Manhattan welcomes 720,000 ladybugs, as pest killers

[jpak]

http://www.sunjournal.com/story/234860-3/National/Manhattan_welcomes_720000_ladybugs_as_pest_killers/

NEW YORK (AP) - Imagine this spectacle in the middle of Manhattan: 720,000 ladybugs from Montana, on the attack.

The red-and-black creatures have purposely been released into the greenery of one of New York's biggest apartment complexes - a sprawling 80 acres of high rises on the East Side. These normally gentle ladybugs have a mission: to destroy and eat pests infesting the neatly landscaped property. The bugs from Bozeman arrived at the Stuyvesant Town and Peter Cooper Village complex Thursday afternoon, packed in boxes shipped by a natural gardening company.

From mesh bags filled with wood shavings, groundskeepers scattered them in clusters of 72,000 per box. The ladybugs quickly spread their half-moon wings over the rental complex near First Avenue and East 14th Street.

In the next days and weeks, they'll crawl into plants, flowers and shrubs in search of insects whose smell attracts them - soft-bodied, leaf-sucking aphids and mites.

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[BOSSHOG]

1. The Ladybugs are indeed loveable as are Dragon Flys

Turn them loose and let them thrive.

[whistle]

2. How far from ground zero is that complex? I wonder if the Ladybugs have a chance

...against the toxic residual environmental pollutants and contaminants from 9/11?

[NYC]

5. Probably 3 or 4 miles.

That's just an approximate, but reasonable. I doubt the ladybugs will have any problem related to WTC.

[KT2000]

3. YEAH!!

This is the way to do it!
I had a thatching ant hill by my apple trees that my neighbor killed this year. Tehy had taken care of an aphid problem I had in my yard for years. Who knows what else they were munching on but they were most welcome in my yard.
This year I had deformed apples and many with worms.

What do you want to bet that people are going to be spraying to kill the ladybugs because there is a belief that all insects are bad.

[Rene]

4. Now I wonder why we had an immense invasion of Ladybugs in Marlborough Ct last week.

Think there could be a connection.....wind blew them here. I heard several people talk about a sudden infestation that covered their places.