Knockouts are their first choice in my yard.

they seem to love things in the rosaceae family; roses, plums, apples, etc.
they favor roses over anything in my yard but sometimes feed on my japanese maples, which i have more of than any of the above mentioned.
you can collect them in a bucket of soapy water. they will drown and this should help somewhat to control the number you will see next summer. can also apply milky spore to treat the grubs that overwinter in the soil.

they always hit our knockouts first.

rather than using sprays, which will kill anything that gets near the affected area (including little guys we love, like honeybees), try using a systemic rose protection product like the granules products that Bayer makes. they're readily available at your local chain store of choice - spread the granules around the plant as prescribed, and be careful to water-in if indicated. worked like a champ for us this year.

should we not be concerned about bee casualties when using systemics? they are, by design, absorbed into the tissues of the plant so why would it be absent in the pollen and nectar?
i don't know that all roses are attractive to bees but some "knockout" varieties have the exposed stamens that would be easily accessible.
they need all the help they can get right now. :-)

I have bees all over my knockouts. I do spray with sevin (no dust) conservatively and at dusk. The bees have usually gone back to the hive for the night and the spray is dry by morning. I still hate doing this though. I try to just spray the thick clusters of jbs and not the entire bush.

here's a TL;DR for you ;)

i'm not an entomologist or anything, so i adamantly suggest you take this and any other info someone relays on the internet with a heaping grain of salt...

from what i understand, there are two parts to the subject of "safety to bees" in regard to pesticides:

- Application method (spray, dust or granule?)
- Active ingredient (known toxicity to bees?)

from what i gather, systemics are safer because they flow through the internal plant tissues, so the affect to bees and other pollinators which touch external parts of the plant is negligible. obviously, i think there would be some systemic transfer to pollen, but such contact via pollen is apparently negligible to bees compared to the contact that japanese beetles get by clear-cutting the entire leaf tissue, which would indicate granules provide more bang vs. buck without the need for re-application you suffer by using liquids and powders, and re-applicaiton lengthens the window for potential harm to bees. as a noteworthy point, systemics usually last up to 3 months, whereas powders and liquids lose most of their strength in 5-10 days.

powders are supposed to be the absolute worst of the worst, the most toxic concoction you can use on your plants to kill undesireable insects. Sevin is one of the popular products many people use that kills a lot of bees. water washes off powder (needs reapplication), and it is not easily applied without hitting the flowers.

sprays are supposedly right up there with powders, only reapplication isn't as dire of a requirement.

it was recommended to me to use Bayer 2-in-1 Systemic Rose & Flower Care Granules on our roses. the active ingredient is Disulfoton (1%). granted, it is listed at NDSU's agriculture website as "mildly toxic" right up there with Sevin, but read on...

Oregon State University has a PDF document discussing reducing bee poisonings in which it states that Disulfoton use (as in the Bayer 2-in-1 product) is safer in granule format than other applications and, what it looks like it is implying is that as long as you're not treating alfalfa or treating near alfalfa leaf-cutting-bees, it should be OK?

most noteworthy, that Oregan State document states that both Disulfoton and Sevin granules "can be applied at any time with relative safety to bees". whereas EVERY SINGLE SPRAY/POWDER is listed as "not safe for X hours or X days.

i also found an interesting wiki page on the subject i'm in the process of reading.

certainly there must be someone who specializes in this kind of thing here @ GW that someone can strum up? :D

i'm not suggesting that anyone should take my advice - do your own reading, feel free to pore over the resources i've provided, or try to hit Google with terms like systemic pesticides honeybees or systemic pesticides bees to gather more resources.

NOTE: never use anything systemic near food-producing plants/trees. don't ask why i'm mentioning this ;)

I don't bother to do a thing. Everything in my yard survives JB's and as a matter of fact, so far I have not had many. And I have tons of roses...but no grass! The grubs can not survive in my yard which has no grass.

GGG

my heart goes out to anyone dealing with them. we moved to ga. from nh in may my husband and i spet 5 weeks 12 hr days landscaping. then bang we have lost alot of out trees, plants shrubs ect. we now have a very lg amount of snales any sugwould be aprciated i wish the people at the nursury had warned us. oh well

Just last week I noticed JB's on my Quinalt Strawbery plants. They suck! I'm just busy picking them off every evening. good luck

JB's have been our company for SEVERAL weeks now...
Walk up to a Knockout, touch a stem, and they fly out...
The greedy monsters have made some leaves look like shredded lace...I cut off the ruined buds/blooms...
No reason to feed the Roses until the JB's leave?....Wonder when that will be...

The JB's are trying to take over my all my roses and my hollhocks, so I'm going to try a couple of those "Bag A Bug" things. I also have an organic spray, but I don't have high hopes for it.

Diana