With monarch migration season here, I needed my milkweed thriving, but aphids were overrunning my garden. I bought some ladybugs from Amazon, and 24 hours later, the aphids are gone. I knew they would work, but I was struck by how fast and efficiently they did their job.
https://amzn.to/4mlxeHt
by bright-ray
23 Comments
Baby lady bugs freaked me out the first time I saw them. just an fyi
https://preview.redd.it/brh6j09aycpf1.jpeg?width=960&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=031308918f5334ef48679d10eaa96d86d229cb81
Did not know you can buy bugs on amazon. Will have to try this next year.
Apparently you need to be careful about buying ladybug species that are native to you area. Just FYI for anyone considering this.
I cut my milkweed back, and it grew new leaves really fast.
Also, you can propagate the cut stems with some root powder into moist soil.
Good ol’ Ladybugs!
“I”? I don’t see you on all sixes out there on the battlefield guzzling down aphids!?
This was a big fail for me but the baby ladybugs were an insane success. For whatever reason the adults did nothing for me
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I’ve never had introduction of predator insects actually work in my garden. (Lady bugs, and lacewings)
I planted milkweed and marigolds, which both are host plants for them, made bug hotels designed for them, released during mild weather days near the pests and then host plants/hotels so they could find both food and shelter easily…..
Every time the adults just fled without eating anything. I bought eggs and incubated them according to instructions and they either wouldn’t hatch, or the few that did starved because, I kid you not, the larva ran *away* from aphids every time they got close.
(When a company that sells beneficial insect eggs looks at pictures and videos of your eggs and….mentally deficient larva and volunteers to refund you, something is seriously wrong with those eggs/larva)
Eventually I just stopped trying and resorted to manually washing plants constantly and killing the aphids by hand.
Suddenly, the aphids left me alone for 8 months after that.
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Please stop doing this. They poach these ladybugs from their hibernating grounds on the west coast & the process of hiking all the way back there right after being released often sees many of them perish needlessly.
I’ve found that for butterfly weed, if you leave the aphids for a week or two native ladybugs will eventually find them and solve the problem. The aphids rarely manage to do much damage to the milkweed and the problem solves itself. The ecological relation between milkweed, oleander aphids and ladybugs is long-established and stable.
As other have said, there’s problems with buying ladybugs online – they may be invasive (or at least non-native) and are often harvested from wild colonies without regard for the ecological impact. If you do want to buy beneficial insects, I’d recommend lacewing larvae – they have many advantages over ladybugs, and are often captive-bred.
I do enjoy seeing those nasty aphids being destroyed!
My kids went around the yard gathering ladybug larvae and moving them to the milkweed
It’s like magic, several severely infested branches are now aphid free.
**I’m sorry I’m advance to be the bearer of bad news,** but these are things I wished people had told me earlier in my gardening journey.
Buying ladybugs is quite harmful. Either A) this is an invasive species bred in captivity in close quarters that will outcompete and spread disease to your native ladybugs or B) these are native ladybugs that you paid someone to poach from the wild. Many die in transit, and keeping them in a container close together is kind of begging for disease to spread amongst them, and then for them to spread those diseases upon release.
I also notice that you’re growing tropical milkweed. If you’re living in Mexico, Central America, South America, or the Caribbean, that’s awesome and you can disregard the following. If you are located in the U.S, however, though, I highly recommend removing it and replacing it with a native species, for a few reasons.
The first being that tropical milkweed is a major host for OE due to its lack of dormancy season. Compared to native milkweeds that will only carry OE spores for a season, tropical milkweed will continue infecting and killing future monarchs indefinitely. Theoretically you could cut it down at the end of the season and deadhead aggressively to prevent any seed pods from escaping in the wind and getting out into the wild, but it’s much riskier than just planting native.
The second reason to avoid tropical milkweed is because there’s been a lot of research going into the effect it has on migratory monarch populations. If you plant a Mexico-native species like tropical milkweed in the U.S, the monarchs may get confused and think they’ve reached Mexico already, which could disrupt their migration. This is something that’s being debated and studied, with mixed evidence. I wouldn’t risk the possibility until the science is settled on that front.
**What to do instead?**
Plant native, leave the aphids and allow them to multiply. Once the population peaks, the predators will take notice and have a massive feast, I’ve seen this happen several times this season alone. On my walks I find plants that only a week ago had been so infested I couldn’t find any green, just orange aphids, are suddenly covered in mating ladybugs and their larvae crawling about. I see hoverfly larvae, wasps, and other predators. Aphids are the main food source for so many native insects, you’ll have an explosion of biodiversity with patience.
_TLDR please don’t buy ladybugs and try to plant native milkweed_
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Get some red lipped green lacewings (Chrysoperla rufilabris) eggs or larva. They aren’t invasive and better than ladybugs at removing aphids and many other pests.
I get about 3000 every year for my garden. I literally have next to no aphids anymore.
GO LADY BUGS GO
I did the same…but the aphids were in my neighbor’s tree. I released 600 of them. I see some from now and again.
Rip and tear…until it is done.
Had to send in special forces.
Not sure where you’re located but just a heads up; most of the ladybugs able to be purchased were harvested from California. It’s apparently negatively impacting their numbers in their natural ecosystems