As you drive down the highways of humid areas such as southern United States, you may encounter a nuisance in the form of splattered insects on your windshield, hood, and radiator grill. These insects on your automobile are called lovebugs or honeymoon flies, a fitting name due to their unique mating flights. The lovebug is a species of fly that happens to flutter about as a male and female attached together. This species’ reputation as a public nuisance is not due to any bite or sting. These bugs, when on the move, collide with vehicles, blurring windshields and clogging radiators and leave behind a sticky white substance that can ruin the paint on the automobiles.

These insects tend to swarm around roadsides, and carelessly drift into the path of oncoming traffic. The result? Drivers with bug-coated windshields find it difficult to see which poses a serious threat of accidents. Because lovebugs can exist in enormous numbers near highways, they die in large numbers on automobile windshields, hoods, and radiator grills when the vehicles travel at high speeds. If left for more than an hour or two, the remains become extremely difficult to remove. The acidity of the dead adult body, especially the female’s egg masses, often results in pits and etches in automotive paint and chrome if not quickly removed. Moreover, another great concern for drivers is excessive clogging of vehicle radiator air passages with the bodies of the adults, as a result of which there is a reduction of the cooling effect on engines, and obstruction of windshields when the remains of the adults and egg masses are smeared on the glass.

Tests have shown that lovebugs are attracted to automobile exhaust that has been irradiated with UV light. It has been proposed that the chemicals in car exhaust, i.e. aldehydes and formaldehydes, are similar to the chemicals released by decaying organic matter. Besides that, the heat radiating off asphalt is also an attractant for these insects. Roads are warm and have accumulated an abundance of automobile exhaust, mimicking areas that are appropriate for lovebugs to lay their eggs. The females are full of about 350 fertilized eggs when they hit a windshield which leads to the white sticky mess that causes so much anguish. This white mess is actually the eggs and the fatty tissue around the eggs that hardens quickly in the hot sun.

The article given below about these pesky insects will further highlight the situation.

Love bugs leave their mark on cars

By Amanda Thomas 

Published: October 1, 2005

Love is in the air as swarms of love bugs leave their mark on windshields across South Alabama this season.

Thanks apparently to a wet summer punctuated by hurricane rains, hundreds of these copulating bugs — flies, actually — are congregating at intersections, traffic lights, filling stations and truck stops. Whole gas pumps are turned black with them.

“They’re the worst this year than they’ve ever been,” said John Hadley, 59, an employee at a BP station near Perdido.

Entomologists who track these insects say they do not bite, damage crops or pose an environmental hazard.

But they are a nuisance, turning out in large numbers in two mating flights a year, most of them taking place during April to May and August to September.

Love bugs, which are attracted to warm car hoods, hot engine and exhaust fumes, can reduce visibility through windshields or cause a car to overheat, according to the University of Florida Entomology Department Web site. If they remain in place on a car’s finish for one or two days, bacterial action causes them to become so acidic that they can etch car paint.

Alvin Diamond, an instructor of ecology at Troy University, said the love bugs die shortly after they mate and the female lays her eggs.

But until they’re gone, little love is being lost by those being bugged in South Alabama.

At the BP station near Perdido, Tyrone Thomas of Biloxi, Miss., cleaned them by the score from the windshield of his SUV. He said he had never seen as many as this season.

“It was really bad in Biloxi,” said Thomas. “They were so thick it was like driving though a rain storm.”

Hadley, the BP employees, was outside filling up buckets with water and windshield washer solution. He said they could hardly keep them full.

Lovebugs, while being a nuisance after their death, are actually beneficial when alive. The larvae of these insects eat leaves, grass roots, etc. and are good at breaking down organic matter. These insects consume the detritus that surrounds them, thereby rejuvenating the earth. Since these insects are vital for our ecosystem, it is of extreme importance to find a safe and non-toxic solution for the lovebug problem which would keep these insects at bay while not causing any harm to these beneficial insects.

At C Tech Corporation, we offer a safe and foolproof solution to deal with these annoying pests. Termirepel™ is a non-toxic, non-hazardous product that primarily repels insects from the application. It is a broad spectrum repellent which works against almost 500 species of pestering bugs thus efficaciously fending them away from the application. The most unique feature of this product is that it is environmentally safe and causes no harm to the target species as well as humans and the environment. Our product is available in masterbatch and lacquer form, and as a liquid solution. To repel any insect, this product can be coated on the automobiles in lacquer form or diluted with a base solvent. The repelling mechanism of the product would ward off lovebugs and any other insect that could prove to be a nuisance to drivers and motorists. Thus, using Termirepel™ would effectively ensure that our roads remain safe for anyone who wishes to use the roadways!