1500 Live Ladybugs – Guaranteed Live Delivery! Good Bug Nectar

All of them were alive when they got here, the handling directions were very good… didn’t bother to count them but it looked like 1500 ladybugs just as [insert appropriate term consistent with your religious beliefs] made them. But…Lady bugs are trippy little creatures. I bought these to control spider mites invading an indoor grow. I released them about 100 at a time every few days, keeping the rest dormant in the fridge. I quickly learned that most of the ladybugs died within a day or two unless I sprinkled the plants with water droplets a couple of times a day.After about 2 weeks I set the rest free, I decided to use neem oil instead (which works very well) because I noticed that while the ladies were effective at keeping the spider mite population in check, they did not eradicate them, as I had hoped. And it makes sense, if they wipe them out, there wouldn’t be anything left for them to eat. So as I wasn’t really down with letting one set of bugs use my high-dollar crop to ranch another set of skeevy bugs, neem oil was a better solution. (Note that I reached this conclusion via other-than-scientific methods; simple, anecdotal, single scenario, no interest in substantiating.)One kind of interesting wrinkle, note that I said most, as in not all, died quickly without water droplets. A small number of super ladybugs survived until harvest, 5 weeks after I assumed they were all either dead or escaped. (Of course I carefully carried them to freedom as I found them.) There were certainly several constant sources of water in the grow, apparently the few figured out how to use it… and the masses didn’t get the memo.(To anyone paying outrageously for chemicals purported to be liquid ladybugs, DON’T, it’s a rip-off, neem oil is cheap, readily available, highly effective, safe for plants and non-toxic! I spent $hundreds figuring this out, and I’m still not happy about it.) [...]