The only thing that will make me more unhappy then rain tomorrow, will be finding those buggers! I was jsut admiring my sundrops and thinking about how the Japanese beetles destroyed them last year, oh well I'm sure they will eat them this year too.

So I had rain and Japanese Beetles today!

Rain, even more JB's AND @#$% bunnies!

Well, that explains the holes in my rose buds. One way to avoid damage on your repeat-blooming roses is to cut all the buds off right now. By the time they flush out again, the beetles will be gone.

I just decided today that it is a good time to prune all my shrub roses. But they are going to destroy my sundrops again. They completely wipe them out, I can't even believe the poor things live through it. But I have them planted by my butterfly garden so I can't spray them. I am going out with a bucket of soapy water in the morning but sometimes I feel like I am kidding myself with my little bucket. Someday I am going to figure out how to deal with those buggers and I am going to be rich!

They just love my zinnias too!

They also consider rose-of-sharon (althea) a tasty treat. Mine are covered in buds. Soon will be covered in bugs.

My 2 Cherry Blossom trees were covered in them yesterday. Thanks to Seven dust...they were dropping like flies.

I hate using pesticides due to killing the good bugs like my lady bugs. Do you think sprinkling flour on the plants would make them less tasty? Why is it that the JB's LOVE your good plants but not weeds?

I know...I hate it too, but you should have seen my poor tree. And I'm terrified of bugs so there was no way I could pick them up. (My DH is coming back today so I'm sending him to get the ones not affected.)

Have you ever seen a lady bug infestation? Those can make you change your mind about lady bugs.

I have read that if you spread milky spore on your lawn that it would help. Has anyone done this? I wonder if it is too late. KathyGA-what are you doing with the soapy bucket? Do you have to do it everyday - if so, for how long? I have a weeping cherry tree that has never bloomed because of JB's.

Thanks!

Milky spore kills the grubs in the ground, so it wouldn't be effective until next year. The problem with it, as I understand it, is that unless all your neighbors use it as well, their JBs will just migrate to your yard as soon as they feel like moving their feast and orgy.

Milky spore will do nothing to help the Japanese Beetles in your own yard as the typical JB travels miles per day to feed, We need a statewide Milky spore program!

the bucket of soapy water is only good when you are really diligent. I know them off of the plant into the bucket of soapy water where they die. I do this for a while and if I stay on top of it I can keep them from destroying some things, but it is hopeless to try on a tree. I will resort to Sevin on my trees in front I am sure. I just pruned back my nearly wild roses so there won't be any blooms for them to eat.

So who eats Japanes Beetles does anyone know? I mean maybe there are some birds we can enlist to eat them all?

I collected a bunch of them in a plastic cup ( no water ) and tossed them in the chicken pen to see if they would eat them. Sure nuff, they inhaled them. If I wasn't afraid they would dig my stuff up I would turn em lose on the JBs

If you are interested in spraying, people on the rose forum have recommended imidacloprid (spelling?) for JB's. Apparently even a residual amount is deadly to the JB's, so you don't need much.

I have been looking all over for this chemical and reading labels. I have only found it locally in the Bayer Advanced line, as a soil drench and also as a ready-mixed spray. I will be spraying only the flower buds, in hopes that I won't kill too many beneficial insects.

I bought a new bird feeder this weekend and the birds have been flocking to it like crazy. I also saw a few birds with black bugs in their beaks. I'm hoping that by giving them some seed, they will stop to pick up a JB on the way.

I am afraid spraying anything will get washed off in the next rain so I am waiting till we have a day with no rain predicted. Maybe tomorrow?

I looked at my canna lillies tonight and they have nearly been destroyed by what I think are JB's! They have demolished whole leaves on some plants. Much as I hate to used insecticide I think I will, otherwise it looks like they may destroy the rest of my garden

They are my bane and sometimes I think it's pointless to grow roses because they sure love 'em; I find three or four of them in each mutilated rosebud. I just snip the blossom off so it falls directly into the can of soapy water. I just discovered that my variegated porcelain vine is covered in them.

I don't know what to do about them. At least the roses give me beautiful flowers in spring and fall. I'll just have to be rose-free during the summer!

Rose

Well the JB's have destroyed the blooms on my pink Crape Myrtles for 2 years in a row now. Mutilated them. I think I will dig em up and burn em. I have had it.

Does anyone remember when they start to taper off? I mean shouldn't they be winding down soon? I am sick of their little orgies all over my yard.

