Love bugs

UF/IFAS describes lovebugs as small flies, males about 1/4 inch and females 1/3 inch long, entirely black except for red on top of the thorax, and as a nuisance pest rather than a destructive or dangerous one.

The species is not native to most of the southern United States. UF/IFAS writes that the lovebug extended its range across the Gulf States, reached Florida in 1949, and during the 1970s spread in explosive populations progressively southward nearly to the end of peninsular Florida.

UF/IFAS writes that lovebugs appear in excessive abundance throughout Florida as male-female pairs for only a few weeks every April to May and August to September. Although they exist over the entire state in those months, they can reach outbreak levels in some areas and be absent in others, and although there are two generations a year, adults can be found during most months. Higher temperatures, UF/IFAS adds, cause adult populations to peak slightly earlier in the southern areas of the state; it gives no dates for Naples.

UF/IFAS also gives the daily flight conditions: lovebug flight is initiated when the air temperature reaches about 68 F and illumination is 1,500 to 2,000 foot-candles, and lovebugs do not fly at night. The temperature is one of two conditions, never the whole trigger.

UF/IFAS writes that lovebug remains can be removed from surfaces easily if not left to bake in the sun.

UF/IFAS also corrects a myth about lovebug body fluids and automobile paint, and the risk it describes is sun-baking rather than acid on contact. Its damage findings are written about automobile paint; UF/IFAS does not extend them to a roof, a paver or a pane of glass.

Whether remains come off window glass is answered at whether love bugs can be cleaned off windows, and the steps a glass cleaning follows are set out in the exterior window cleaning method. The two flights are among the things that can reach a clean pane in the days weighed by cleaning windows before an event. Lovebugs are one of the Florida calendars that Naples exteriors compared with homes up north sets against a northern year, and the August to September flight falls inside NWS Tampa Bay's Southwest Florida dates for the rainy season.