Ladybugs are great assets to your garden
At this time of the year, aphids can be a serious problem in the garden. But salvation can arrive in the form of ladybugs. Ladybugs are actually beetles, not bugs. And while they are sometimes called ladybirds or lady beetles, of course they are not all female. They belong to the class Insecta and are members of the Coccinellidae family of beetles. Coccinellidae means “small red sphere” in Latin.
Ladybugs have oval-shaped bodies and appear in various colors, including red, yellow, gray, black, brown and even pink. They may or may not have spots or stripes. Ladybugs are beneficial insects that play a major role in keeping down populations of insects that feed on plants. Perhaps most importantly, ladybugs are predators with an insatiable appetite for aphids.
A ladybug can eat up to 5,000 aphids over its lifetime. They can also help to rid your garden of other soft-bodied insects such as mites, mealybugs and leafhoppers, along with insect eggs and even ants.
Of the 5,000 ladybug species found worldwide, 450 are native to North America, with 175 of those species found here in California. Adults mate in early spring (when temperatures reach above 65 degrees) and again in June if the aphid population is abundant. When aphid populations decline, ladybugs
migrate to higher elevations.
Ladybugs undergo a complete metamorphosis during their life cycle, moving through four stages: eggs to larvae to pupae to adult. The first three stages of life occur quickly, over one to two months. A single ladybug can lay up to 300 eggs. After a female lays her eggs, they hatch in two to 10 days. The eggs are yellow, oblong and laid in clusters in an aphid colony so the larvae will have a food source as they emerge from their eggs. The larvae look like tiny alligators and are about one- quarter of an inch long and blackish with orange stripes. Larvae eat and grow for another 21 to 30 days before entering the pupal stage, which lasts seven to 15 days.
Once it emerges from the pupal stage an adult ladybug will live for approximately one year.
Adult ladybugs are four to seven millimeters long or around one-quarter of an inch. The ladybug anatomy consists of a head, two antenna, two eyes, a pronotum covering the thorax, an elytra (the hard shell that covers their wings), six jointed legs, abdomen and wings (these are so thin you can actually see through them). Interestingly, ladybugs beat their wings 85 times per second in order to fly. When threatened a ladybug can draw its heads into its pronotum, like a turtle does, to protect itself.
Ladybugs hibernate in the winter months and will not fly when temperatures fall below 55 degrees. They feed