Japanese Beetle

[sds888]

Or I call them June bugs. They are driving me nuts. I have been using seven dust every year and really knocking them back. But now I have bees. So I am learning to bee more careful with pesticides. They are going to ruin this wonderful flowering peach tree if I dont do something. Any suggestions?

[BigT]

If they are Japanesse Bettles, you can go to your local feed and seed store to buy traps. You place a scent that comes with the trap inside the bag and hang the bags (traps) around various parts of the yard. You will be amazed at how fast the bags fill up with hundreds of the bettles. When the bags are pretty full, I take them and throw them in a fire barrel and then put up new traps. The traps are great at controlling the bettles and I have never found a bee in any of them.
I hope this helps,
Big T

[Marc]

I would not set up those traps, they just attract more beetles. I started putting down milky spores in my yard a few years back, and after about three years I started to see less beetles. Not a whole lot less, but noticeably less. To my knowledge there is nothing that will be 100% effective. Can you cover the tree with netting to keep the beetles out?

[sds888]

I have used these traps before. The only problem I have found is they attract the beetles and they will destroy anything you hang the bag onto and anything near it. Thanks

[sds888]

I would not set up those traps, they just attract more beetles. I started putting down milky spores in my yard a few years back, and after about three years I started to see less beetles. Not a whole lot less, but noticeably less. To my knowledge there is nothing that will be 100% effective. Can you cover the tree with netting to keep the beetles out?

I have never heard of milkly spores but I will look it up. No I cant really cover the tree with netting to big. Thanks.

[danno]

If you use the traps, put them on your neighbors property

[beemandan]

I started putting down milky spores in my yard a few years back, and after about three years I started to see less beetles.

The drawback with milky spore is that your neighbors for miles around will need to use it as well to be effective. Those devils (japanese beetles) will travel quite some distance to find their favorite meal.
You're right, there isn't any 100% effective treatment.

[Jeffzhear]

If I found it necessary to spray the tree to kill beetles, I would spray sevin close to or even after dark to limit the impact to the honeybees. Personally, the tree would never get sprayed if the tree were mine!

[Hobie]

First, please do not malign the poor june bug, which is NOT your nemesis here.

I, too, am inundated. They have a special fondness for fruit trees, grapes, roses. Well, heck, they are even eating my oak trees. Here's what I am doing:

1: For the (currently non-flowering) plum tree which has high sentimental value, I spray with malathion. This is horribly deadly to bees, so should not be used where it could drift to where they forage. Label says it's okay for use on edible plants (veggies) but I'm skeptical and keep it away from the garden.

2. I've also heard about systemic treatments, where you douse the soil, and the plants take it in to their systems, making the foliage toxic. Bayer has one.. can't remember the name. They claim the amount that gets into the flowers and pollen is "insignificant", but, again, I am skeptical.


3: By total accident, or some might say "laziness", my rose garden did not get weeded well, and was full of touch-me-nots (jewelweed). Jewelweed is apparently more tasty than roses, which saved my roses for a while... until they had eaten all the jewelweed.

4. For my raspberries, and everything else, I am employing the "Size 9" solution. I capture as many as I can in a jar, shaking them vigorously so they are disoriented. Then I dump them on the ground and stomp them. Time consuming, but oddly satisfying. I must be up over 1000 now.

5. If you have chickens, get one of those traps, cut the bottom out, and hang it in with the chickens over a tray. Beetles fall in... chickens get smorgasbord.

6. There are also nematodes that you can put on the soil in the fall which prey on the larvae. I may try this. I've heard milky spore takes a few years to get going, but the nematodes work right away. Google "Japanese beetle" and "nematode." I think Gardens Alive has them.


For what it's worth, my barn is full of starlings, which were imported to this country to eat japanese beetles. There is not one bird eating these horrid things. A pox on the genius who had that bright idea.

[mike haney]

why are you worried about sevin on your peach tree? if its not blooming the aren't any bees so i don't see the connection. good luck,mike

[beehoppers]

I have found kaolin clay is effective. It is sold as Surround by Gardens Alive, but I buy what seems to be the same from a masonry supply store called Carotex. $10 for 50#. I mix it with water, 2 cups clay per gallon, and spray or dust with a sock. Works on flea beetles, potato bugs, Colorado bean beetles too. Not sure if it kills anything, maybe just runs them off.

