Re: Lady bugs, lady beetles...gone

**A*@aol.com**

Andrew,

I live about 45 miles west of Washington, D.C. in Northern Virginia.   I 
noticed the absence of ladybugs also -- for the first time in years, didn't  
have any ladybugs in the house, either last fall or this spring. It was  
astonishing.  We did begin to have stink bugs in the house, however --  quite an 
incursion, although some areas nearby had them worse.  Any  correlation? 

Lina Burton

In a message dated 7/9/2011 12:33:23 P.M. Eastern Daylight Time,  
Hamptongar@aol.com writes:

Late  every fall we've had to deal with an inundation of lady  beetles  
(Asiatic) on the south face of a number of buildings.  As soon  as  it 
would get 
cold they would congregate by the thousands and seek  every possible  crack 
and crevice to enter the structure and seek  over- wintering  sites.  It 
was 
easy enough to simply vacuum  them up once they got  in and problem solved. 

The invasions  were very  predictable.

In the spring as soon as the south faces  of the same buildings  would warm 
up the beetles would re-emerge en  mass and again be found all over  the 
inside of the buildings.   For some reason they are better at getting in  
then 
getting  out.

In one instance they got into a small six by six foot folly   that was once 
a swimming pool changing room and there must have been tens  of  thousands 
of 
them in this tiny space setting up for  winter.

Last fall I counted less than ten beetles at the three   sites.  From tens 
of thousands to ten. When I spoke with my  entomology  contacts at Cornell 
they said they'd seen a gradual  decline over the years but  they weren't 
alarmed at my  observation.

This spring, when I would have expected to see another  swarm  on both the 
inside and outside of the same buildings...not a  single  one.

I again noted this to my bug buddies...again no sign  of  concern.

Did they get wiped out in last summer's record  breaking heat  and drought? 

No one seems to know.

My  question is how localized is this?  My observations  are from  northern 
Westchester in NY.  Upstate in the Catskills I've seen   the usually number 
of 
lady beetles stalking aphids on the shrub hibiscus  so  apparently they are 
not affected there.

Has anyone else  noted a collapse of lady bug/ lady beetle  populations or 
is it just  limited to this one area in Westchester?

Andrew Messinger
The  Hampton Gardener is a  registered trade mark and is published every  
Thursday in The Southampton Press,  The Press and the Easthampton  Press  

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