‘Worst season we’ve ever seen’
Exterminator says there has been steady flow of calls for help with beetles
Darrell Aikens will not be surprised if you call him to report an invasion of Asian lady beetles in your home.
“Probably five calls a day for the past month,” said the owner of Aikens Pest Control Ltd. in Stellarton. “This has been going on for several years but it’s been getting progressively worse.”
Introduced from Asia to control aphids on pecans and apples by the United States Department of Agriculture through the mid-part of the 20th century, the Asian lady beetle has found North America to its liking. And over recent years it has been showing up in people’s homes in this province.
“This is the worst season we’ve ever seen,” said Aikens. “Even as a professional these are new waters for me.”
There is often desperation in the voices of the people calling Aikens. The news he has for
them is mixed.
“Doing a treatment right now would be a waste of money and
I’m not going to take people’s money for doing something that won’t work,” said Aikens.
The good news is that the beetles aren’t breeding or feeding in your walls.
“Unless you have aphids in your walls, they’re not going to stick around,” said Paul Manning, an entomologist at Dalhousie University’s Agriculture Campus.
And you don’t have aphids in your walls — they live outside, sucking the sap from the leaves and grass in your yard.
As the weather has warmed up, the beetles crawl out from around window frames and light fixtures and any other gaps on the interior of your house. It isn’t their intention to wreck whatever peace and order you’ve strived to create in your home. It’s actually that they want outside.
Within a few weeks the interior infestation should be over once you have crushed, drowned or vacuumed up all the little buggers that have stuck around.
Outside, explained Manning, they will feed and lay eggs. Those eggs will become larvae and then adults that feed quite happily on sapsucking aphids.
“To make it through a Canadian winter they need to find somewhere dry and relatively warm,” said Manning.
“So, often they will look for cracks in homes — in foundations, gaps around windows or under the roof. Wherever they can get in, they will try to find nice place to overwinter.”
It’s when you see them amassing on the exterior walls of your house in the fall that Aikens recommends calling him.
“There’s a very short window of opportunity,” said Aikens. “You can’t spray too early and if you spray too late they are already in-house.”
As for its future here, Manning isn’t sure. The beetles don’t have many natural predators here.
There are lots of aphids for them to eat and Nova Scotian homes appear to be a comfortable place for them to overwinter. So, Aikens may be busy in the fall.