They swarm everywhere, peppering your car with their squashed bodies when you drive into a cloud of them. First discovered in Florida in the 1940’s, lovebugs are easily identified by the red spots just behind their heads and the fact that they often travel attached as mating pairs.
While they are annoying house guests, they do not sting or bite. But they can cause damage to your car’s paint. In extreme swarms, lovebugs have even been known to clog up car radiators.
Insecticides can kill a negligible number of lovebugs, but this will neither deter nor prevent their swarming. Unfortunately, they are a seasonal pest and nothing seems to help much.
One way to deal with them is by mechanical means, such as using a fan to blow the pests away (they can’t fly into the strong breeze). Keeping doors and windows closed is another way of ensuring they don’t enter your home. While they don’t actually want to be in your house, they fly in a haphazard manner and have been known to hitch a ride on an occasional grocery bag or backpack.
You can also consider your own property’s attractiveness level. If your grass is thick and spongy with excessive thatch (dead grass clippings settled at the root level), female lovebugs will be attracted to the rotting organic matter and lay their eggs in it.
Another way to deal with their swarms on the roadways is to keep up with the wax on your car so that when they do splatter on your vehicle, they will be easier to remove. You may even decide to spray the front and side mirrors with wax before driving on highways.
Unfortunately, there is little you can do to prevent lovebugs. Sometimes, you just have to wait them out. If you are running into more serious pest problems, call Slug-A-Bug today at (321) 259-7844 for a free evaluation and no-obligation estimate for our lawn, termite or pest control services.