In September, October (even November), these fall invaders begin clustering on the outside of homes and buildings. They are looking for a place to hibernate over the winter and the vertical structure provides a familiar and safe harborage. You want to keep them outside where they belong by first sealing any gaps, cracks or crevices with caulk or some other means of physical exclusion. Because it is not practical to seal everything, you then need to supplement your work with Buggslayer - a residual insecticide that kills on contact.
We suggest you treat a band of soil or lawn about 2 to 5 feet wide around and next to buildings and treat the foundation to a height of 2 or 3 feet and onto the first few boards of lap siding. This keeps insects from crawling up the outside walls. If they are congregating in a certain area, the mixture can be applied to SIDING, porches, screens, patios, window frames, eves or other areas where they may gain entrance to the structure.
Buggslayer is water-based, odorless, non-staining and can be used on siding, etc.
It is very important to treat these pest outdoors before they can find shelter in your outside walls. Any insects (Asian lady beetles included) that actually make it all the way indoors signals you may have a significant infestation on your hands. Some may come in around doors and windows but if you are seeing these pests all winter, you may have hundreds sleeping in your walls.
What do you do if these are already inside? Most experts recommend you just vacuum them up with a bagged vacuum cleaner and dispose of the bag in the trash. If you try to use an insecticide labeled for indoor use, they will most likely die in an area inaccessible to your cleaning efforts (inside the walls, attic, crawl space, etc.). After that, their bodies will tend to smell and their parts can cause allergies and other health problems (similar to dust mites).
As a side note, my parents renovated their 1950's rambler in 1987 replacing cedar shake siding with stucco. When removing the shakes, there were thousands (if not hundreds of thousands) of dead box elder bugs underneath the siding. The piles of dead bugs were about half the size of the piles of shingles. Disgusting...
We don't recommend treating your box elder trees as these insects pose no harm to you or the environment. These bugs can also travel considerable distances (1/4 - 1/2 mile) so taking away your shade tree by cutting it down may even make the problem worse by attracting more bugs to your house.
We have posted some great pictures
and video to show how Buggslayer keeps box elder bugs from congregating
on the outside surfaces of buildings. We treated this area with
Buggslayer on October 3, 2005. On October 4&5, the area received
over 4 inches of rain. These pictures and video were taken on
October 20th - 2-1/2 weeks later.
Because the bugs were dying that
day means Buggslayer was still working and it DID NOT WASH AWAY!