I would follow the advice of your state's cooperative extension service. They probably have a fact sheet about rose pests on the web.

Thank you so much for posting this. I have been puzzled over what was causing this problem on my roses. Now, I know what they are. Do rose midges go away or do they persist all growing season? I have been trying not to use chemicals but it seems a losing battle. If it is not the Japanese beetles, slugs, aphids, now it is rose midge and Asian brown beetles.

I did not see where you stated your garden is. Since it is in zone 5 perhaps this article may be of use.

http://www.pghrosesociety.org/rosemidge.html

" So far researchers have not been able to come up with a good biological control for rose midge. The only scientific study published in the horticultural literature on in subject of rose midge control appeared in 2006 authored by Dr. Janice Elmhirst, director of the Elmhirst Diagnostics & Research Corp. and was performed in selected test gardens located in British Columbia, Canada. This study compared two biological agents, two live predator insects, a chemical control, and an untreated control plot. The two biologicals tested are commercially available, one being AVID (with the active ingredient abamectin derived from the soil microorganism Streptomyces avermitilis and the other DOKTOR DOOMî, a ready to use permethrin formulation. The predators were a nematode (Steinernema feltiae) and a predatory mite in the form of an unidentified Hypoaspis species. The chemical control was Matador (lambdacyhalothrin), which is similar to the active ingredient in the Bayer chemical products mentioned earlier. The results of this study were interesting in that the predatory insect approach actually had a higher level of midge damage than the untreated controls. The best result came from the Doktor Doom product with less than 2% damaged rose growth. The next best was the chemical control with approximately 4% damaged tips. The Avid did better than the control but not by a significant amount."

Here is a link that might be useful: link for above

Perhaps due to its geographical footprint, rose midge does not seem to be a frequent topic on the rose forum. I have been stalking this forum for a few years now, and rose midge was never on my radar until weeks ago. It can wipe out one's post-spring flush rose season (speaking from personal experience). As far as I can gather online, there is no "organic" control against rose midge. The takeaway for me from this whole rose midge fiasco is load up on other plants. However, this is no easy task at all when the groundhogs see your garden as a salad bar (when you have managed, for now, to hold the damn deer at bay).

One of our club members recommended Merit.
I am going to need more than two plants out of 140 damaged before harming my earthworms. I may change my mind.
FL

kousa--

Generally the midges do not go away but rather build up over the season and return the following year. If you are outside the hot zone for midge, it's possible there is some environmental factor or predator that limits them. In that case you might have an intermittent problem some seasons but not every year.

An approach that has not been mentioned (nor tested in a controlled experiment) is using an impervious mulch to keep the pupae from burrowing in the soil or keep overwintering pupae from emerging from the soil. This could be plastic or a thick layer of newspaper applied freshly each spring before any leaves open.. You would have to cover every square inch of soil inside the drip line and a little wider. Don't mulch heavily over this layer, as deep mulch creates soil-like conditions where the pupae could survive. We used to have a competent poster here who believed she had successfully controlled midge with a newspaper mulch.

We are in the process of rebuilding our rose garden... (On a mission to find better blackspot resistant roses for my area in a no spray situation.)

So right now we only have 9 roses and 5 of those are Double Knockouts...

But I ordered two Carefree Sunshines a couple years ago and that's when our rose midge problem started. But only those two roses showed signs of rose midge.
SO I shovel pruned both CS roses and carefully bagged them and called our local Ag office which later confirmed they both had Rose Midge.

I took up the mulch, loosened the soil then put plastic over the area. So far so good this year as all other roses are still blooming good.

I will have to wait and see what happens next year though...