This was the Good Question the other night and I have to wonder if everyone else has these stupid asian beetles and box elder bugs in their house.
“Some bugs die, like mayflies and mosquitoes. The new insects are newly hatched in the spring. Some insects hibernate, like ladybug beetles. But a lot stay active in the winter. For example, honeybees cluster in their hives and create heat by flapping their wings. Some bugs, just move into our homes.”
That’s what it said on the Good Question. They move into my house every fall. The colder it gets outside, the more come in. The box elder bugs are the worst in numbers. There are millions of them. My white house looks black if it’s a really sunny day. I can walk around the house and spray them off. KILL THEM ALL and by the time I get around my house, back to where I started, it looks like I haven’t done anything. They are thick on the house again. Now mind you, these bugs only “bother” us. They don’t bite nor do they hurt anything. They are merely an annoyance. But they will come flying right at you and hit you squarely in the face. The penalty is death. I mean, even for a bug, how dumb can you be to fly smack dab into someone’s face? The face of the person whose house you’re living in!! This is a box elder bug:
Now let’s talk the asian beetles. These bugs are just as annoying and bothersome as the box elder bug but they bite. Oh yes, they dare to come into my house and want a place to live and then they bite me? How do they think this is going to work? Their bite leaves you feeling like you have a slight burn. These are also harder to kill because they fly more than the box elder bug. There are so many of them and they are harder to kill so there is a certain period in the year that I have two vacuum cleaners out because by the time I leave a room for 10 minutes and come back, there are enough to vacuum up. I’ve also been told that if you kill them, others will smell that smell and come in to find them so vacuuming them up is the best thing to do but let’s face it, who wants their vacuum cleaner out all the time? Not one but two!!!! Here are what the darling asian beetles look like:
The worse isn’t even here yet. When the farmers plow all the fields, then it get much worse so I’m waiting for that day. It should be any day now. Then they will be thick in here. They eventually do die off but not all of them. Some of these suckers will make it through the winter. I swear they live under the siding or something. On some warmer winter days they will appear in sunny windows.
I know we all live in different places but do any of you have these bugs? If not, any other pesky things that won’t leave you alone?
Us Girls..Our Views 
Some years we get a lot of ladybugs. We also get centipedes. Sometimes ants or fruit flies. Those are the main ones.
I really don’t like killing things, even bugs. Most of the time I’ll either ignore them or guide them outdoors. I do make an exception for the occasional ant infestations. Those, I poison. I probably have really bad karma for destroying all those ant lives. Please pray for my soul.
Thankfully, most of the bugs stay on the outside of our house! But, there will come a day that will change I’m sure. The things we get yearly are ants in the spring. Those damn things make me want to vomit!
lol at the vacum…im like some one out of ghostbusters with the vacum, i hate them things in the house.
I have some good stuff that actually works for those boxelder bugs but i cant think of what its called right off hand..we have them so bad here..will let u know what it is at a later time..
about those boxelder bugs..i heard somewhere they are around for like 10 years then disappear for sometime somewhere *shrugs* the closer to the end of the 10 years the thinner they start getting..i don’t think they are as bad this year as they were in the past so hopefully were on the end of that 10 year span.
Those asian beatles ive heard were released here to take care of some other bug that attacks soybeans, once the soybean crops start coming out they start getting thicker..wonder what bug they will bring in now to get rid of these stinky asian beatles.
Isn’t that a scary thought Vicki? I hate those beetles.
We don’t get asian beetles but we do get a few box elder bugs “only a few” the main ones we get are little black bugs. Not sure what there called but we call them crunch bugs because they have a very hard shell and there easy to kill or crunch. We get tons of them in the summer.
Ew, that is so gross that they cover your house and then fly at your face! That is like a horror movie for me. The only bugs that get into our house here are spiders, which I hate! They come in when it gets cold out. At one place I lived when I was younger, I would find huge centipedes on the walls and sometimes in the bathtub, where they got stuck. I have to say they are creepier than even spiders. I squashed one once and all the legs just came off and squirmed around for a while.
I came home last week after a warm spell to find literally thousands of (mostly) dead Asian Beetles covering my front porch, inside my horse barn, my garage, and my studio. I swept them, vacuumed them and swatted at the live ones which had flown on me to bite my neck!! I hate them!!! They stink!
I feel your pain, Joy. I’ve got the Asian Beetle Invasion starting. We’re not so bad with the Box Elders, but jiminy, with the Asians!!! I, too, keep my vacuum stuck in a little cubby in the living room, and hit them once a day during the worst of the infestations. It has gotten less intense as the years have gone bad… not sure if word is getting out that my house is the place to avoid, or if they’re just losing numbers around here. Either way, I don’t much care! Just stay OUT of my house!
Spiders, though… spiders I cultivate, because they help me keep the other vermin out. Unless those spiders are in my bedroom. They’re not allowed in my bedroom.
We have so many box elders and asian beetles I have learned to ignore them. We had a problem with wasps here…you couldn’t open my front door without being swarmed. They are gone…TG! So I’ll take these annoying pests any day over those wasps! They are annoying and I almost always have an Asian beetle on me tagging along for a ride. That’s what I tell the kids when they see one on me…they get a laugh out of it! The bugs were horrible this year but these 2 don’t necessarily bother me too much. The mayflies were the biggest annoyance ever! The wasps? We have to figure something out for those next year b/c that was just dangerous!! There were days we couldn’t even go outside!
There must be a wasp nest near your door or somewhere close. Try and find it now and knock it down and wreck it. They won’t sting you now. No, you can’t have that.
Man, I had a brilliant moment with yellow-jackets one year. They had a nest on the ceiling of an outbuilding and I climbed up on a precarious, rickety thing to spray them with bee killer. Well, surprise surprise, they got angry and started coming after me! I of course could not safely get down quickly enough to run away. Not that that mattered. I do have a survival instinct. Sprung down somehow and ran my butt off. Next time I was at least prepared for their attempt at retaliation.
yeah we get both…beetles the cat gets. we have one cat that can sniff them out and kills them
Control these babies with BuggSlayer Insecticide.
See pictures here:
http://www.buggslayer.com/testimonials.html
Thanks!