Some actually successfully hibernate. They emerge from their hiding places when warm weather arrives (like it did on Wednesday) and we find them trying to figure out a way to get outside, usually crawling on or around the windows.
The other day, I went around the house with a jar and gathered up all the ladybugs I saw ... and I took them out to the greenhouse to help rid the roses of their spring crop of aphids. As I was putting each ladybug into the jar, I was promising them that I was taking them to a place where their children would always have enough to eat.
When I got to the greenhouse and opened the jar, the ladybugs quickly crawled to the rim and set off to find suitable places to set up housekeeping.
Caught an action shot of a ladybug taking flight in this photo!
There are plenty of aphids on the roses in the greenhouse to go around. It's not the ladybugs themselves that are going to do the bulk of the eating, though. The adult ladybugs mate and lay their eggs in locations with an ample food supply, and it's the larvae who are voracious little aphid eating machines. (See what the larvae look like in THIS post from last year.)
I've done my part. It's all up to the ladybugs now.
