From everyone's experience, what plants do they go for most? I think I've been seeing these beetles on my pumpkin plants and around my roses (no surprise there). I guess I have a new garden project for a few days..

From everyone's experience, what plants do they go for most? I think I've been seeing these beetles on my pumpkin plants and around my roses (no surprise there). I guess I have a new garden project for a few days..

in my yard they ate astilbe, heuchera, and lady's mantle, as well as the dogwood tree. They left most other things alone, including my roses (but I have a small yard without too much variety). They liked the flowers of astible and lady's mantle best of all, and now that those are past, I hardly have any beetles left in my garden.

Thank you for all your recommendations. I am heading out to Lowes to get a white plastic sheet to spread under the apple tree and a flashight. Hopefully I can get some them tonight. Thanks again.

I'm surprised you have to go out after dark to find them. My neighbor is on bucket patrol quite successfully in mid afternoon.

Oriental (mottled gray/tan) and Japanese beetles (shiny) are often out during the day, but Asiatic beetles (cinnamon brown in color) are night feeders. The hide in the dirt or mulch during the day.

I apparently have both the AGBs and the OBs. Because of the large yard and the large infestation, I had to use sevin, but I got tired of putting on sevin, and gave up 10 days back. They finished off the mums and the heuchera, and almost all the black eyed susans, and asters, they also like eating the plum trees, lemon balm completely wiped out, mint half gone. I have a potted curry leaf tree (Muyyaya koneigi) which they also got to, now I have to bring it indoors at night. I have a number of lemon tree seedlings, which I don't dare put out. It's hopeless, my only hope is to plant plants that they don't like. So far the only ones they don't like are: hydrangea, blackberry, brown eyed Susan, and the evening primrose.

Oops, must be a regional thing. Saw this post under most recent, not realizing it's a NE forum. I'm in the Midwest and the coppery Japanese beetle is also referred to here as the Asian beetle, so I wondered why you all were out at night!

Another member of the club here! I am also on the prowl with a soapy bucket and flashlight and wonder what my neighbors must think!

The spoon trick is a nice idea but I've been manning up and just using my hands. A few do come to the porch light and land on the house. The fly swatter works on those.

I'm wondering if any of you use grubex on your lawn? I don't use any and I think that is why I have such a problem since nothing seems to eat them and the one nematode that has some effect isn't for sale.

In my yard, they eat roses, echinacea, basil, verbascum, strawberries, petunias, calibrachoa, coleus, dapppled willow, kalmia, mint, sage, the occasional canna - basically, I've found them at one point or another on many species of plants. But this year, I've learned they really love salvias, especially pineapple sage and salvia coccinea. I've planted a lot of it this year and it has helped preserved my roses and coneflowers. I am going to use them as a trap crop in the future.

This post was edited by loretta on Mon, Jul 28, 14 at 1:39

I thought I would check back in one year later. I was really diligent last year about killing the asiatic garden beetles, and I seem to have knocked the next generation down quite a bit. I have not had as much time to combat them this year, and my astilbes and other plants, which they normally decimate, are still looking good!

When do they come out? Is it about now or later? My apple tree is doing ok, no damage yet from these night beetles. I have not seen them. But looking back over the old post, it would seem that they arrive around early July for my area.

They arrive in mid to late June for me, and disappear from my yard by mid-July once their favorite garden snacks stop blooming. But online sources say they are most commonly active in July and August.

A few are out in Zone 5b (MA), however I concur they come July 1 (precisely) and stay through the end of August.

I have swarms of AGBs and OBs, only way I can control (Not successfully) is sevin late evening, and wash it off by watering in the AM so no beneficial insects (bees) are not harmed. The beetles do their dirty deeds at night, while the bees are out in the day.

Do be careful, since sevin will kill your earthworms.

Thank you Marie, I appreciate you speaking up. I understand how disappointing and frustrating damage from bugs is, and that it is a little bit more work to hand pick, but, the bee crisis is getting more severe every year. This year, I have seen very few bees and pollinators and I'm trying to figure out ways to provide habitat for them.

