Right now in refrigerators across Maine, there are old mayonnaise jars filled with hundreds of lady bugs, caught and capped off by well-intentioned people who believe they’re saving the ladies by giving them temporary shelter.

There are winter moths flying about and they’re up to no good. There are snow fleas that are not fleas. And indoor mosquitoes that just want a spot to chill and don’t want to bite you. You know — much.

Weird as it sounds, winter in Maine is far buggier than one might expect.

“It used to be when I first started, people would say, ‘Oh, boy, it must be boring during the winter being an entomologist,'” said James Dill, a pest management specialist for the University of Maine Cooperative Extension.

But no more.

“With the things that have come in, and looking at pests and you name it, there’s truly not a slow time of year anymore,” he said.

* Snow fleas

You can find these tiny insects frolicking in the snow in giant red or black/gray clumps on warm days.

They get around by hopping, Dill said, so that’s where the name comes from. In truth, they’re outdoors year-round — but they’re hard to see without the white, snowy backdrop.

“They’re strictly scavengers that feed on plant material,” he said. “They’re not interested in you at all.”

* Western conifer seed bugs

With thin legs and a craggy body, these started popping up in Maine about seven years ago, Dill said. Come winter, they’re looking for a place to bed down.

If they’re creeping around indoors now, they’ve woken up early from a winter’s sleep and are looking for seeds.

“Just escort them out,” he said. “Don’t squash them because they are smelly; they’re very closely related to stinkbugs.”

* Northern house mosquito

These guys like cool winter basements. Yours will do.

“The good thing about them is they’re not voracious biters,” Dill said. “There’s nothing that I know of, disease-wise, associated with them. They’re just kind of an innocuous mosquito.”

Northern house mosquitoes can be confused with the lanky winter crane fly, which similarly isn’t driven to nibble.

“I was running around the other day just trying to take pictures; there were two or three outside of my house,” Dill said. “This time of year, they’re probably out looking for mates.”

* Winter moths

Massachusetts has had winter moths for 20 years, so it wasn’t a shock when they were seen eating leaves here in 2012, said Charlene Donahue, forest entomologist with the Maine Forest Service.

She asked people for help this winter in tracking their movements and so far, more than 600 people have responded to an online survey.

In the winter, adult males fly around and flightless females release pheromones to attract the males. In the spring, larvae hatch and kick into high gear, exacting plenty of damage.

“The problem is, with them, they can be a serious pest,” Dill said. “Down in Massachusetts, they’re a problem on hardwood trees and they’re also a serious pest on high-bush blueberries. Our concern is that they’re going to be a pest on low-bush blueberries, too.” 

Donahue said they’ve been seen from Kittery to Harpswell and a little inland. If the state can pinpoint the highest-density whereabouts, they’ll have a better idea of where to release European flies with an appetite exclusive to winter moths. (The state did two releases in 2013 and three in 2014, she said.)

Winter moths fly around into January and overlap slightly with the Bruce spanworm moth, which can fly around into early December.

To the naked eye, the two look uncannily alike.

“We have to dissect them in order to distinguish them,” Donahue said.

The internal difference?

“Oh, you really don’t want to ask that,” she said. “It’s the male genitalia.” 

* Winter spiders

Dill hears about these after rain has flushed them out of their winter hiding spots and the caller’s done a double-take at seeing a spider walking on the snow.

“There are some species of spiders in Maine that can live several years,” he said. “When winter comes, they go down out of their webs and then they look for cracks and crevices to over-winter outside.”

After rain, “they’re out and about, looking for a new place to settle down.”

* Asian lady beetles

When these little interlopers started showing up in Maine 10-plus years ago, it was a big deal. 

“We were getting inundated with calls,” Dill said. “There would literally be hundreds in the corner of the room of people’s houses. There are probably just as many around, but people now know what they are, why they’re there. We don’t get the calls on them like we used to.”

For that reason, it’s hard to get a handle on when the state has a bumper crop.

“But I’ll tell you, I have never seen so many as when I was hunting (this past) October,” he said. “We were west of Baxter Park. Literally, you’d ride down the road with the windows in your truck down, there would be thousands of them flying all over the place, coming in the windows.”

Asian lady beetles come in a variety of spots and colors and eat tree-pest aphids. They over-winter in rocky cracks and crevices. Come October, they start trying to sneak indoors, especially pestering lighter-colored houses, Dill said.

“They probably see the side of a house and they’re thinking, ‘Oh, that’s the side of a mountain,'” Dill said. “No matter how good we all are about sealing up our houses, there are little cracks and crevices.”

By early November, they should be tucked in for winter. If you spy a lady bug toddling around indoors now, it’s been woken up by you turning up the heat and is looking for a snack, he said.

“I’ve had people try to feed them sugar water or honey and water, they’ll go up and feed on that,” Dill said. “You might extend their life for a day or two, then they end up going belly up.”

Ditto with chilling them in the fridge to reintroduce hibernation, a tactic Dill hears about frequently every winter. In reality, come spring, it’s less of a feel-good ending and more like a mayonnaise jar full of dead bugs.

“It’s really tough to save them,” he said. “I usually recommend, if you really want to save them, sweep them into that jar and then take them outside and let them go.”

But do it carefully: Startle them and they’ll release a smelly yellow liquid that stains.

“In your own mind, you can say, ‘I put them outside, they found a better place to hibernate,'” Dill said. “You’ve got a clear conscience then.”

Weird, Wicked Weird is a monthly feature on the strange, intriguing and unexplained in Maine. Send photos, story ideas and jars of anything but bugs to kskelton@sunjournal.com.

Copy the Story Link