This summer I discovered that my bamboos, which are placed on my balcony, were infested with aphids. Not wanting to use any chemicals to get them rid of aphids, I decided to capture some ladybugs in the wild, near my house, and place them in the bamboos.
I wanted to capture around half a dozen of ladybugs, to be sure they could reproduce, since I always wanted to see first-hand their life-cycle. But luck seemed not to be on my side, since I was only able to capture two ladybirds, and on top of that they were of different species. Frustrated, I went back home and placed both of them on the bamboos.
The next day, with great surprise, I noticed that one of the ladybugs, a Coccinella septempunctata,was laying eggs! That way I could happily record the different phases of the ladybug development. The result was a complete set of photographs of the ladybird lyfe-cycle.
Ladybugs larvae, after hatching, pass through 4 instars, until they form a cocoon, and finally emerge as the adult insect we know so well. All the process, since the laying of eggs until eclosion, lasts about 3-4 weeks. In my experience, the eggs took 3 days to hatch, then the larvae stood near the eggs as a cluster for one day (where the first molting takes place). After one week, the time it took for them to eat all aphids, they started to make cocoons. They rested on the cocoons for another week, and finally ecloded as small adult ladybugs.