It seems to me that they usually stick around for about a month, and that it's pretty soon after you see them having "orgies" that they disappear. It also seems to me that this is the best time (towards the end of their mating cycle) to knock them down into soapy water and end their lives. And I discovered by accident that dusk is the best time to do this. When the sun is up, they are more energetic, but just before dark they seem unable to rouse themselves and fly away. Nothing creeps me out more than a Japanese beetle flying into my face or hair, so this new discovery has been really helpful to me. In fact, I'm finding that instead of knocking them into the soapy water with a stick, I can even take my clippers and cut off the whole leaf or flower bud where sometimes up to a dozen of the things are clustered, and drop that into the soapy water instead of knocking the beetles off the leaf first. It's faster and easier to drown them in groups.

This year the beetles have been attracted mostly to a wild grapevine I allowed to climb along my fence because I liked the look of its leaves. Now, of course, the leaves are completely skeletonized, but who cares? It was a weed anyway. They also like four o'clocks and seem to choose those even over rosebushes, so I plant lots of four o'clocks as trap plants. They recover quickly when the beetles disappear. For the first time this year, I have also noticed a lot of JB damage to my gladiolus plants and flowers. It does seem that this is a particularly bad year for them.

Here's some really good info on this exotic pest
http://www.uky.edu/Agriculture/Entomology/entfacts/trees/ef409.htm

You can shake the plants early in the morning when the beetles are sluggish.

As Westender pointed out, they have some brutal mating practices. Just counted 16 of them on a window screen. They are very agressive with each other.

These are almost as bad as Cuban tree frogs.

These things are eating everything! Are they the same things that were much bigger and that we played with when we were little and called them "June Bugs"?

Now I know my garden is not the only X-rated garden out there. Yuck!

Amyta, June bugs /Phyllophaga spp are different than the Japanese beetle. Japanese beetles were an accidental import from Japan which stowed away on iris roots and as you can see are a real pain in the butt. The use of predatory insects is actually working to reduce the populations of these. June bugs do look a little different. A dead giveaway is the metallic green body on the Jap. beetle and grey hair underneath.

Last year the beetles nearly destroyed my apple and plum trees. I tried spraying them with Neem Oil, but it had little effect. The trees are also too tall for me to reach the tops of them with my sprayer, so the JBs pretty much got the new growth. Luckily, a bunch of little gray birds (I think they are Gnatcatchers) showed up and devoured the bugs.

This year I am using the traps. I have five up on my 2 acres and have, over the last two weeks, captured and killed several thousand. I have noticed far less damage in my trees and also on other plants around the property. The traps along with the birds are working.

I know I have read many times that the traps only "attract" them into your yard but it would seem to me if they get trapped that is one less JB to fornicate and make little JB's. Just my take on the traps. I think I will try them next year as an experiment. Placing them AWAY from my veggies and roses.

Yes I have also heard that the traps are bad, but I wondered the same thing--if tons of traps were put up all over wouldn't that start to impact the population? I am sure there is some one out there that can explain why this is not a viable option or it would be being promoted more.

I think that there are a couple of variables (in my experience) that need to be looked at, as far as traps go. One, they need to be changed fairly often. I think that the stench of the dead bugs keeps others from entering the trap.
And two, there needs to be enough traps to cover the area. Otherwise, you WILL be inviting the bugs into your yard to devour your plants.

I don't use any pesticides. I have three birdfeeders that stay packed with birds and bird houses all around our fence and most are occupied. I have only seen a couple of Japanese beetles. I grow roses and althea which have been a JB treat in the past. We also have raspberries and have very little bug damage. Some good friends with the same berries have JB eating them like crazy.
I have to attribute this to a healthy bird population. We also have turtles, frogs and bats.
If I remember correctly from my reading last year JBs last for about a month. From around mid June to mid July around here.

I know this post is old and not sure if anyone is replying still or not, but just came across it looking for a solution to my JB problem on our weeping cherry tree. It's a 2 year old tree and they are starting to tear it up. I've read on here alot about dunking them in a bucket of soapy water. Is it the soap that kills them or is it just the principal of drowning them? If it's the soap, what about spraying the tree with a soap/water mixture from a plant sprayer attached to a hose? Would the soap make the leaves 'taste bad' to them to keep them off or would this hurt the tree more than the JB's themselves? Just a thought....

I didn't see a single Japanese beetle this year. Usually, my apple trees, rose of sharon and crape myrtles are covered. This year, I can see no damage to any of them. Somebody told me that the late freeze at Easter probably killed them as they were moving up through the soil. I don't know but it sure was nice not having them around.