Ladybug gators?

After spotting a few aphid-like bugs (maybe even aphids; I'm not an entomologist) on my balcony plants, I decided to treat them the organic way - with ladybugs. I'd seen some bags of ladybugs for sale at Home Depot the last time I was there, so I stopped by this weekend and picked one up. This evening I let them loose on my plants (the packaging recommends a nighttime jailbreak; maybe they fly less when it's cool and dark?). There were actually quite a few dead ladybugs in the bag (I hope I didn't kill them!) but still plenty of live ones. I then spent a while collecting the ones that had fallen to the ground and encouraging them to crawl onto the plants. (The inside of the packaging has some interesting information about the ladybug life cycle, including the fact that the larvae are called ladybug gators... really?) If there are any "ladies in red" left during the daylight hours I'll try to post a picture. I hope they do their job and find lots of little pests to eat! If not, I suppose I'll be doing the neighbors a favor as the ladybugs will probably migrate to greener pastures, as it were. Either way, for $4, it's a fun experiment!