Some years ago our government imported a lady bug from the Orient with the idea it would control harmful pests on soy beans according to what I was told.  I have also been told the idea was a bust as the lady bugs live in trees, not on soy beans.  Oh  well.

About ten years ago that lady bug population grew locally to huge numbers.  The first warm sunny day after the first frost those bugs come out of the woods and seek winter shelter under siding in the walls of buildings.  When the population boomed there were three years that the fall migration day was miserable.  Tens of thousands in the air and on the south side of my home.  I sprayed the south side of the house with sevin.  The ground around the foundation was yellow-orange with dead bodies.  Thousands and thousands dead in the eves troughs.  The stink from them was pretty bad.  I heard of people locally finding buckets full of dead lady bugs in garages those winters.  My house is pretty tight.  I know it is tight.  I sheeted, sided and wrapped it in tyvek with my own hands.  All winter we had from 20 to 50 lady bugs a day in the house stinking the place up.  After about three years suddenly the fall influx dropped like a rock.  This year on migration day there were probably no more than 100 total.  I live surrounded by forests.  No local agriculture at all.  Housing density of maybe 75 homes per square mile.  We are zoned for five acres minimum and some lots are as big as 100 acres like my next door neighbor.  I have an 800 acre park across the street.

We also are at the top of the local hills.  My house is at 1225 feet only eight miles south of lake Erie which has a surface level of about 580 feet.  The head waters of two local rivers that flow eventually into lake Erie are within under two miles southeast and west of my house.  Both of those rivers first flow directly south away from the lake for a good distance then hook east and north.  The little creek on my property drains west under a quarter mile then north directly downhill to the lake. Everywhere around me is down hill.  So we do not get any run off from Ag areas a few miles away.  Nor do we have any chem lawn lawns.  So, why the big drop in population?  The only explanation is some disease that whacks those imported lady bugs and Japanese beetles.  How many natives are also whacked by those diseases?  I doubt if it is zero.

We went thru the same boom bust cycle on Japanese beetles only the peak was back in about 1980.  Today we have no more than 1% of the Japanese beetles we saw back then.  Again I think it must be a disease issue.

Dick

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