Stink Bugs, Spiders, Other Pests Crawling In For Winter: What To Do

ACROSS AMERICA — With a few notable exceptions, insects, spiders and other creatures do a good lot overall, even if you don’t want them crawling in your house and looking for places to bed down for the winter.

You don’t need to kill them to be rid of them, unless it’s a spotted lanternfly, — and squish that bad actor on the spot — or a brown marmorated stink bug. Don’t squish stink bugs. P-yew. If you do, they’ll live up to their name and more. But like the spotted lanternfly, stink bugs are a menace to agricultural crops, and you don’t want to go easy on them.

Keep in mind the cautionary tale of a South Carolina couple who discovered 26,000 stink bugs had invaded their home with the arrival of cool temperatures. The couple described their experience, hilariously recounted in The New Yorker, as “like a horror movie.”

What to do: To make your home a fortress against brown marmorated stink bugs, arm yourself with weather-stripping, caulking and tape. Seal up gaps and crevices around foundations and any area where doors, windows, chimneys and utility pipes are cut into the exterior. Any opening large enough for a stink bug to crawl through should be sealed.

The best thing to do if you find them inside is gently sweep them into a bucket, then fill it with a couple of inches of soapy water. You could vacuum them up, but perhaps as a last resort because it will trigger stink bugs’ notorious odor and leave you with a stinky vacuum cleaner.

More For Your Fall To-Do List:

• When Does The 1st Killing Frost Usually Occur: How To Save Your Plants
• Skunks Active In Towns Across U.S.: How Do You Get Rid Of The Stink?

Poison can quickly kill the stink bugs, but that will also trigger their stench. Professional extermination is another option.

Or, if you can bear the thought of living communally with them inside your home, you could just leave them alone and hope no one frightens them and stirs up a stinky ruckus. They don’t nest or lay eggs. They don’t feed on anything or anyone in your house. Come spring, they’ll crawl right back outside in time to take a bite out of your garden, and for the war on stink bugs to begin anew.

Below are five more pests that are looking for winter shelter:

Spiders Not Worth The Freak-Out

Giant arachnids like the American house spider, the wolf spider and gangly daddy longlegs get a fairly bad rap. They’re not bloodsuckers. Daddy longlegs are especially benign. They don’t bite or poison anyone and are not considered garden or agricultural pests. House spiders are more afraid of you than you should be of them and, when confronted, scurry away as fast as their eight legs will curry them. Left alone, they’ll eat smaller, more annoying insects. Still, rooming with spiders isn’t everyone’s notion of an agreeable living arrangement,

What to do: Caulking to keep out other pests will help here. Once they’re in, you can buy a spider repellent available at home improvement stores and supermarkets, but natural control methods are cheaper and better overall for the family and pets.

Here’s some cool spider science: Arachnids sense vibrations and smells through the tiny hairs on their legs. Among the most unpleasant smells for a spider is pungent peppermint. It’s a good rodent repellent, too.

Buy a premixed peppermint spray or make it yourself by diluting peppermint oil with water. Spray around windows, door frames and other places that collect moisture, which spiders need to survive. Also, try a pot of peppermint plants in the kitchen. Other strong scents such as vinegar, whole cinnamon and citrus peel are also recommended.

Another Stinker: Asian Lady Beetles

The multicolored Asian lady beetle can be a real stinker, too. It oozes a bad-smelling orange liquid from its leg joints.

Generally considered beneficial, they feed on plant pests — especially aphids, which they gobble up like steak. But they’re also troublemakers and can affect the quality of your life when large numbers of them invade buildings, often emitting a noxious odor and the orange staining fluid before dying. Eww.

What to do: Stop them before they get in your house. Beetles come in a variety of colors — from pale tan to a brilliant red-orange — and can have no spots, many spots, or large or small spots. To correctly identify Asian lady beetles, look for black-and-white markings directly behind the head.

In the fall, large swarms of these beetles collect on the sunlit side of buildings before moving into their hibernation sites. To control them, apply an insecticide approved for outdoor use. You should also caulk places where the beetles can get inside — cracks and other spaces where the beetles can find easy passage, but also places where a pipe, conduit telephone or cable TV wire goes through the siding. Check attic windows and repair them if necessary, and make sure the weather seal is tight on basement windows.

Despite your best efforts, a few may sneak in. Don’t use insecticides, even those approved for indoor use. Instead, suck them up using a hand-held or other vacuum with a bag that can be emptied.

A Stink Bug Look-Alike

If you made your home a fortress against Asian lady beetles, you should be good to go in your battle against western conifer seed bugs — unless you have loosely hung vinyl siding, and no amount of caulking is going to keep these insects out of your home.

You’re likely to find these bugs in areas with evergreen trees old enough to produce cones, because they like to feed on the gooey goodness inside the conifer seeds. They closely resemble stink bugs but have wider hind legs.

Western conifer seed bugs also have the potential to bite humans with their piercing, sucking mouthparts. It was probably an accident or a fluke, according to researchers in Budapest, Hungary, but a bite by one of these bugs resulted in a fairly painful irritation and a lesion that lasted 48 hours, and the area the bug chomped remained red for about a month.

But don’t worry too much about this.

What to do: Deal with it? Once they’re inside walls, there’s not much you can do. It’s likely you’ll continue to see them throughout the winter. Insecticides approved for indoor use can be expensive, and it’s nearly impossible to treat every surface. These bugs are lethargic, so you should be able to vacuum them up.

Boxelder Bugs (No, They Don’t Vote)

Did you know that in some parts of the country, boxelder bugs are known as Democrat bugs, a term of denigration? Just a little trivia about these rather attractive bugs — they’re dark gray or black, and their red-edged wings form a V-shape in the middle of their backs. They are found wherever boxelder trees are nearby; and in the fall, they look for dry, protected sites, including attics and wall cavities, to spend the winter.

They’re harmless. They don’t chew on you, your food or your clothes. They don’t lay eggs. Like the western conifer seed bugs, they just hang out in your home until it’s warm enough to venture outside again.

What to do: Your best weapon of defense is a caulking gun here, too. Once they’re in, even aggressive and costly insecticide applications may not be effective because it is nearly impossible to treat every hidden area that may be harboring insects.

Sealing cracks around electrical outlet boxes, switches and light fixtures, and around window and baseboard molding on the inside walls will help keep the bugs trapped within the walls. In older homes with double-hung windows equipped with pulleys, insects commonly enter living areas through the pulley opening. Masking tape applied over the opening will keep insects from entering through this route. Vacuuming up the sluggish, slow-moving bugs works, too.

Nasty Cluster Flies

Cluster flies look a lot like the common housefly, but have a patch of yellow hairs under their wings. They get in your house by squeezing through cracks around windows and doors, loosely hung siding, soffit vents, louvers and other entry points — and they live up to their name and come into your home in clusters.

If they’re in your home, they’re likely to remain active throughout the winter months. They’re harmless enough. They don’t bite. They don’t transmit disease. They don’t feed or lay eggs during this time.

But they are, after all, flies, and no one wants them buzzing around.

What to do: Get a flyswatter. Cluster flies are slow movers so, which makes the vacuum cleaner an effective weapon. Winterization maintenance actions like those advised for other fall invaders can help keep them out, but once they’re in, they’re in. Indoor aerosol insecticides are effective to control large infestations.