So, with all sympathy, Daffodil, in your desire to want to rid yourself of this pest, I just want to make the effort one last time, to bring awareness of the consequences of using Sevin, not only to you, but anyone else following this thread.

I spent some time this morning reading up on it. And for those who don't have the time to read an article on the subject, I offer some of the highlights of the information I found and the link, where I found it….

Sevin Dust is NOT Your Garden Friend.

~~~

Why NOT to use it?

Human exposure - direct skin contact, inhalation, or ingestion. Higher incidents of Parkinson’s disease. Fetal abnormalities during Pregnancy, Kidney and Liver damage. Behavioral problems. Has been shown to induce DNA damage in humans, animals and plants.

Animals - Dogs exposed to Lawn Care and garden chemicals show related cancer rates.

Sevin is highly toxic to bees, aquatic invertebrates and mollusks.

List of aquatic Invertebrates

This includes horseshoe crabs, star fish, coral, sea horses

List of Mollusks

This includes of course, mussels, clams, and oysters

~

Groundwater contamination and subsequent runoff affect the entire food chain. [So, even if you wash it off your plants, it's still doing damage, soaking into the ground]

~

It also increases the toxicity of Scotts Weed & Feed or Miracle Grow.

Is it safe?

No, it’s not. It’s dangerous and toxic. It's a neurotoxin. Eating food treated with Sevin dust will cause low level poisoning and higher doses will cause damage and illness.

Continuous inhalation of Sevin can cause ‘Black Lung Disease’.

Pregnant women should avoid exposure. It can be the cause of ADD in children. Additionally, women whose pregnancies fall between the months of the highest Sevin applications - May and September - have the highest instances of fetal distress in development.

There are plenty of home remedies but you have to accept one fact - your garden will not be 100% perfect.

~~~

Personally, I hand pick, but if I wanted to escalate my efforts beyond that, what I would use would be a home made spray. A drop of dishwashing liquid, a clove of garlic, a little cayenne pepper, a drop of olive oil blended in a blender, strained and fill a spray bottle with it. I use cheesecloth to strain it to keep the spray head from getting clogged. I have used this in the past and it was very effective as a general deterrent to keep bugs off the foliage.

I hope that helps. I know, I've spent time on the forums searching for alternative ideas, and you don't always get the answer you need the first few times you ask.

Thanks for the information, and I understand your concerns with sevin. But unfortunately in my case, it is not just a few beetles but thousands, and the damage is not to just a few plants, but ALL the plants.

To give you an idea of how bad the infestation is, I watered a baby spirea that I planted a couple of weeks ago, and the water washed out of the ground (small plant, mind you) about 20 coppery red beetles. They literally consume everything to bare stem, their favorites are mums and asters, also mint and lemon balm, but they devour every plant in just a few days. The 3 years we have lived in this home, they have eaten about $2000 worth of plants.

I dust select plants with sevin late at night, plants that are not flowering, and wash it off in the morning. The beetles feed at night, while other beneficial insects feed during the day on flowering plants.

This has limited the damage so far this year to only about 10% of the plants being eaten, but it is still early. I only have seen dead beetles, and no other dead insects because of selective application.

I do have a patch of potted flowering plants that I do not dust, and get a lot of butterflies and bees on those.

Picking them off at night into soapy water would take hours as I have a lot of plants, they go on them all and it is very tedious, I have to be at work in the AM. I have tried other altnernatives and those have not been very unsuccessful.

Thanks.

Carbaryl (Sevin) is moderately to highly toxic to humans. Here's an excerpt from the instructions on the Label.

"WARNING MAY BE FATAL IF SWALLOWED. HARMFUL IF ABSORBED THROUGH THE SKIN, INHALED, OR IF IN EYES. Do not breathe vapors dust or spray mist. Do not get in eyes, on skin or on clothing. Keep out of reach of children or domestic animals."

If you are going to be using this stuff you need to be taking precautions. That means if you are "dusting plants at night" you should be wearing a mask so as not to breathe it in.

