A lady beetle affliction

By Christine Tailer
HCP columnist

I really do appreciate all living things, even the small ones. I have been known to gently shoo a spider out the front door, and of course I love the honey bees, but I am far from a fan of the wintertime, home-invading lady beetle. Greg might even say that I am a vindictive hunter of the biting, bad smelling, orange pests.

Now, lady beetles are not to be confused with their relative, the good-luck inspiring ladybug. Lady beetles are orange and have large white cheeks, while ladybugs are red. There are actually over 500 species of lady beetles in North America, but the pesky ones that I abhor were actually purposely introduced to this continent close to 100 years ago because of their voracious appetite for aphids. They have flourished, and done well eating the aphids, but by 1980 they gained the status of an invasive nuisance, as every winter they leave the croplands and enter our rural homes for shelter.

It is true that I am able to peacefully co-exist with lady beetles during the day. I might see a few gathered on a warm window, enjoying the sunshine, and be tempted to simply let them be, but it is difficult to them pass by, because I know that come nightfall, as I sit down I my rocking chair to relax and read under a light, the wicked bugs will repeatedly land on my glasses, and smear orange scum across the pages of my book. One even flew into my ear, but not only are these bugs bothersome, they can and do bite, and if you squish them, they leave behind both a putrid scent and an obnoxious orange stain.    

So, even by day, I mercilessly massacre as many as I can. Yes, I do feel somewhat guilty about the slaughter, but I confess that I have become rather immune to any potential sorrow, and I’ll even admit that I really do feel rather triumphant. Greg will occasionally inquire from downstairs as to what I am doing upstairs, and I simply reply that I am hunting. He understands.

Still, I thought that there must be a better way to deal with these home invaders. There certainly had to be a lady beetle pest control device out there somewhere, so Greg and I set off to scour the big box store shelves. We found nothing, but I still brought home a sticky fly strip with hopes that it might attract and catch a few of the invading pests. Not quite. It caught two.

So, I researched online, and there I found an ingenious homemade invention. Simply place a battery powered light inside a jar wrapped with clear, double sided sticky tape and leave the light on all night. The lady beetles would theoretically be attracted to the light, land or walk on the tape, and be trapped. This ingenious concept did work, somewhat, but so many lady beetles still remained uncaught that I continued my research.  

I then learned that lady beetles do not like the smell of citrus, cloves or bay. I decided to add a bit of lemon juice to the vinegar with which I mop our wooden floors, though honestly, I cannot report that I saw their numbers diminish. I then placed bottles filled with cloves and bay leaves on the window ledges. I hoped that the aroma would drive them away, but alas, they still graced the windows with their obnoxious presence and even climbed on the jars. So now I have placed a large marble on top of each bottle, and I go hunting. When I find a lady beetle, I simply deposit it inside the jar and replace the marble. It has also occurred to me that I need no longer feel any quilt at all, for I do not squish them. I simply leave them in a lovely scented final resting place.   

It is now evening. As I sit here writing on my laptop, gently rocking in my chair, a lady beetle lands on my computer screen. I feel no remorse, none in the least, as I get up and deposit the pest into the closest marble topped bottle of cloves. This is my home after all.

Christine Tailer is an attorney and former city dweller who moved several years ago, with her husband, Greg, to an off-grid farm in Ohio south-central Ohio. Visit them on the web at straightcreekvalleyfarm.com.