The Ladybug
These days, when I make breakfast in the morning, looking through the window to the lawn in front of the house, I will get distracted by the ladybugs crawling on the window pane or sitting on the windowsill drinking in the warmth of the morning sunshine. The window’s southern exposure lets the sunshine in and it is giving me the kick to start my day, and that of the ladybugs.
For me seeing ladybugs means that I am expecting a couple of days of joyous circumstances. I have learned that as a little girl in Europe, and I am a firm believer of joyous days in the future. I also learned that you should never kill a ladybug. Who would, with a prediction like that? You will find ladybugs all over the world. They might look differently and have a different name, but they belong to the same beetle family.
They are considered useful insects because they prey on aphids or scale insects which are considered an agricultural pest. Usually you will find ladybugs in your garden near your tomatoes where they are very welcome. They snuged into our old farmhouse a long time ago and considered it their winter quarters.
They are fine with humans, not poisonous and they do not bite. During the night they disappear, but bounce back as soon as the sun hits the kitchen window.
They are fine with humans, not poisonous and they do not bite. During the night they disappear, but bounce back as soon as the sun hits the kitchen window.
"Bleeding Knee" As we all know, nothing is perfect. So ladybugs also have a not so favorable side. If you startle an adult ladybug, they will emit a foul-smelling liquid, which seeps from its leg joints and will leave a yellow stain on the surface. It is called “knee bleeding”. It might signal to a predator that it is dealing with a sick beetle and it should move on. Even larvae from ladybugs can produce a foul-smelling liquid. The liquid however is not poisonous and can be wiped up easily.
Cottony Cushion Scale Ladybugs live for a year. Its life begins when a batch of bright-yellow eggs are laid near a food source, for example near aphids. In four to ten days they will hatch, and when the food source has been eaten up, they will begin to build a pupa. In a good week they emerge as an adult with the red dome-shaped red back with the black dots. Farmers love them because during its lifetime, it is said that they will consume 5,000 aphids apiece! Farmers use ladybugs to control other insects. The first time it was done was in 1880, when an Australian ladybug was imported into California to control the cottony cushion scale. It was a very expensive experiment, but in 1890 the orange crop in California tripled.
But not all experiments are successful. The Asian harlequin ladybug was introduced to the U.S. in 1980. It did depress the aphid population, but it also caused the declines in native species of ladybugs. And there is another problem with the harlequin ladybug. They love fruit, especially grapes. They get harvested with the grapes and if the winemakers are not careful, the nasty taste of “knee bleeding” will spoil the wine.
As soon as the temperature rises to 60 degrees or more outside, the ladybug will leave me and head into our garden and hopefully return at the beginning of the next winter.
If you enjoy having a vegetable garden every year but have a bad aphid or scale insect problem, then ladybugs can help - particularly if you are as fond of having several different varieties of tomatoes like we do. If you find that you lack sufficient numbers of them in your garden, or have a particularly bad aphid infestation, you can order live ladybugs online. They are delivered in a small box by the postal service. You can just release them into your garden and they will quickly solve the problem.
If you enjoy having a vegetable garden every year but have a bad aphid or scale insect problem, then ladybugs can help - particularly if you are as fond of having several different varieties of tomatoes like we do. If you find that you lack sufficient numbers of them in your garden, or have a particularly bad aphid infestation, you can order live ladybugs online. They are delivered in a small box by the postal service. You can just release them into your garden and they will quickly solve the problem.
But don’t forget that you ordered them, as one of our new urban fugitive neighbors on the road did one year. He ordered several hundred ladybugs and then promptly forgot about them and left for Europe for a few weeks, after putting a hold on his mail. We don’t have home delivery of our mail in our rural area, so several hundred homes share one small post office with a bank of post office boxes. Well after a couple weeks, the now dead ladybugs began to cause quite the stink, in more than one sense of the word! Everyone was trying to find a dead rodent or something you would expect. But the non-descript little box in one P.O. box was overlooked for quite a while. So remember, they don’t ship with food!
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