The Carbaryl (Sevin) Controversy

Instead of Sevin, try ordering one of these beetle traps. Here

http://www.rescue.com/product/japanese-and-oriental-beetle-trap

or here

http://www.greatlakesipm.com/2015%20CATALOG%20WEB.pdf

They cost about $20 and they won't harm people, pets or the ecosystem of your garden. Then later in the Fall treat your lawn with beneficial nematodes to get rid of the grubs before they turn into beetles. You apply them through a hose end sprayer. Here's the link for that.

http://www.arbico-organics.com/product/nemaseek-beneficial-nematodes-hb-heterorhabditis-bacteriophora/grub-beetle-control-products

Be safe.

Steve

Thanks Steve.

I appreciate the information, and I understand the risks. I have done my research and resorted to SELECTIVE treatment by Sevin as a last resort.

The traps do more harm than good, they attract all the neighborhood beetles to your yard.

While the nematodes work well for Japanese beetles, they are largely ineffective for asian garden beetles and oriental bettles (the one's I have).

I have a degree in Chemical Engineering, so I am aware of the concerns from sevin to human health. Having worked for chemical companies, I know to take the necessary precautions while and after application.

Trust me, not using sevin will lead to a complete loss of ALL my plants every july/august. All the hard work done planting in fall/spring is decimated in July/August. The first two years I tried to be organic and did not use anything but homemade sprays/neem oil, etc, it resulted in us having nothing but bare stems just a week into July. Even larger shrubs like hydrangeas were destroyed by August.

When we got the house, we never imagined inheriting this menace. Rather than give up and not garden, I choose to fight the menace the best I can, so I can continue to get pleasure from plants.

Just found this forum. We have been part of the late night beetle brigade for the last 2 summers. Didn't realize that it was such a popular evening sport. Anyway, tonight we decided to try just spraying soapy water on these agb demonspawn. Has anybody here tried that with any luck? I have some really sad basil out there, and now they are beginning to go to work on the beans and the raspberries leaves. And they also seem to actually like the HOT peppers ...

"Daffodil, I realize you have made your choice. However, you made two statements that are not entirely correct and need further discussion.

"The traps do more harm than good, they attract all the neighborhood beetles to your yard."

This really isn't true and especially in your case, where your expensive plants have already attracted the neighborhood beetles. If traps are properly placed (don't put them next to your David Austin roses), they are very effective. But you have to have the kind that attract both Oriental and Japanese Beetles. And of course if your neighbors have problems also then a neighborhood set of traps would be highly effective.

"While the nematodes work well for Japanese beetles, they are largely ineffective for asian garden beetles and oriental bettles (the one's I have)."

I think you may be confusing the use of beneficial nematodes with Milky Spore. Milky Spore only works on Japanese Beetles and it takes about 4 years to build up in the soil to make a difference. Beneficial Nems, specifically Heterohabditis bacteriofora, work equally well on Japanese, Oriental and Asiatic beetles. The problem with Beneficial Nems are that they are hard to use. You are dealing with live organisms and things like shipping and application temperatures and conditions will directly effect whether or not these work. But they do work on all types of beetles, when properly applied.

Hope your gardening year goes well.

Steve

HI Steve, thanks again for the info. After googling traps for beetles, the vast majority of blogs/posts on forums had advised against traps for controlling beetles. I will look up Heterohabditis bacteriofora, I was not aware of that one.

Siggh, it is unfortunately that time of the year. And despite all my efforts My plants and flowers are almost down to bare stem/without petals yet again. I had a black eyed susan (about 2 feet tall) non flowering with Sevin on it, and at night I saw about 20 AGBs feasting on it. The plant was gone in the day. I am so frustrated, that I am thinking of just giving up.

Literally the only plant they do not destroy is the brown/black eyed susan (Not sure of the name), is the one that grows wild on roadsides, flowers similar to black eyed susan but with lighter green leaves? Having a garden full of those seems to be my only real option.

