Could you clarify please? Lady bugs (your title) don't harm squash and aren't caterpillars. Can't think of any caterpillars that can take down a squash plant, Armyworms (green caterpillars with smooth skin and lengthwise stripes running across their bodies) eat holes in leaves but it doesn't affect the plant much. Same for tiny little lime green cabbage loopers - holes in leaves is all. Both are easy to control with Bt dust but their effect on normal squash plants are usually minimal so something else may have done in the plant.

Squash vine borers kill squash plants but they aren't caterpillars and you can't see them as they are inside the stems so crushing is out. Can you describe these caterpillars?

Dave

Squash lady beetles is what I believe I should have called them.

The squash plant just collapsed and one of these little larva was on each leaf that was basically dead.

I did just find one on the pole beans, I will really go through them with a fine tooth comb tomorrow. I don't get how they even got here. The only thing I can think of is they were in the compost I purchased. I have some weird things going on in some of the brand new beds.

They are endemic around here. Look for much smaller yellow larvae on the underside of leaves.

Still suspect you have some other issue with the squash.

Jim, maybe you have squash vine borers, and coincidentally you saw these beetle and larva around too.

Agree Mexican Bean Beetle - exist in all states east of the Rockies and show up just about anywhere in the garden. But they aren't Lady Bugs or caterpillars - that was what was throwing me originally. But the damage they do is to the leaves - a skeletonizing of them but it doesn't kill the plant unless there is a major infestation that goes un-noticed for some time. So the odds that they are what took your plant down and did it so quickly are slim to none. There is another problem there and the odds favor squash vine borers did it and these guys are just a coincidence.

Dave

If I get rid of them do the plants recover? I already had two harvests from the pole beans, so if I have to rip them out it doesn't hurt. What does concern me is that the same day the goldetti squash dropped, my zucchini dropped down by about 18" or so. It covered a 6 square foot area of ground and was almost 4 feet high. That morning it was maybe two feet or so and more laying down than standing straight up. I clipped a bunch of dead leaves about a week ago and I now have a tremendous amount of new leaves and buds coming up. It just seemed weird that two plants a fair distance from each other with other squash plants in between, suffered such a dramatic change over night.

I have meticulously looked for SVB and found none on the two plants in question, although the zucchini is not so easy to completely search. I had one crookneck that definitely had a couple or more in it and I just tore the entire plant out and bagged it for the garbage pickup.

Dave, could it be from a change in watering pattern? We got crushed with heat and humidity here for a week. It was mid 90s and humidity about the same. One night it barely got down to 80. To complicate things more, I am extremely close to the bay on my south and have a salt water canal on either side of me. Is it possible that the extreme humidity had this effect? I have a couple of tomato plants in the same bed as the squash in question and I did not water the one morning because it was so hot and humid all night. Is it possible that it is severely dehydrated and will bounce back? I will say this morning when I went outside it was mid 60s and the leaves and stems were mostly upright, although not like they were. This afternoon I put a slow shower watering into the ground around the sick plant and added a gallon of fish emulsion and cal-mag diluted as recommended. In my mind I am trying to catch up for the lack of water that one day, although not truly soaking it.

Appreciate all the input from everyone, greatly.