Re: Lady bugs, lady beetles...gone

**H*@aol.com**

Ok, second confirmation on the lady bugs...more please?  Depending on  the 
species of the stink bug I remember an alert that they were moving west to  
east and I've seen an increase in the metro NY area but they usually don't  
appear on buildings until October.

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 

In a message dated 7/9/2011 3:33:54 P.M. Eastern Daylight Time,  
AldieOaks@aol.com writes:

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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