Thanks again all, I did not mean to get everyone riled up on Sevin, was just sharing my observations/contributing to research. Trust me the applied Sevin did not kill bees, I still see them every evening on the few flowers i have left. The only place I applied sevin was on select non flowering plants (mums, raspberries, young black eyed susan, montauk daisies) and only at the bottom of the plant (first few set of leaves only). Very similar to as depicted on this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qSaEbKXU-As

If anyone is in he MA Zone 5b area and wants to see the devastation for themself, I would love to give you a tour.

daffodil, since dusting with sevin doesn't seem to work against your beetles, and could only have negative consequences for beneficial insects and worms (and possibly you), why don't you concentrate on transitioning to plants and shrubs they don't like? Then you could have a beetle-free and chemical-free garden. Besides brown-eyed Susan, you mentioned earlier that they don't eat your hydrangea, for example. Can anyone else help create a list of Zone 5 plants that Oriental, Asiatic, and Japanese beetles don't like?

I only have Asiatic beetles but in my garden, they don't touch the shrubs: hydrangea, fothergilla, azalea, lilac, laurel. For perennials, they have ignored hosta, sedum, agastache, and stachys 'hummelo.' They also ignore my may night salvia, but I know others have problems with salvia. I don't grow many annuals but have some begonia this year that are doing fine.

I don't have a very sunny garden and yours sounds sunnier than mine. What have other people found to be Asiatic and Oriental beetle resistant?

Daffodil,

I'm sorry to hear that the devastation from these non-native pests is continuing. I too, have beetles eating clematis blooms, roses, and echinacea. But, for the first time this year I'm growing Dahlias, and this plant seems to be their favorite. This one is called Moonstruck, and the Orientals in particular love to crawl into the deep petals and eat away. I have been hand picking in the morning and have regularly pulled a dozen oriental beetles off one plant.

So I decided to take my own advice and I got two of the Rescue traps. I placed one in the back yard about 30 feet from the Dahlia and one in the front about 30 feet from some Roses, Clematis and Daylilies. Believe me these traps quickly filled with lots of Oriental beetles. But the proof in how they work is whether or not they reduced the beetles on the Dahlias. So I've continued to hand pick each morning to see if there was any change. The first day I pulled 4 beetles off this plant. The second day 9 beetles. This morning there were 6. So I would say it's been moderately effective. I still have to hand pick to protect the flowers from being eaten, but there has been some reduction. What I'm wondering about is if these traps will result in lowering the population overall. Those beetles in the traps aren't going to be creating grubs in the lawns, so maybe over a few years the population will decrease. I'm in 5b, Central Mass, if you want to come and look at these and how they work, message me.

Steve

Steve, I wonder if you are talking about Japanese Beetles instead of the Asiatic Garden Beetle? For the first time I also have Japanese Beetles on my dahlias but the Asiatic Garden Beetles are not interested in them. I don't read that pheromones for AGB are in those traps but if they work, let us know.

So I posted above that I was going to use salvia as a trap crop. I did salvia spendens and I didn't find a single AGB on them this year. They were back on the roses. I went out several nights in a row in June and did the soapy water or I just knocked them in plain water and then brought them where I could just step on them instead of letting them drown all night. (Their habit is to fall to the ground when scared). I also used a swatter on the ones that flew to the porch light. I don't see hardly any on the porch or on the roses or my ornamental plants. Now they are all on the plantain in the grass. I don't care if they eat plantain at all except they are probably attracted to those so they can lay their eggs in the lawn.

Hi Loretta, I agree with you. I have AGBs, they feed only at night, hide in soil during day. They have left my potted dahlia alone so far. They LOVE mums, they finish mums off in a night, they also love aster, mint, lemon balm, butterfly bush, and daisies. If you want a trap plant you should use a mum. I have not found any traps for AGBs, the stores and online sell only traps for JBs.

Wow so much information!!!!

So i have some of oriental and japanese beetles eating away. The most popular so far are Dalhias, Hollyhocks, Roses and Yellow Echinacea.

I have been successful using insecticidal soap from Garden Safe, Garden Safe IS

One night i have left bucket of water and in the morning i have found several oriental and ASIATIC! beetles dead in the water. Can anybody tell me if they die in water why do i need to add soap to the bucket??

