Ladybug courtesy of the University of Kentucky Entomology Department Web site.

To attract ladybugs and other beneficial insects...

Sugar Water Spray

• Mix 5 ounces of sugar and
  1 quart of water

Apply using a watering can to the plants where aphids, etc. are a problem. (Research done at Utah State University showed that spraying this sugar water solution in the center of an alfalfa field increased ladybug numbers in 1 to 2 days by 200% to 1300%. This was printed in Entomophaga vol.42.)

And here you can read what the University of Florida has to say about these lovely ladies. Plus, you can read up on the bad bugs, too! Florida gardeners can never know enough about good bugs and bad bugs.

According to a article in the Orlando Sentinel, ladybugs that you order through catalogs will not always stick around once freed. Convergent lady beetles -- the ones usually offered for sale -- hibernate by the millions in the foothills of the Sierra Nevada mountains. They are scooped up, packaged, and shipped all over the country. But the beetles feast before their nap, so when they awaken they mostly want to fly -- away.

Once they become hungry again, they relish such plant pests as aphids, mealybugs, scale insects, whiteflies and mites. Each adult beetle wolfs down as many as 50 aphids a day. The females lay more than a 1000 eggs in two months, which hatch into cute larvae that look like little alligators and gobble up to 25 aphids a day.

Although the bugs eat voraciously when hungry, the effectiveness of even naturally occurring lady beetles is limited. This is because the beetles do not clean their plates. They take off to greener pastures before they have really knocked out a pest population.

You can make your yard more attractive to them with food. You could try an artificial food such as Wheast, a commercially available yeast and sugar mixture, putting it out on a tray or spraying it on a post or plants. However, the sugar water mixture above will do the same job. The little ladies especially like alfalfa, goldenrod and morning glory. (A word of caution here -- morning glory is considered invasive here in Florida. I planted 6 seeds once and I ended up pulling morning glory babies for the next year.)

Convincing naturally occurring ladybugs to stick around is more effective than importing lady beetles from the Sierra Nevadas. If you do buy some of those ladybugs, you'll need also to order tons of tiny leashes in order to keep them close by.