Finding a ladybug is considered good luck. Finding hundreds is something else entirely.
Chicago Park District worker Cleophus Ray did not think it good fortune when two ladybugs bit him earlier in the week as he put up afence at North Avenue Beach, and accountant Julie Boldt was not happy to find more than a dozen in her Northfield kitchen.
“They’re a pest,” Boldt said. “They used to be cute to me and now they’re not.”
Swarming in parks, on sunny windowsills and along the lakeshore, a ladybug species relatively new to the Midwest is preparing to invade homes and offices when the temperature drops.
The Harmonia axyridis, known as the multicolored Asian lady beetle, is back in large numbers for the third year in a row, and scientists said residents could expect the beetles first spotted in Illinois in 1994 to become a fixture of fall.
Loved in years past for its dainty appearance and appetite for aphids, the beetle is now being called a new name: a pest.
“People in general don’t want insects in their house, regardless of whether they’re good or bad, ” said Raymond Cloyd, an entomologist with the University of Illinois Extension Service. “They’re a nuisance.”
Unlike the old ruby-red ladybug of children’s books, the multicolored Asian lady beetle sports wings of an orange-yellow hue. The beetles were brought years ago from Asia to the southern United States in an aphid-control experiment and thrived. They have appeared en masse in other states as well.
Because they reproduce several times during the summer, their population reaches its height just as colder weather drives them to seek shelter indoors. “This unfortunately is an example of bio-control that got out of control,” Cloyd said. “This is going to be a seasonal problem.”
While some Chicago area residents are calling exterminators, entomologists urge patience. The ladybug eats crop-threatening bugs, and is considered a beneficial insect.
“We’re basically saying, `he’s still a good guy,'” said Jim Schuster, a horticulturist with the extension service.
The beetle’s bite usually is little more than a mild irritation, and the beetles do not damage property. They enter homes in search of a hiding place where they can enter a semi-dormant phase for the winter. In the spring, if they can find their way out, they will leave.
Experts recommend that residents caulk windows and doors to keep the insects from entering, and vacuum the piles of beetles they encounter.
The beetles will survive the suctioning if a fresh vacuum bag is used. They can then be released outside, or brought to Bob Quig’s orchards in Mundelein.
“To us, they are definitely a friend and not a pest,” Quig said. “We’d be happy to take all they could bring us.”
