Since ladybugs are perfectly able to fly away when disturbed, I suspect that they did just that. They can be nervous little things.

At least they stuck around for two weeks. Mine have never hung around for more than a day.

Your Lady Beetles went someplace where there was food and shelter. What have you done to provide a good habitat for them, and other beneficial insects?

Kimmsr, my garden had plenty of food and shelter for the ladybugs. The lupine itself was infested with aphids when i bought the ladybugs and they where quite content to be there until the groundhog arrived and did it's thing. They actually had the aphid infestation under fairly good control.

As for habitat for them, that particular bed has marigolds, dill, chives, right beside the lupines and right next to the bed is another bed full of cosmos and another one with statice and coreopsis and dandelions in the lawn.

next to the lupines where zinnias also that had aphids all on it and the ladybugs where on the zinnias as well.

I use no pesticides of any kind, nor do any of my neighbors, and my gardens are full of all kinds of good and bad bugs, butterflies, caterpillars, bees, birds etc. The only unwanted guests are the groundhogs, chipmunks and an infestation of aphids and the misquitos.

I tend to think that "chuck" scared the living dickins out of them and they high tailed it out of here real quick. Can't blame them for that one.

Fran

Just buy some more ladybugs and set them free, if you control that hedgehog with a trap then your ladybugs will stick around.

Since you said you have more than enough food for the ladybugs. Also 1500 ladybugs is not really that many, you need like 10,000 lady bugs... on each plant.

Good grief!

Bad Chuck, bad, bad Chuck !
You go to your room and think about what you have done and don't come out until you can apologize.

About the ladybugs... Don't give up yet.

When ladybugs are shipped and stored ready for you to purchase, they are kept refrigerated so they don't get hungry. (all except that ride in the UPS truck, when they must wake up and get confused, poor dears ).

So once you bought them and brought them home, then released them at a wonderful food source, they most often eat for awhile then lay eggs. It's obviously a great spring in their thoughts.

So keep an eye out for eggs, larva, and pupa. In fact, if the plastic bag you tossed is still there, I would go and check there, since they lay the eggs where the larva will find food. I will find a picture for you and add a link.

And a story:

Back in the early 1980's we had a severe freezing spell here in Portland, and it seemed not only was the bag bug situation greatly improved that year, our local neighborhood colony of ladybugs had gone missing. Fortunately my neighbors , like yours, do not use chemicals in their yards, and we have a group of us that all garden and compare notes over the years.

What we did was agree between four households, to each buy a min.of one bag of ladybugs per month of the garden season. That put at least one bunch out each week. It seemed to have worked since they where here, though smaller in number than before the following spring, with a nice increase for several years after.

We'll never really know if it was our combined efforts or if the natural population somehow had stayed very well hidden, leaving the aphids to party on, or if it was our plan that worked. Personally I think it was us. Ya team. :)

EDIT :Oh, oh... didn't look at the date of the original post. 2008 ! I guess the bag of plant shards has been picked up by the trash guys now. LOL

Here is a link that might be useful: Pictures as promised

This post was edited by plaidbird on Tue, Apr 23, 13 at 23:21