Listener Deep Dive: Reviewing Laura’s Infestation (Part 2)

In this Peskies Pest Control Podcast episode, hosts Michael Wienecke and Travis McGowin assist a Georgia homeowner, Laura, with a persistent Asian Lady Beetle infestation. We explain that these “occasional invaders” swarm southern-facing walls in autumn to overwinter, often returning to the same structures due to lingering pheromone trails. To address the problem, we recommend an Integrated Pest Management (IPM) strategy that combines structural exclusion—sealing cracks and poor door seals—with the application of insecticidal dusts in wall voids and fast-acting liquids on high-activity exterior surfaces. While Laura was previously told that vacuuming was the only solution, the Peskies team asserts that a professional protocol can achieve a 90% to 95% reduction in the beetle population. Watch this YouTube Video! Podcast Transcript:Michael Wienecke: All right, so here today on the Peskies Pest Control Podcast, we have got a guest—Laura from Georgia. She put a form out on our online fill-out form and said her issue, what she was having an issue with. No one in Georgia could take care of it. Saw a YouTube video that Travis and I had made, and so she came, she wants to come on the podcast and just talk about this issue, which is Asian Lady Beetles. So here she is.Travis McGowin: All right. Welcome, Laura.Laura K: Thank you! Nice to be here.Travis McGowin: So Laura, we understand that you’ve got a pretty extreme—I was about to say German cockroaches! We were talking about those earlier—but Asian Lady Beetles. I mean, who knew? Now is this your first run-in with them that you’ve ever really had?Laura K: Yes. I’ve never had them—you think they’re ladybugs until you have hundreds or thousands of them and they bite, and you know that’s not a ladybug.Michael Wienecke: Did you have any reaction to the bite?Laura K: No, just hurts. And they’re not aggressive; they just bite if they get stuck, like under a sleeve or something, but it’s still not good.Travis McGowin: Now have you been in Georgia your entire life or…?Laura K: No, I grew up in Virginia… in rural Virginia, so I’m used to bugs and rural areas. And then lived in New Jersey for 10 years, and then we got cold and it was expensive, and we moved to Georgia in 2004. So we’ve been in Georgia since then.Travis McGowin: That’s pretty impressive though that you’ve lived several different places and still up to this point haven’t really had any kind of run-ins with these things. And it feels like—Michael, see if you agree—but I do feel like now over the last probably four or five years, they’ve actually seemed to be getting worse. That’s just from my take on how many I’ve treated and seen. Would you agree with that?Michael Wienecke: 100%. Me and my wife went to Georgia, I do not know exactly where, but it was very similar to your pictures of your home—beautiful home by the way, up in the mountains and all that—but we were bombarded by them. My wife, obviously, it’s not something that… they controlled them a lot better than what was outside than what was inside the condo/cabin where we were at. So I think they were doing something. But yes, like Travis said, we’ve had such hot winters. It’s just been extremely hot winters and we normally see a much larger pest infestation or we start seeing a lot more aggregation of pests inside homes in the summer.Travis McGowin: So these Asian Lady Beetles, they fall under a category in our world of trying to overwinter in a warm place. They’re one of a couple—you’ve got Asian Lady Beetles, you’ve got the Brown Marmorated Stink Bugs…Laura K: Stink bugs are all there too, yeah.Travis McGowin: Right, absolutely. So they come into September, October, they start to look for a place to overwinter and ride out the potentially colder weather, which in Alabama we’ve had like three days of cold weather and the rest has been miserably warm or humid. And I’m sure North Georgia might be better, but Georgia itself is probably not too far off base of what we’ve been seeing.Laura K: No, it’s been a mild winter, yeah.Travis McGowin: Yeah, they creep in and they just try to take over. They’re just looking for a place to hang out and they come in droves.Laura K: They do. They fly, yeah.Michael Wienecke: Well, they’re called occasional invaders for this reason, that they come in right around that time and then they drop off at a certain time, and then the next year they come right back.Travis McGowin: Right, so, but from what we’ll discuss and from what you’ve experienced, I feel like come next season for these pests, you’ll probably be a lot more well-equipped to deal with them, especially having some understanding about what it is you’re dealing with.Laura K: I hope so. I’ve got… that’s why I wanted to talk to you guys about it, but also just to come up with a plan for the next six months to start the prevention because I ...