Multicolored Asian lady beetles (a.k.a. Japanese lady beetles or Halloween bugs) congregate in huge numbers. Luckily, they don’t chew or burrow into housing materials or human possessions, and they don’t carry diseases or bite (much). But did I mention that they congregate in huge numbers?
Benign though they may be, it’s unpleasant seeing so many bugs in one place, not to mention being occasionally dive-bombed by hard little insects or finding them meandering over your salad or floating in your mojito. Plus, when you startle or squish them, you discover their one destructive power: it’s called reflex bleeding, and it involves emitting a foul-smelling yellow substance from their leg joints. Outdoors, this makes them less palatable to predators, but indoors, it can stain surfaces or excite allergic reactions. If the fact that they congregate in huge numbers wasn’t enough to convince you, reflex bleeding is another excellent reason to keep Asian Lady Beetles out of your home. Here’s how to do it:
Controlling an Asian Beetle Infestation
Inspect the outside of your house for cracks and gaps in the walls, siding, or foundation, and fill or repair any you find that are wider than 1/16 of an inch. Eliminate spaces around doors and windows, and don’t forget to caulk around cables, pipes, and hoses that enter your house from the outside. Asian lady beetles don’t reproduce indoors, and are only interested in your house as a warm place to spend the winter. They usually start searching for a place to hibernate in October, so if you have your house sealed against tiny intruders by late September, they’ll be forced to overwinter in the neighbors’ walls instead.
Screens are an important defense mechanism against Asian lady beetles. Make sure you have them on all your windows, bathroom and kitchen ventilation fans, and attic vents. It’s a good idea to check these in the late summer or early fall for holes, gaps, or tears, and repair or replace damaged screens before the Asian beetles can take advantage of them.
If you really want to keep Asian lady beetles away, you might consider changing the color of your house. The beetles are most attracted to buildings that are light in color, especially whites and yellows, so painting darker colors over your outside walls and trim would make them a less attractive landing place. It’s possible that this would be a tiny overreaction to a basically harmless insect, but I’m not here to judge. 
Sealing cracks and gaps in the walls inside your house will keep any Asian lady beetles that manage to sneak into your wall cavities from accidentally exiting into your living space. Since Asian beetles spend most of their time in your home hibernating out of sight, you’ll often see them in the spring, when the weather is warm enough that they’re looking for a way outside. They don’t actually want to be in your bedroom anymore than you want them there.
When you do see Asian lady beetles indoors, the best method of getting rid of them is to simply vacuum them up. Smashing, swatting, or even sweeping them will trigger reflex bleeding and leave yellow stains on your stuff. If you would rather release the Asian lady bugs outdoors than have them die inside your vacuum cleaner, you can slip a knee-high nylon stocking inside the hose attachment on the vacuum cleaner and secure it with a rubber band around the opening. The suction will pull the beetles inside the stocking without killing them, and you can take the stocking outside to humanely release the insects. Controlling Asian Beetles with Pesticides
Chemical warfare is not the most effective way to deal with an Asian lady beetle infestation. Fogging or spraying indoors will kill only a minimal number of the beetles because the majority will be hiding inside your walls or crawl spaces, where the pesticide can’t reach them. What fogging and spraying will do is leave a bunch of nasty chemicals to circulate in your closed-up house all winter. Once a population of Asian beetles has gotten into your house, your best option is to vacuum up any beetles you happen to see and wait for the rest to leave on their own in the spring.
Then, when fall comes again and you’re busy fortifying your house against another invasion of Asian lady beetles, you can use insecticides as an additional protective layer. In this application, timing is crucial: in late September, just before the beetles start looking for places to overwinter, spray a residual pyrethrin-based insecticide like Demand or Demon WP on the outside surfaces of your house. Concentrate on the sunny south and west sides of the house, and around possible entry points like windows, doors, and soffits. Since Asian beetles often fly to their hibernating places from a distance, spraying your yard or trees won’t noticeably affect their numbers. Just apply the insecticide to the house itself, where it can play a direct role in repelling Asian lady beetles.
