The Ladybugs

This spring I had to raise some ladybugs! It was amazing to watch them! It really was!

When they came in the mail, they had already hatched from eggs to larva. We put them into the ladybug dome with their food crystals. Which was ground up mealworms. We watched them for about a week as they slowly grew and grew. They ate a lot and molted many times. When they molted they were white and got kind of bigger. Then they turned black with a few red spots. In larval form, they looked a little like alligators and kind of walked like swimming alligators.

After they were larvae, they turned into pupae. They went to spot in the habitat, attached their little butts with a little string, burst out of the larval shell and curled into a ball. Then after 5 days, the lady bug burst out of the pupa just like the pupa burst out of the larva! We fed them golden raisins. What we didn't realize was that, they ate all the good stuff out of the raisins and on the day we were going to release them, one ladybug ate one of the others! They all started to run from each other!

My ladybugs were pink ladybugs that were really pretty. They had 12 spots and no white spots above their heads like most ladybugs do.