Dying to find out!

Since all three of us concluded that it's a beneficial insect, I've decided that it has a home on my pepper plant for as long as it likes. Still, I would like to know how in the hell all of those eggs came out of such a little beetle!

It's what called a "twicestabbed lady beetle," Chilocorus stigmata. It feeds exclusively on scale insects, which are bad. Found it in a really great reference book, "Garden Insects of North America" (Cranshaw).

although I think it might actually be Chilocorus kuwanae according to this link. Either way, it's a welcome guest. One of my cherry tomato plants was covered with aphids last week!

so I guess the questions that remain are, "Are those its eggs, and if not, are they the eggs of a garden pest?"

I both came to a compromise and completely nerded out since my last post. I found that the eggs came off of the leaf easily without damaging it, so I removed them. They are sitting on my porch in a petri dish, and if they hatch into ladybug larvae, I'll gladly give them a home on a cherry tomato plant that the aphids can't seem to resist. If not, well then, hasta la vista, babies!

I took some pictures under a scope, too. Here's the top side of the eggs:



Here's the underside of the eggs where they attached to the leaf:

Even if they are "bad" insect eggs, those are some pretty nice pictures.

Yep, you are definitely a nerd. Join the crowd.

well done

/u/Shigofumi of the reddit gardening forum confirmed the beetle as Chilocorus kuwanae, but identified the eggs as those of Leptoglossus phyllopus, the Florida leaf-footed bug, which is a garden pest and all-around bastard. He suggested that I burn the eggs and check my pesticide labels to see if I can counter them.

I'm glad I got pictures of these eggs now. If you see any of these on your plants, scrape them off and burn them!

and they were all sort of jellybean shaped and yellow. Glad you got these eggs identified so you know what kind of beast you are dealing with. I assume your ladybug doesn't eat these and will stick to aphids and scale. I looked up your leaf-footed bug, don't think we get them in this area, but all true bugs (Hemiptera) are bad, juice-sucking monsters.

I'm sort of surprised that that was the first ladybug I've seen all season, though. There was a pretty severe ladybug infestation in my apartment this winter. In March I was vacuuming at least a dozen ladybugs a day and releasing them outside figuring that they'd be money in the bank. Nope. I've got a cherry tomato plant and a roma that the aphids love, and not a single ladybug about save the one pictured above. Go figure. :/

Hope it doesn't have aphids - though it doesn't seem to be producing a lot of apples this year anyhow. It's about time for me to go out and bag the ones that are growing.