house I've been trying to get rid of the English Ivy that was such a wonderful groundcover UNTIL it crawled up the exposed cement wall and UNDER the vinyl siding. That's where they (and the odd stinkbug) are entering!!!! I've been hacking away at the ivy for ages, it just walks right up the wall again. You're a genius chimera! The English Ivy will be Round-up'd very soon!

    tom, cow-corn is probably the wrong term (everybody around here calls it that).
    It's bitter corn (versus sweet corn for eating by people), and is only (apparently) suitable for fodder. It's fascinating to watch the farm's harvester at work...as the machine travels over the 8 to 10 foot tall corn plants, it covers a swath about 8 feet wide, and the entire plant, everything, goes into the chopper, immediately augered out (size about 2 to 3 inch pieces) in a continuous stream to several trucks (about the size of gravel trucks) that follow the harvester.

    There's an immense amount of dust in the process, but as soon as the land is laid bare, there's great activity of birds landing to feast on the dropped kernels, and critters in the now-exposed soil: starlings (thousands), geese (hundreds), gull-type birds from the garbage dump 5 miles away (hundreds of them). Lots of action on this sleepy rural road.

    And presumably, ladybugs, heading to my house...
     
  12. trh

    trh Member

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    Kia.. you sure have a way with words.. thanks for the info.. i'm in a rural area of sorts.. we just moved from Atlanta and i love this life.. i saw a Red Headed Woodpecker 2 days ago that looked like a eagle.. i thank the LORD every day for getting me away from that madness.. have a great day... Tom
     
  13. kia796

    kia796 Active Member

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    Got this pic at the crack 'o dawn...proving chimera is correct! Thanks again.

    Tom, our area's seen amazing population growth over the last 5 years...a real estate friend said it's 50/50 west from Calgary, northeast from Vancouver (cities not as big as Atlanta but congested nevertheless). Vancouver's Hwy 1 East (the main escape route) still has the same number of lanes as it did when I was a kid...and that was a very long time ago. Enjoy your newfound casual lifestyle...
     
  14. kia796

    kia796 Active Member

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    Photo didn't load?!
     

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