Stink bugs and lady beetles: what comes in with the first cold night

Every late September in Chesterton the same thing happens: the south-facing siding fills with brown shield-shaped bugs in the afternoon sun, and a week later they are in the curtains. They are not there by accident.

What they want

The EPA's page on the brown marmorated stink bug says it plainly: beyond the damage they do to crops, they are a nuisance because the adults seek shelter to overwinter inside houses and other buildings. A warm home with a gap somewhere is the best option on the block, and they find the gap.

The week to shut the door

The EPA's list for keeping them out is a sealing list, and it is the same list that keeps the heat in:

• Caulk around the windows, inside and out
• Inspect the foundation for cracks and seal them
• Where pipes come through the foundation or the crawl space, caulk the small gaps and fill the larger ones with steel wool
• If there is a fireplace, cap or screen the top of the chimney

Done before the first cold night, that is most of the battle. Done in November, it is keeping in the ones that already arrived.

For the ones inside: a vacuum, not a shoe

Crushed, they release the smell they are named for, from glands on the underside. The EPA's advice is to remove them, live or dead, with a vacuum, and it adds the honest caveat that the vacuum may smell of stink bugs for a while afterwards. So use a shop vac or one with a bag you can throw out, not the good vacuum.

The lady beetles come the same week

The multicolored Asian lady beetles arrive on the same warm afternoons and end up in the same places: window tracks, the inside of light fittings, the corner of the ceiling. The same sealing stops them. On every October visit I clear both out of the tracks and the fittings, and a track that was brushed out in September has a lot fewer. Pest control is a different trade. Sealing a window and clearing a sill is cleaning, and the last week of September is when to do it.