The attractive red and black ladybird beetle, or ladybug, celebrated in the nursery rhyme, eats aphids and other small insects—to the gardener's delight.

But even when warmed up the ladybird beetle is too temperamental to breed in captivity, so that every one shipped has to be captured.

Scientific investigations have failed to show that the release of this ladybird beetle in any aphis-infested field ever resulted in an effective reduction of the aphis population in that field.