"Lady Bugs" are like bats or #3 sand as alternatives to pesticides. They are natural and when they have eaten all the food (their target bait or pest) they go away with no residue. More about bats and #3 sand later.
Last summer 2007, 720,000 of the red/orange-and-black bugs were imported from Bozeman, Montana and were set out on an 80-acre site of one of New York's biggest apartment complexes, the Stuyvesant Town and Peter Cooper Village with a coded message: eat pests. The ladybugs arrived at the complex on Manhattan's East Side packed in boxes shipped by a natural gardening company.
From mesh bags filled with wood shavings, groundskeepers scattered them in clusters of 72,000 per box. Within days they crawl into plants, flowers and shrubs in search of insects whose smell attracts them — soft-bodied, leaf-sucking aphids and mites.
This species of ladybug — Hippodamia convergens — converges in the wilderness, where they are harvested. Buying the bugs means the complex's owner, Tishman Speyer, can avoid using chemical insecticides. On its website, the company offers "Live Ladybugs — Free Shipping!" at $16.50 for 2,000.
"In most cases, we reach for a can of pesticide — and we kill not only the 'bad guys,' but the 'good guys,'" said Eric Vinje, owner of Planet Natural, which supplied the pest-killers for Manhattan.
Each insect can take care of a piece of land measuring about 19-by-19-inches. A ladybug can eat up to 50 pests a day, plus insect eggs. The huge colony will consume billions of pests before moving on.
As to bats, they are such good insect control monitors that the State of California's transportation dept installed 88,000 bat caves in overpasses throughout the Central valley. And #3 sand as a foundation base for homes keeps termites from forming colonies under houses.
Other sources of supply:
High Country Gardens - Nursery specializing in xeriscaping friendly plants for dry climates.
http://www.highcountrygardens.com
Directory for non- or least toxic pest control provideers.
http://www.beyondpesticides.org/safetysource
Golden Harvest Organics - Site provides a guide to plants taht naturally repel specific pests.
http://wwwghorganics.com/page2.html
Ideal Bite - daily email offering bite sized ideas for light green living.
http://www.idealbite.com