Warmer weather comes with a pest

Have been enjoying the unusual warming trend in Michigan. However, also have been major irritated by boxelder bugs. These little pests like to winter over in nooks and crannies, usually around the chicken coop. Apparently they taste bad because the chickens won't eat them.
I did spray the massed buggers down with soap spray and killed them by the thousands around the coop. Now they have moved to the house. Somehow they are finding a way into our bedroom and like the South facing window near my bed because of the sunlight warmth. Dang bugs are nocturnal. So they are landing and crawling on me at night and waking me up a lot. I patrol the windows with a vacuum during the day but they just keep on coming. Really can't go spraying insecticide in the house so I am going to have to come up with another solution.

I may very well cut the boxelder tree down this Summer just to hopefully help them migrate somewhere else. My dad, the entomologist is sorely missed. He knew a lot about bugs and unfortunately never told me how to kill this critter off.

THAT sounds like a problem. Down here don't have those bugs but certainly have a bunch of others. I have no idea if it will work on them, but for a lot of bugs, including ants, I use a mixture of borax and sugar. The sugar attracts them and the borax kills them. Might work as you said you use soap spray on them.

Doesn't sound like fun Paul. We had quite a infestation of oak mites around here last year. Been hoping we've had enough cold weather to kill them off. If not, I'll not be looking forward to any yard work again this year. Just think of them as chiggers that fall from the sky and bite you from the head down rather than the toes up.

Had box elder bugs when I was a kid in Iowa. A couple years ago we had a plague of moths out here for a couple of months. Absolutely nothing you could do about it there were so many of them. The moths of the army cutworm, which apparently grow in hay fields in the middle of the valley here.

We have already beat the all time record record of precip for a water year out here, and we still have 221 days to go, or something like that. I'm just hoping we don't get hit with the army cut worm moths or the mormon crickets this year.

Stink bugs. At least that's what I am told they are. Appeared by the dozens around the door and window to the shop last fall. Killed them or sucked them up in the shop vac every time I saw one but they are sneaky. Some how a few dozen got up into the shop attic. It seems every time I move a box in the attic I find a handful of them sleeping through the winter. Fortunately they are rather slow and dumb and don't present a difficult target.

Rennie Heuer said:

Stink bugs. At least that's what I am told they are. Appeared by the dozens around the door and window to the shop last fall. Killed them or sucked them up in the shop vac every time I saw one but they are sneaky. Some how a few dozen got up into the shop attic. It seems every time I move a box in the attic I find a handful of them sleeping through the winter. Fortunately they are rather slow and dumb and don't present a difficult target.

Click to expand...

If you squish them you'll know if they're stink bugs.

We've had the whole gambit here this winter... stink bugs, box elder bugs and lady beetles... they get in the house, in the shop, in the carport and storage shed attached... a few years ago we had some bug that was breeding on the fly, they were attached at the butt end and were everywhere... used to get them in Houston and along the I10 into Louisiana too... they made a mess on the windshield and grill of the car. We had a name for them that we can't use on the forum.

I really do think this is an organized plot. As the son of an entomologist, I spent my youth sticking pins through lots of bugs either for my dad or for my personal bug collection. Spent a week one Summer killing wasp and hornet nests on a college campus. Soap sprayed 100's of nests. Never got stung. In fact in 40 years of doing this, I have murdered 1000's of those kind of nests with the soap spray, only got stung once. Did some running away on occasion. Soap spray- liquid dish detergent and water in various sprayers suffocates bugs. Flying insects, like the stinging kind, seem to be blinded and just want to escape. The spray kills them in seconds. It may also act as a caustic to their bug anatomy.

So I guess this is revenge. The boxelder bugs also stink. probably why birds don't eat very many of them. I think I will employ the kids, equipped with an assortment of bug battle gear this Summer, to try to knock the numbers down. The aged female boxelder tree over the chicken coop has structural problems anyway, so it's days are numbered. Might have to pull it when cutting, or maybe just figure on a new chicken coop. The old structure is junk anyway.