Blog

We purchased the ladybugs online. They arrived in its larva stage. The children loved to observe their transformation… Below is a picture of them after their final metamorphosis.

We also bought some live adult ladybugs. We released them in our backyard at night, hoping they would eat our hibiscus’ tree white flies.

For our disappointment, they didn’t care about the white flies and, by noon the next day, they were all gone. It is really not worthy buying ladybugs from a store with the purpose of eliminating backyard pests… We even sprayed their wings with a solution of water and Coke, as somebody recommended. The solution is supposed to make their wings sticky and unable them to fly away for one or two days. Well, it didn’t work!

(They like aphids better…)

But, we kept a few dozens of them as pets. We made them a bug hotel, and watched them for about a week. Our bug hotel was made from a 2 litters Coke bottle. We glued a dry branch to the bottom and added some fake leaves to it. We also added some fake grass. At the bottom, we placed some dirt from our backyard. We fed the ladybugs soaked raisins, and kept a piece of felt constantly wet inside the container, so they could have water to drink. The ladybugs seemed to be happy for about a week. After that, we had to let them go…

Below, our project at the science fair.

This was his first Science Expo (First Grade.)

The red background was his idea. Adding some dots just made sense…

Nico realized he loves ladybugs…