Backyard Adventures with Nature

Bugs and Insects, etc.: butterflies | ladybugs (with images) | ants | mosquitoes | spiders

Plants: maple trees

Successful rearing of ladybug larvae. Twice now, I have taken ladybug larvae indoors. These particular larvae look (as several sites put it) sort of like tiny black alligators or crocodiles, with spikes and orange markings (markings and coloration vary by ladybug variety), and six stubby legs near the front of the body. The peppermint plant (in a pot, mind you; peppermint is a nasty weed) seems to get lots of them, and adult ladybugs seem to like hanging out on the perniciously spreading tansy I foolishly planted one year. Well, this year I found one larvae sitting indoors on the kitchen table (perhaps from a peppermint cutting, perhaps stuck to someone's shirt); one that got stuck in the dog's fur, and one lost on a hops vine. I took all three, put them in a large plastic container, and added some aphid-covered leaves from the cherry tree. (That's where the big black ants have their favorite aphid farms in early summer (they started farming aphids on my scallions in fall!). I had to be very careful to knock all the big black ants off, because I think one thing they do is patrol around to kill anything that might like to harm their aphids, and I suspect to them ladybug larvae may be just another kill-on-sight target. These particular aphids are black, some winged, some not.) I replaced the leaves once or twice over the course of captivity. I observed also that the larvae seem to occasionally go into "wander" mode, such as when disturbed. They then run around at a rapid clip and seem to "run away" from aphids they bump into! At last they settle down on a leaf and then they start picking up aphids and sucking the juices out, one by one, like good little ladybugs. Within a day or two the larvae had gone though their last molt. Then, a day or two later, they attached themselves to the plastic (seemingly preferring it to the leaves!) and became pupae. To this day I am annoyed that I miss the crucial brief time period in which they shed their larval skin - the black stuff with the tufts. In a brief window of time, they somehow manage to get the skin all the way down to their "ankles," like crumpled pants -- it must involve some undulation of the bodies or something, because their little stubby legs at the front of their bodies sure couldn't push it all the way down. Moreover, when the skin is shed, the insect-like legs go with the skin! What's left are little bumps where the six larval legs used to be. Then they gradually become encased in a hard shell (orange, with black spots), and the transformation to an orange ladybug takes several days. Oddly, all my captive ladybugs have come out pale orange with no spots -- though apparently the spots and deep orange color come out when the shell dries. Still, the ones I had were spot-less hours later, even out in the sun. I hope I'm not doing something wrong. Anyway, I worry a bit about the "wild" larvae -- those big black ants seem to patrol everywhere, and I can't imagine they'd be kind to ladybug larvae.