Insect ID help! Hibiscus has turned into a bug colony!

[Lianne]

What are these creepy crawlies??? They have completely taken over one hibiscus plant in my flower garden where they seem to be colonizing and you can also find individual ones running around EVERYWHERE in the mulch. It is a large flower bed across the whole front of our house. If someone can tell me what they are, I can figure out what to do about them! I'm too scared to even go pull weeds. There are hundreds of them.







Those pics are all from the same plant, but there are many more on the ground and stragglers on other plants.

[Lianne]

Okay, upon further internet searching they could maybe be either a boxelder bug or a milkweed bug, but I have neither milkweed nor maple in that flower bed, so I'm just as confused!

[rainbowgardener]

You did well on your searching. I'm thinking milkweed bug nymphs. Milkweed bugs and boxelder bugs are easier to tell apart as adults, but even as nymphs they are shaped a little differently.

Milkweed bugs prefer milkweed, can be found on a variety of plants. Applestar had a post awhile back about milkweed bugs on her peppers. There's no reason to be afraid. They are completely harmless and cannot bite or sting you.

They eat the seeds of milkweeds. I don't know that they will do any damage to your hibiscus.

[cedillamuerta]

Here to confirm that this is a Boxelder Bug. They prefer to feed on trees, and seem to be really picky about them (even to the point of preferring female box elder trees over males). I don't think they pose any threat to your Hibiscus, but if there's any damage, you can simply spray them. They're not social insects, so you won't have to worry about them colonizing anything either. They simply all hatched from a brood simultaneously.

[rainbowgardener]

Thanks for the id and good information. So how did you tell them apart from the similar milkweed bug nymphs?

[Lianne]

Thanks for calming my nerves, all! We did decide to spray the big cluster of them on the one hibiscus, and the stragglers eventually left just as mysteriously as they came. They must have all just hatched, and then moved on.

I'd be curious to know how you tell them apart from the milkweed bugs too, just for my general knowledge! Glad they didn't pose a threat to anything in the flower bed, just creepy and definitely crawly

[rainbowgardener]

What did you spray with? The bugs were harmless to your plants, you, the environment... That's more than I can say for most insecticides people spray around.

[ElizabethB]

Although the bugs look disgusting I am with Rainbow on the harmless nature of the bugs as opposed to the harmful effects of insecticides. The older I get the more tolerant I am with natures creatures. The exceptions are wasp and red ants. No mercy where they are concerned. Every summer I get stink bugs on my tomatoes. I wear gloves and pick them off by hand rather than use insecticides. Kind of smelly but effective. As a landscape contractor and having worked at nurseries and Lowe's garden center people frequently brought bugs in for identification. A very common one was assassin bugs. Ugly looking but actually beneficial to the garden.

Sorry for the ramble. My point is that if the bugs are not harmful or you have another control option avoid insecticides as much as possible.