Wanted: Ladybug Tenants
Despite Valley views, a sound roof and hand-painted details, this rent-free bungalow in the Hollywood Hills went unused over the winter.
Even the raisins left for prospective tenants were untouched.
Seems as though ladybugs don’t have much enthusiasm for Los Angeles real estate.
Sitting on the shelf of a local garden center, the Ladybug Village, a box with a sloping roof and four slits in the front, seemed like an interesting experiment and it was geared to kids.
But even for insects, a house is not necessarily a home. If attracting ladybugs is your goal in the garden, providing a roof over their heads is probably not going to do the trick.
“They’re selling you a bill of goods,” said Mary Louise Flint, a Davis-based specialist in integrated pest management for the University of California.
Still, the house, which was devised as a hibernating box, dressed up a dreary corner of the garden and piqued an interest in how to attract ladybugs, or lady beetles to be more accurate.
Ladybugs, which are particularly fond of aphids, are among the most effective insect predators found in the garden. As adults, ladybugs will eat about 100 aphids a day, and some of their larger larvae, which look like tiny, black six-legged alligators with orange spots, will do the same, Flint said. Ladybugs also have been known to have an appetite for such garden scourges as scale, spider mites and mealybugs.
The key is attracting ladybugs and then keeping them in the garden. This is harder than it may seem because the insects have a tendency to follow their tummies, flying off to a neighbor’s yard within a day or so in search of food.
Although there are products to lure them and certain plants are said to be beguiling, the one sure thing ladybugs love is what gardeners hate: aphids. A cottage industry has grown up around this relationship, with ladybug collectors working the Sierra Nevada and coastal ranges of Central California, gathering the convergent lady beetle, Hippodamia convergens, where the bugs gather en masse and hibernate.
Although there are hundreds of species of lady beetles, this one, with its distinctive orange body and black dots, is the most widely recognized and the most commonly found in California gardens.
With our ladybug house vacant and the aphids camping out on the roses, it seemed a good time to explore the ins and outs of buying lady beetles. A variety of suppliers can be found on the Internet. A quart of ladybugs (that’s about 4,500 of them) at $17.50 plus $3.95 shipping seemed a good deal from the Ladybug Co. in Berry Creek, Calif.
Julie Steel, who runs the company, said the ones shipped earlier this month would be “old bugs” that have been refrigerated. Once they get out there, she said, they’ll be hungry. To keep the ladybugs in the yard as long as possible, they should be released in the evening, because they will not fly at night, and at the base of plants they will have to climb up. Gently misting them and wetting the area where they will be released, which provides something for them to drink, will also help. The Ladybug Co. sells Bio-Control Honeydew to entice them to stay, but Steel says a 10% sugar solution also will do the trick.
“We’ve done quite a bit of research on releasing lady beetles and what we find is about 95% you release fly away within 12 hours,” Flint of UC Davis said. “But if you have a high aphid population, a small percentage of them will stick around and clean up the plant.”
The cost of buying the ladybugs was just slightly less than the nearly $20 it cost to purchase the house, but it was well worth an afternoon’s entertainment for the children in the neighborhood who delighted in placing them around the garden.
The children even made sure to place a few on that unused bungalow, which had been properly outfitted last fall with a couple of water-soaked raisins as attractants. (Raisins, it turns out, were a cheap alternative to items such as Ladybug Lunch, a powder that typically costs about $5, and “Eau de Ladybug” ($7.99 for a 2-ounce bottle), described as a “pheromone-based” liquid that can be used to lure ladybugs.
(Ladybug aficionados on the Internet suggest simply mixing one-fourth cup of white sugar with a teaspoon of yeast and 2 cups of warm water. After the mixture stops foaming add one-half teaspoon honey and mix into a syrup that can be sprayed where lady beetles are believed present).
Although the lady beetles and aphids are now gone from my garden, in the spirit of the experiment, small parts of the garden have been dedicated to plants that are said to attract beneficial insects, including ladybugs.
Some experts suggest planting low-growing plants such as alyssum and clover, which will attract aphids and, in turn, ladybugs. But for gardeners interested in attracting a broad array of beneficial insects, any number of plants will provide nectar and pollen and sources of shelter. Among the top-rated plants for beneficial boarders are anise hyssop, a summer-blooming perennial with licorice-scented leaves that is also attractive to butterflies; golden marguerite; fennel; and mint.
Annuals such as basil, bachelor’s button, California poppy, cosmos, dill, lobelia and sunflowers are said to be effective. And among a long list of perennials are aster, white lace flower, catmint, comfrey, coneflower, evening primrose, garlic chives, Korean mint, lavender, lupine, mint and yarrow.
“It’s hard to give a recipe,” said Flint, who downplays the idea that such plants will boost a garden’s ladybug population. “But it makes people more aware of biological control and that’s something I support.”
