Aphids love my hibiscus flower bush. I’m loath to use chemical pesticides. I’ve sprayed it with detergent and water multiple times but every spring they come back.
Ladybugs are natural predators of aphids, and I’ve seen an occasional beetle on the bush. This year I bought a box of live ladybugs online to treat this aphid problem. The box contained a sachet of crawling, live beetles. I gently shook them over the plant though most stuck to the bag. I ended up carefully picking them out with my fingers. Some crawled onto my hands, and I placed as many directly onto more infested buds and branches.
The next day, I checked on the bush and was disappointed to find that only a small fraction of the ladybugs were around from the previous day. Some must have flown away; perhaps some were eaten by birds or predators? In any case, a few days later I could barely find one ladybug left on the bush and there were still aphids.
So the attempt seems to be a failure. Perhaps I needed to starve the beetles a few days before releasing them? Or maybe this is just to be expected?
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