Hi, Rochelle! OK!I've got to do one of those so I have to bookmark that!!! You done an excellent job! They are precious! By the way, I will be in Henryetta tomorrow,( how cowinky- dinky is that??!!) I live in Sapulpa now, but I lived in Henryetta for about 10 years! My daughter went to school there until 5th grade, but that was a long time ago.Who knows, maybe we know each other!! blessings-sherri

All of us here are well aware of how beneficial they are in gardens, but they can become pests if hundreds or thousands of them decide they want to spend the winter indoors with you.....so just be aware of that when cold weather is approaching in the autumn or winter. I just take the time to gather them up and release them in the barn or the greenhouse. When you let them stay indoors, they can create a stinky situation after a while, so I'd rather not let them overwinter in the house. If you have pest bugs around that the ladybugs like to eat, they ought to show up on their own, unless you live in an area where pesticide use or something else drastic has either killed them all or driven them away. I usually see about two weeks of fairly heavy pest insect population growth before the ladybugs show up, lay eggs, and give you tons more ladybugs. The larvae don't look at all like ladybugs----they look like little gray alligator-shaped or dragon-shaped insects----and sometimes people don't realize that they are the ladybug larvae and kill them. It is the larvae that really devour tons and tons of pest insects like mites, mealy bugs, leafhoppers, scales and aphids (and many others as well). If you've never released ladybugs before, be advised that often they simply fly away shortly after being released. There's a couple of ways to encourage them to stay around: 1) be sure you do have pest insects for them to eat. If you release them before the pest insects are present in sufficient numbers to feed them, they'll just fly away. They won't stay if there's not a big enough food supply to feed them and their children. 2) You can Google and find recipes for wheast or you can buy some wheast from some of the same places that sell ladybugs. This is like fast food for lady bugs (and also for green lacewings) and helps encourage them to stay on your property if there's not yet enough pest insects to eat. You mix it up and spray it on the plants and it gives them a food source to feed upon before the pest population is sufficiently large enough to feed them. 3) Release them in the evening and, if you wish, release half of them one day and the other half the next day. Scatter them around the yard or garden instead of just dumping all of them out in one spot so that they won't feel like they are in an overpopulated area. Lady bugs are great. Yesterday I saw the regular orange ones, and also some pink, red and black ones in my garden. They were particularly busy on the corn and cabbage plants. Finally, to encourage them (and other beneficial insects) to show up in the first place and then to stay, it helps if you are growing plants with tiny flowers that they can use for a food source (pollen and/or nectar). I usually have the following growing in my garden for the ladybugs: calendula, coreopsis, sweet alyssum, dill, fennel, tansy, statice, silver tansy, marigolds, yarrow and cilantro. Outside the garden there's also wild carrots and dandelions in bloom. I also tend to let lots of my other herbs go into bloom periodically (lemon balm, catnip, catmint, an onion here and there, etc.) for the beneficial insects. They need water too and if there isn't any available, they'll leave to find it. Right now, with all the torrential rainfall in Oklahoma, we have lots of standing puddles of water, but I usually keep shallow pans and a birdbath filled with water for the beneficial insects, with the bottom of the pan and birdbath filled with pebbles so the little ladybugs can perch on the pebbles to drink without drowning. Normally, once you've attracted local ladybugs to your garden, or once you've successfully released purchased ones and had them stick around, you'll never be without ladybugs again. Even when it seems like there are not many nearby, they are there, even though they won't show up in large numbers until there's a sufficient food supply available for them.

History speaks for it self, I am not the only one that believes in what you call fanciful using Jet streams to travel. You make it sound like they have to enter the Interior of the Jet stream where I am sure yes you will need more than a robotic balloon more like a very powerful drone to verify that and I am sure there are skeptic that want more proof in this theory and if scientist could strap a tracking device on the ladybugs legs to track them they would have already done that. Plain and simple logic it makes sense in a short period of time one fines large numbers of ladybugs gathered in large numbers in the high county where I believe they hibernate and from there in a short period of time they are all gone from that very same spot. Which leads to believe they do use the air currents perhaps jet streams the outer currents to get around? I am sure some would believe that the photos were photo shopped or manipulated I believe man walked on the moon. If you can prove other wise or have a better theory I am listening?

It is a great ladybug year. I've probably had this many in some previous years, but not often. I suspect that more of them than usual survived overwintering in various places across the state because the winter was so mild, and also that the early heat in January and February (and the early blooming of the fruit trees) may have encouraged them to start breeding earlier than usual. It is a good thing to have lady bugs always, always,always..... except for this: when you have a lot of lady bugs, there's got to be something in your garden that they are eating. So, while it is great to have them, you might want to ask yourself what you have in such abundance that they are eating so well. (If they aren't finding something good to eat, they move on elsewhere.) Normally at this time of the year they are feasting on aphids and on the early spider mites. If you notice that you have ladybugs but then that they seem to be disappearing, that also is a good and bad thing: it is good you had them, but can be bad if they finish up with whatever the current pest happens to be and then move on. You don't want them to move on because then you won't have them when you need them for the next round of pests....like the milkweed aphids that Lisa mentioned. You can encourage the ladybugs to stay around by planting lots of flowers they like and/or by spraying wheast around the garden as an alternate food source. You can buy wheast (essentially a whey and yeast mixture) or can Google and find recipes for making your own. Here's an example of commercially-available wheast: Wheast @ Planet Natural