Can love bugs be cleaned off windows?

UF/IFAS states the whole answer in one sentence: lovebug remains can be removed from surfaces easily if not left to bake in the sun.

Glass has its own version of that same rule. NGA's quick-reference list for cleaning architectural glass says not to allow splashed materials to dry on the glass surface, which is exactly what a lovebug spatter is. Read together, the two sources agree without either one being written about the other: the sooner a splatter is washed, the easier it comes off and the less residue is left behind.

Love bugs come in two short flights, which UF/IFAS puts at a few weeks every April to May and every August to September, peaking slightly earlier in the southern part of the state.

UF/IFAS also says they are only active in daylight and fly across the wind, blown against obstacles, especially vehicles traveling at high speeds. A splatter therefore arrives during the day. UF/IFAS's warning is about remains left to bake in the sun, so the stretch that matters runs from the day the insects land to the day the glass is washed.

It can feel personal when a house collects far more of them than the yard next door, and UF/IFAS calls that perception erroneous.

In UF/IFAS's account, lovebugs seem to collect on light-colored buildings, especially when freshly painted, and stronger winds concentrate them against down-wind objects. Under a heading that calls it a myth that dispersing lovebugs are attracted to homes, UF/IFAS writes that people exposed to winds that deposit the insects at their homes can perceive erroneously that they are attracting them.

UF/IFAS's own heading calls it a myth that lovebug body fluids are acidic and immediately dissolve automobile paint, and its numbers only make sense with that heading attached.

Macerated lovebugs are about neutral, at a pH of 6.5, but turn acidic, at 4.25, inside a day. Read alone that sounds alarming; read with UF/IFAS's finding, it is not: automobile paint coated with them and held in a humid indoor environment for 21 days was left undamaged. A lovebug-coated surface left in the sun for an extended period may be damaged by the insects and their removal, which is the same time-based rule as the sun-baking finding above, and UF/IFAS calls lovebugs a nuisance pest rather than a destructive one. Nothing in that record is about glass, and no read source says lovebugs etch or damage a window pane. A different splashed deposit that raises the same question is answered on bird droppings and glass.

Nothing in the sources gives lovebug remains on glass a procedure of their own.

NGA's routine wash for exterior glass is written for what sits on the surface, and NGA's rule for a splash is the one above: do not let it dry on the glass. What a homeowner can do about marks that build up between professional cleanings is its own answer, and a transom window over a door is glass under the same rule as any other pane.