After losing the war on asian beetles for a few years it was time to get serious. You can check out how to get rid of Asian Beetles here. This is a great guide if your ladybug infestation has moved around and into your home. If you’ve read my story you know I live in an area surrounded by fields. That’s why I have the picture of a soybean field on the top of this site. This year we will have bean fields on three sides of our house. It is believed the asian beetle was first imported into this country to eat aphids that were destroying the crops. That worked very well on the aphids but maybe not so well for us as we all got introduced to asian beetles around here. The asian lady beetle is a cousin to the ladybug I grew up with. Very similar in looks with some very small differences.
Asian Beetles
In my first ladybug infestation I thought the ladybugs were biting me. It turns out that they were probably pinching me; I just assumed it was a bite. It felt the same to me. Once you swat them for pinching you they leave this very unpleasant odor and a nice slimy smear to go with it.
Asian beetles have this built in defense mechanism called reflex bleeding they use to defend themselves against predators. Their blood is a stinky yellow-orange colored fluid that discourages predators like birds from eating them. This blood will also leave a stain when you squish them. If the asian lady beetle is already in the house I would suggest using the vacuum cleaner to suck them up instead of a fly swatter so you don’t have a bunch of stains on your walls and ceiling.
One of the methods talked about to stop the asian beetle from getting in is going around your house and sealing up all the cracks or holes with caulk or screening or steel wool. While this is always a good idea to seal up all these things from a practical point of view it didn’t stop the asian beetles from getting into our house. There were just too many of them around our place. We could go out and look at the south side of the house sometimes and it would just be covered with them.
I think the best prevention you have is to keep them off the house to begin with. We finally got to the point where we went in search on an exterminator. We found one that would come out and spray down the whole house with pesticides to keep the asian beetles off the house. This can be quite effective for a while but there are a couple of downfalls to it.
For me in particular I found that I had to have the house sprayed at least twice a year to keep up. Every time the exterminators came out it cost me about two hundred dollars. Another important thing to keep in mind is the timing of when you spray. These chemicals don’t last forever. If you spray to early in the fall the effectiveness of the pesticide will be useless about the time the asian lady beetle is looking for a home to hibernate the winter away in.
If you’re looking for a guide to help you get rid of asian beetles in and out of the home you can check out the Asian Beetles guide here. It covers many different applications for getting an existing ladybug infestation out of your house to what chemicals or most effective to keep the asian beetles off the house to begin with.
