A friend north of Grove said they were like that at her house, but I haven't seen any. My son and DIL live by a soybean field and as soon as the beans are cut, they have thousands of ladybugs.

Carol, that must be what happened here, sorta, Our neighbor mowed our little hay field adjacent to the garden last week. Last year and the year before he mowed much earlier in the year than this.

Dorothy, We almost always have that happen here, but some years the ladybug population is much larger than others. We went through a spell in the mid-2000s where they flew in the door, or found a way inside somehow, every winter, and I'd have to vacuum up literally hundreds of ladybugs and take them outside and release them. Then, they would immediately return to the house and would be climbing all over the walls, especially near doors and windows, trying to find a way to get inside. We did check all our weatherstripping and did some caulking around windows because they seemed to be finding their way inside the house more than they should have. In more recent years, their population in the fall has not been as heavy....maybe not since about 2009, but the population this year is huge.

Yesterday they were literally riding into the house by flying and landing on my hair, my clothing, my arms and hands, etc. as I was carrying bucket after bucket of peppers into the house from the final harvest. When I arrived at the back door, they were inside the sunroom crawling around, and they were in the garage and greenhouse. The back door was crawling with ladybugs just waiting for me to open the door so they could fly in. It was almost like a scene from the movie, "The Birds', except it was ladybugs instead of birds. Clearly they are smart and knew the cold weather was about to arrive and were seeking shelter. Today I will vacuum up whatever lady bugs made it into the house and and will take them outside and release them into the plant-filled greenhouse.

The odd thing yesterday was that the little native honeybees also were getting into the sunroom and the greenhouse and I normally don't see that so much in the fall, since they tolerate cold weather fairly well and often are outside most sunny winter days anyway. A few honeybees flew in when I came into the house, but then they went back outside with me when I opened the door to go back out.

Dawn

So now Dawn has pet honeybees? Who knew?

lol grandmom

I've heard about lady bug infestations and how hard it is to be rid of them. I was thinking oklahoma was immune. I guess not!

I don't particularly like having lady bugs get into the house but it is relatively easy to vacuum them up and remove them. I try to 'dump' them near the garage door or the greenhouse so they can find shelter from the cold in one of those places. Since they are such wonderful beneficial insects in the garden, I want for as many of them as possible to survive the winter so we'll have them in the garden eating aphids and other little beasties in spring.

Carol, You know, I'll feed just about any wild critter that is hungry, and I think the wild critters know when you are seeking to help them and not harm them. Still, having bees coming into the house was odd. I managed to get most of them back out the open door before I closed it. Once they were in here, they didn't want to stay. They just wanted to find someplace warm. I had a lot of bees, ladybugs, butterflies and spiders in the greenhouse yesterday, and there were some ladybugs in the sunroom with the citrus trees. I hope the ones in the greenhouse crawled underneath the floating row covers that I threw over the plants around 3 p.m. because it got pretty cold here last night.

We also still had grasshoppers out eating plants yesterday and I bet they didn't survive the night. I know there was at least one grasshopper in the greenhouse but I didn't have the heart to kill it. I imagine the weather will take care of that hopper for me.

At least we don't have the huge infestations of brown marmorated stink bugs coming into our homes like people in some states in the NE USA. I imagine that sooner or later those things will become a problem here too.

Dawn

Aren't these really NOT lady bugs? Someone said that they were Asian beetles. What I have never seen here is real lady bugs, the beneficial kind. Do we have them? If I bought some would they like it here?

Hi jessaka. Because I've seen so many different colors of spotted beetles in my yard I wondered what they were.

The Asian lady beetles are non-native to North America, but are still beneficial.

There is a type of beetle that resembles our lady bug but with varying colors. In my yard these are the Mexican Bean Beetle and they are anything but beneficial. If I remember correctly, they are horrendous like the cucumber beetle, but I'd need to look it up again to see what damage they create.

But that's all I really know. Maybe it is the Mexican variety you are pondering.

When I googled the Mexican Bean Beetle it was yellowish. what I think I see is more red. and I think they were the Japanese (Asian) beetle, and I am told that they bite I will have to look and see what they look like, only we don't have any yet or maybe it is too late to have them..

Mexican bean beetles range from yellowish to orangish to almost red. And the Asian beetles can bite, but not very hard.

I have never been bitten by them even when we have a lot and I allow them on my hands, usually to take them out of the house.

Im going to buy some lady bugs for my garden..they eat the bad bugs

All of us here are well aware of how beneficial they are in gardens, but they can become pests if hundreds or thousands of them decide they want to spend the winter indoors with you.....so just be aware of that when cold weather is approaching in the autumn or winter. I just take the time to gather them up and release them in the barn or the greenhouse. When you let them stay indoors, they can create a stinky situation after a while, so I'd rather not let them overwinter in the house.

If you have pest bugs around that the ladybugs like to eat, they ought to show up on their own, unless you live in an area where pesticide use or something else drastic has either killed them all or driven them away. I usually see about two weeks of fairly heavy pest insect population growth before the ladybugs show up, lay eggs, and give you tons more ladybugs. The larvae don't look at all like ladybugs----they look like little gray alligator-shaped or dragon-shaped insects----and sometimes people don't realize that they are the ladybug larvae and kill them. It is the larvae that really devour tons and tons of pest insects like mites, mealy bugs, leafhoppers, scales and aphids (and many others as well).

If you've never released ladybugs before, be advised that often they simply fly away shortly after being released. There's a couple of ways to encourage them to stay around: 1) be sure you do have pest insects for them to eat. If you release them before the pest insects are present in sufficient numbers to feed them, they'll just fly away. They won't stay if there's not a big enough food supply to feed them and their children. 2) You can Google and find recipes for wheast or you can buy some wheast from some of the same places that sell ladybugs. This is like fast food for lady bugs (and also for green lacewings) and helps encourage them to stay on your property if there's not yet enough pest insects to eat. You mix it up and spray it on the plants and it gives them a food source to feed upon before the pest population is sufficiently large enough to feed them. 3) Release them in the evening and, if you wish, release half of them one day and the other half the next day. Scatter them around the yard or garden instead of just dumping all of them out in one spot so that they won't feel like they are in an overpopulated area.

Lady bugs are great. Yesterday I saw the regular orange ones, and also some pink, red and black ones in my garden. They were particularly busy on the corn and cabbage plants.

Finally, to encourage them (and other beneficial insects) to show up in the first place and then to stay, it helps if you are growing plants with tiny flowers that they can use for a food source (pollen and/or nectar). I usually have the following growing in my garden for the ladybugs: calendula, coreopsis, sweet alyssum, dill, fennel, tansy, statice, silver tansy, marigolds, yarrow and cilantro. Outside the garden there's also wild carrots and dandelions in bloom. I also tend to let lots of my other herbs go into bloom periodically (lemon balm, catnip, catmint, an onion here and there, etc.) for the beneficial insects.

They need water too and if there isn't any available, they'll leave to find it. Right now, with all the torrential rainfall in Oklahoma, we have lots of standing puddles of water, but I usually keep shallow pans and a birdbath filled with water for the beneficial insects, with the bottom of the pan and birdbath filled with pebbles so the little ladybugs can perch on the pebbles to drink without drowning.

Normally, once you've attracted local ladybugs to your garden, or once you've successfully released purchased ones and had them stick around, you'll never be without ladybugs again. Even when it seems like there are not many nearby, they are there, even though they won't show up in large numbers until there's a sufficient food supply available for them.

Thanks so much for the great information..I have also purchased Praying Mantis eggs in the past