Ladybugs!!!!

[Grandma and pappy]

How do we get rid of ladybugs? How do we keep them out?

 

[Monte421]

Probably not Lady Bugs but another something we inherited from China.
Can't keep em just have to wait till they die.

 

[Mikendebbie]

Did a quick search on ladybugs. They are great to have in your yard because they eat other pests…not so much fun in the RV.

I googled and saw a couple of suggestions for getting rid of them…
1. Seal up all openings…caulk etc etc…this is more for a house but you can check around the RV for small openings.
2. Spray some vinegar around…they don’t like the smell and it covers up pheromones that draw them in.
3. They do not like citronella or citrus smells…so get some Citronella oil and place it in bowls or cups around the camper.

Good luck!

 

[mlh]

They probably aren’t lady bugs. They are an import that look almost identical to lady bugs. There used to be thousands at my home place 30 years ago in the fall. So how to get rid of them wait and they will go away. They don’t hurt anything except to make a mess.
Lynwood

 

[DutchmenSport]

Seems every year the topic of Lady bug and Stink bug infestations come up.

We had problems with Stink bugs for a few years. I solved our problem by purchasing some Raid bug bombs (Dollar General - 4 to a package - cheap, found usually on an end-cap).

Clean out your camper of any open food. Remove pet dishes. Put all all eating and cooking utinsils.

Set one bug bomb in the rear of the camper, one in the front of the camper, and one in the middle of the camper. Set the last one in your pass-through bay area, and if you can, even open the back wall of your bay area.

Now, before setting the bombs off, turn on your AC, all your AC if you have more than one. Now, set off all 4 bombs at the same time and leave the camper for an hour.

What just happened? The bug bomb poison was sucked up into the air ducts in the ceiling and any open holes or seams in the ductwork just now let the bug bomb poison escape inside your ceiling cavity. It addition, it now penetrated all the little cracks and seams around your slide seals, any holes in the floor, and any open gaps, including windows that have gaps.

After an hour, the smell will be gone. Wipe down your counter tops, wash the top bed covering, and wipe off any surface you use regularly. Do not wash the floor, walls, windows, or anything else. You will immediately see millions of bugs drop to the floor and you'll be sweeping them up for 2 weeks following.

After 2 weeks, repeat one more time. This time, instead of running the AC's, turn on the furnace on high (regardless of temperature outside) and set of the next round of bug bombs. Now, the bug bomb poison will transfer through your heat ducts, again blowing the mist under the floor. Repeat the same clean up. After another couple days, you are free to mop the floor or anything else. The bug bomb poison has penetrated every nook and cranny in your camper and anywhere a bug can pass through will have to travel through the poison, killing it once it touches it.

You WILL be sweeping bugs for the next 6 months as they attempt to come in.


Why the 2 weeks? The first round kills the parent bugs. The second round kills the babies after they hatch out and before the mature and can reproduce. Thus killing everything.

Meanwhile, that bug bomb spray will not hurt anything, will not hurt you, your pets, or the camper, as long as you wipe down the areas you actually touch.

The second year, repeat again when the bugs start reappearing. Do the 2 week cycle and I promise you, you will NEVER, NEVER see bugs inside your camper again, unless you leave your door open and they fly in ... But... if they do ... they die!

Some folks are afraid to do this, thinking the bug bombs will blow up the trailer. FALSE! Myth Busters did an episode similar to this, and in order to cause an explosion in an enclosed space, it took something like 200,000 cans of bug spray to cause a reaction.

 

[Mikendebbie]

Here is pics of various ladybugs…

 

[mlh]

The stink bugs are being infected by a fungus according to the Virginia Teck AG department and that is why we don’t see nearly as many now as a few years ago. The infected ones have a white creamy belly. I met a VT PhD student on a nearby farm that was catching them to study. This is what they expanded to me.
Lynwood

 

[Laura&Jerry]

How do we get rid of ladybugs? How do we keep them out?

We have found in all of our travels around North America that the unwanted guests such as the "stink bugs", the various "lady bugs" that the best defense is Home Defense spray. I really dislike the "bug bombs" because of the mess and residue left behind. The best defense if to keep the bugs out, not get them once in the RV.

Home Defense can be bought at any hardware store, Walmart, Amazon and such. We spray around all exterior windows, the main doors and storage compartment doors. We Spray around all rubber seals on the slides as we have found out that the bugs like the heat on the seals and it's the easiest way into the RV, especially when slides are being brought in.

We spray Home Defense on the ground around our RV site wherever we are camped. We have found that Home Defense works on bugs, ticks and ants. We can let our dogs out shortly after we spray Home Defense and they are perfectly fine and safe.

Hope this helps.
Laura and Jerry Thorsell
MOC #19945

 

[DutchmenSport]

Another "trick" you can do to keep bugs out is to use Citronella candles.

We are currently in Louisiana and where we are camped we are able to put a fenced area outside the door for the dogs to freely come in and out of the door. t's near the end of March now and the bugs are going "buggie" right now. Unbelievable, we have no bugs inside the camper even though we leave the front door open for the dogs to come and go! Really. (I attribute that to the bug bombs 3 years ago now).

However, we did notice a few small mosquitoes flying around inside the camper a couple days ago. I also noticed they'd eventually drop to the floor dead (I suppose once they touch the ceiling, the bug bomb residue poisons them.)

Meanwhile, I remembered a trick we did in our pop-up camping days ... citronella candles. All I did was set one candle right by the open door. I did not light the candle, just opened it up and set it by the door. The odor of the citronella right at the door stopped the mosquitoes from coming in. No bugs.

You can do the same and the citronella will discourage bugs from entering your camper too. No reason to set it on fire (candle), just let the odor do it's job. However, if you close up the camper, I hope you don't mind the smell of citronella. If you set out too many candles, it takes a while to get use to the smell! But, this does work.

In our pop-up, I use to leave a citronella candle open all the time when the camper was folded up. We never, ever had any type of bug infestation .... even ants.

 

[Grandma and pappy]

We’ve swept and vacuumed a couple of times. We hauled it down the road for about an hour away for the weekend. Cleaned it one more time yesterday. So far this morning they seem to be mostly gone. Maybe we shook them up and got them out, who knows.