[acb's]

I don't have any answers to your specific bug problem. but I sure found out how little I know about the pesticides that are being used out there around our bees. There's got to be something better!
We're experiencing our first "wave" of Japanese beetles this year in our crops here in central Illinois. A farm chemical man about 60 miles east of here told me they had theirs a couple of years ago and the beetles are slowly working their way west across the state. He said the first wave is more intense then you "just have beetles".
Had spoken with the local farm chemical guy to remind him of our bees. Two days later my cousin was spraying Warrior pesticide (which seems to be the chemical of choice around here for Japanese beetles) on his flowering soybeans less than a 1/2 mile away at 4 in the afternoon even though it states on the product that it wasn't to be used on flowering crops with foraging bees! Thank God an unexpected rain came that night and 2 smaller patches of beans were blooming closer to our yard.
We have 3 beeyards all about 10-15 miles apart, so spoke with all the chemical guys about our bees. All have told me rather nonchalantly that they don't have a pesticide that doesn't have a specific warning about using it on flowering crops or weeds where bees are foraging. And the old "early in the morning or late in the evening" spray time advice doesn't work with some of this stuff. For example, depending on the concentration, Warrior can have a residual kill for up to 2 weeks. It is not a contact kill spray but is taken into the digestive system. This is some serious stuff. It's been around about 10 years!
The scary thing about it to me was the lack of knowledge of those in charge of using these chemicals and how many farmers there are that apply their own chemicals that are much more worried about dead beetles than they are about live bees. I have to admit my ignorance of these chemicals and their effect, but I'm working to change that after my recent experience. All seemed aware of our bees, but just weren't really sure what they could do different than what they have been. They have all agreed to give me enough notice of application of any of these pesticides so that we would have a chance to move our hives from the area.
We're not what you would call "treehuggers", but, being 56, I was raised on a small farm in this area when farming was really farming, instead of the every farming problem having a solution in more chemicals or more fertilizer as it is today. We need to become more informed and not trust our bees to the "knowledgeable". It could be that they just don't care. I even had one beekeeper tell me that the beetles were such a problem that if some of our bees traveled in the treated area and were lost, well, I'm sorry. Anyone beginning to wonder what else besides varroa has reduced feral populations?
Sorry about getting on my soapbox, I realize I didn't offer any solutions. I was just really shocked to find out what was really being used out there with just the simple "time of day" solution we all thought was safe.
Just a heads up,
Arvin

[Hobie]

I'm with you, Arvin. I live next to a large nursery, and they are more interested in $$$ than the environment. Luckily they grow non-flowering shrubs, but the pesticides they spray drift everywhere. They claim the pesticides are not harmful (huh???), but then someone explain to me why the guy spraying is wearing a HazMat suit, and a week after they spray, every leaf downwind of the field up to a height of about 10 ft is brown and dying.

I looked into it, and there is no immediate solution to japanese beetles that does not have far-reaching consequences. (Except the catch-and stomp method... I'm up to about 3000 at best guess.) I have heard from many people that this year was going to be particularly bad. Could be the beetles come in cycles, like many other things.

But if that is the case, my theory is that now is the time to break the cycle. I am going to try the beneficial nematodes, and maybe milky spore in the fall, keeping in mind that any reduction I see next year may be from those efforts, and may be part of the natural cycle. I believe it is better to try this than to rely on the systemic pesticides that the plants absorb... and you can't tell me it won't be in the pollen and nectar.

[John D.]

No expertise claimed here, but after some brief googling, it doesn't appear that Japanese Beetles & June bugs are the same insect.

[BEES4U]

Japanese Beetles. (Metalic blue green and colorful.)
http://www.pueblo.gsa.gov/cic_text/housing/japanese-beetle/jbeetle.html

Photo: http://www.pueblo.gsa.gov/cic_text/housing/japanese-beetle/jbadult.gif

June bugs. ( Brown and drab.)
http://www.cirrusimage.com/beetles_June.htm

Regards,
Ernie Lucas Apiaries

[Eyeshooter]

Milky Spore worked well for us until we had a really cold winter. It's actually a bacterium, Bacillus popillae. You have to apply it 3x a year for a couple of years. Locally, it's rather expensive. We live in the woods so it really didn't matter that our neighbors didn't use it. None-the-less, the cold killed the bacterium and we're back to normal Japanese Beetle numbers.

My wife loves to walk the garden and the raspberry patch in the morning. She brings and old plastic cup filled with hot water and then adds dish soap. She picks them off the plants and drops them in. Bye-bye beetle. Personally, I just crush them...