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House full of Asian lady beetles? Blame the weather. And be careful not to crush them

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EDITOR’S NOTE (Oct. 24, 2023): This article was originally published in 2021, but the info again seems relevant for southeast Ohio in 2023.

ATHENS, Ohio (WOUB) — If you’re finding your home overrun with Asian lady beetles over the past few days, you might be tempted to get out the vacuum.

And that’s fine. But know this first. These little buggers really stink when they’re crushed.

Ed Brown, the agriculture and natural resource educator with the Ohio State University Athens County Extension office, has this advice:

“I take a vacuum that has a hose on it, and I’ll take an old stocking that you can put in the end of the hose and you can put a rubber band around it. And then when you run your vacuum, it catches them in that stocking in the hose so you can take them out and put them back outside or throw them away, and then that way they don’t go through your vacuum and get crushed.”

Brown said the ladybugs-like pests, known as multicolored Asian lady beetles, are an invasive species that arrived here around a decade or so ago. They have no natural predators, in part because of that stinky substance they secrete when threatened or crushed.

“So I don’t see them being too palatable,” he said.

Multicolored Asian lady beetles congregate on the siding of a home in Athens County. The bugs often find their way inside homes through cracks and crevices in siding or around doors and windows, as they look for a place to hibernate for the winter.
Multicolored Asian lady beetles congregate on the siding of a home in Athens County. The bugs often find their way inside homes through cracks and crevices in siding or around doors and windows, as they look for a place to hibernate for the winter. [Aaron Payne | WOUB]
The reason so many of them are swarming inside homes over the past few days has to do with the weather. The ladybugs spend much of the year out in the woods and in gardens foraging for food and mating.

The cold snap we had felt more like winter and the bugs started to settle down for hibernation, Brown said. But then the sudden rise in temperatures over the past several days got the bugs active again and sent them congregating on the sunny sides of homes, usually walls facing south or west.

Once there, they start searching for cracks and crevices in the siding or around doors and windows or attic eaves, looking for a spot to settle in, Brown said.

“So they’re trying to find a place to hibernate for the year,” he said.

This would normally be in the bark of a tree or somewhere else safe and cozy outdoors. But once they get inside homes, the warm air is going to keep them from hibernating, Brown said.

“That’s pretty much a death sentence for them,” he said.

Because they’re still active, the ladybugs will get hungry. Their typical meal is aphids and other small bugs, which they’re not likely to find much of indoors, so they’re going to starve and die.

Brown said it’s best to get rid of them before that happens, because it’s certainly not good for the Asian lady beetles, and you don’t want a lot of dead ones around the house getting crushed underfoot and stinking up the place.

When the weather turns cold again the activity outside should start to settle down.