Anyone outside of Minnesota ever heard of a box elder bug?? For the last three years they have been everywhere...In the house out side, where ever the sun shines...Thousands of them, help, we are going B.E. bug crazy..

Never thought I could talk about Box Elder bugs without being taken away by a Thread Drift SWAT Team.

But, yeah, we had a box elder tree in Iowa that provided summer shade for our house so well that my parents didn't buy air conditioning until it blew down in a storm. The bugs in your photo seem mostly black. I remember ours as having equal parts orange and black.

I have seen them all over the upper Midwest, Canada and Colorado and Utah. Kansas, too, I think.

Now Bill, thread drift would be if I now started talking about motorhomes. This thread is about bugs and bugs alone...got it.

Hey Shadow, want to weigh in here on Black Widows, Turantulas and Rattle Snakes...

Box elder bugs? Ya sure, you betcha. I remember them from childhood in MN. Sounds like you have an unusual infestation this year. My memory of their colors matches Bill H's.

I have less pleasant summertime memories of the Minnesota state bird, the mosquito, & swarms of flies.

All we have around here is springtime invasions by carpenter ants, the occasional brown recluse spider, & swarms of yellowjackets in the fall.

I can't get my better half excited about AZ. I tell her no mosquito's, no humidity. You can sit out in the evenings. Come mid May once it is dusk the bugs drive you in.

Talking about flies Olroy. We used to vacation in this beautiful area in Northern Wisconsin in a town called Bayfield. Then we would go to Madeline Island one of the Apostle Islands in Lake Superior. The days are wonderful and the nights provide an air to breathe which is indescribable. Like they say if you haven't slept on an island you haven't slept at all. But for 2-3 hours in the evening come the black flies.. And,,,they bite your ankles.. Why do they go for the ankles I do not know. Probably because it is the only area below the waist that is partially unprotected.

quote:

Originally posted by Dave Bowers:
they bite your ankles.. Why do they go for the ankles I do not know. Probably because it is the only area below the waist that is partially unprotected.

Staying on thread here, they like your ankles because the skin is thin and the blood vessels are close to the skin. They smell blood.

For the bugs, I recommend the Skeeter-Vac.

I live on a creek, and my cypress bog is a mosquito condo. Since getting the Skeeter-Vac (the biggest one), I've reclaimed my yard.

....While surfin' last night, I went to:
Insects.com........

Fortunately, one of their threads had run-a-muck and drifted to a discussion on motorhomes...

Life has a way of balancing out, doesn't it?

PS: Dave - a SURE solution: get two short pieces of Spruce 2x4.....Lay'em on one and smack'em with the other......

Hey Dave, I had the same problem at a another place we have here in Michigan on the Grand River. They first appeared in the fall and then again this spring. I sprayed they with a can of Ortho insect killer. they all went scurring and I haven't seen them again. Of course I did say I had them in the fall and then again in the spring so maybe it just scares them over to the neighbors for a while.

Dave; Cheap fix, per Jerry Baker the garden Guy, soapy water sprayed on them. JKB

Hey Doug, did the Ortho last fall, bugs are 1/2 last years, however, there going at it, (if you know what I mean) so we'll see. Ortho did work well and fast.

Sloop, bug guy is buggy, tried the soap and watter, cleaned my front door but the bugs seemed to like it.

Yuma rattlers look good about now.

Dave:

I have one word and the word is Diazinon.

If it moves this stuff will kill it.

If you ever go to sell your place I suggest being low key about ever using this product. But if you want to create an environment that is just a little more inhospitable to your new bug visitors than one of Jupiter’s moons this is the stuff to use. Wait two weeks for the next batch to hatch, do it again and say aloha to your front door coating.

Timothy

I used to keep my yard bugs off-balance by alternating between diazanon and malathion. Really worked.

Since we have gone into snail harvesting, we are back to soap. Works fairly well.

Whatever happened to good 'ole DDT ? Bugs didn't have a chance.

It's been banned for years due to causing problems with birds' eggshells and other major ecological disruptions. IIRC, Chris-Craft (yep, the boat builder) holds the license for its production...