My mountain laurel is been slowly eaten and i could never see any insect on it, is that something that asiatic beetles would eat? I think i am gonna go out in the late pm to check what else is out there eating my plants,

also i have found oriental beetle in my house sink today, no idea how it got there, i have flooded it with hot water and could not believe how long he was managing to hold onto the sink opening before it was taken down to its final destination :)

Nightmart, I think the surfectants in the soapy water penetrates their shells or messes with their membranes so they die more quickly/can't escape.

I see that Gardens Alive has a bt strain that is effective against AGB. I think I'll give it a try.

On the Oriental Beetles, I know the grubs are bad for the lawns but do you notice much feeding by the adults? I don't see them doing much damage but I don't have many of them.

Nightmart, I have seen just a couple of AGB on the Mountain Laurel and I can say after watching and drowning for the last two or three years, they could chose any plant. I've even seen one eating my canna. Black Vine Weevil can eat Mountain Laurel leaves. Does the damage look similar to this? https://ag.umass.edu/fact-sheets/black-vine-weevil

Daffodil, they haven't taken a bite out of my mums. Last year I took them off verbascum, strawberry, salvia of different species, coleus, basil, germander, canna, roses, coneflower and a lot of plants that I had trouble growing through the years without knowing what was eating them. This year, I didn't see any on any of those plants except roses and a few are starting on the coneflowers, I also saw a couple on a fuzzy kiwi plant this year. And now as I said, they are all over the plantain in the grass. I would leave them alone if they would stay there.

Nightmart, I have a baby pool for my dog and the beetles do land in the water but not enough for control. They last a long time before they drown. The soap is a quicker death as I can't stand watching them drown for so many hours. That's why I just stamp on them now. I hate killing things, even AGB and this seems more merciful.

Are any of you grubex users?

Loretta NJ Z6, the damage on my ML is different, most of the leaves are half eaten, some almost to the branch, it looks like something big, at first i even suspected dear but it the location where i have it now deer would not show.

Its very frustrated because any new spring growth disappears with summer months and two of my shrubs have not flower at all.

The other one flowers but gets balck spot and thats what kills a lot of it.

I see,the soap helps to kill the beetle faster, sometimes i enjoy watching them die slowly though. :D

When i think about it i do not think the adult oriental beetles do a lot of damage but with Japanese and european chafers i just dont like seeing them anymore no matter how much they eat.

The soap foam also keeps them from climbing out.

I don't have any other ideas about your Mountain Laurel. They are suppose to be poisonous to animals. I also get the leaf spot.

Last year I constructed a setup with a big watering Can filled with soapy water and hung Almost upside down From a post so that it dripped onto the area with beetles. That got rid of the problem.. Other years I have dug a bit into the soil and removed 250 beetles and put them into Soapy water. The problem is they always come back. I think, for me, the solution is to apply something in the fall to get at whatever stage it is that over winters.

These AGB are my gardening nightmare! We moved from Seattle to Connecticut 2 years ago, and my gardening dreams have been turned upside down because of these pests. I have tried a few new tactics this summer with some success. First, my husband and I are out there popping them every night, usually killing about 40. Second, I have run an extension cord and set up a black light zapper near the garden. This kills a lot of moths but also gets about a dozen AGB in the night. The other benefit is that it causes them to congregate, which makes it easier to locate and squish them. Third, I tried a new product, Beetle-B-Gone. It was expensive, and at first it didn't seem to work, but I have recently noticed some new growth on my basil, so I'd say it is somewhat effective in combination with my other efforts.

I've really appreciated the information people have posted about what plants the AGB like and don't like. In my garden, they have REALLY loved sunflowers, raspberries, basil, peppers (jalapeno, bell, banana), tarragon, eggplant, green beans, broccoli, spinach, kale, cauliflower, kohlrabi. They've been moderately into lemon balm, stevia, blackberries, sage, cucumbers, sweet potatoes. They haven't touched tomatoes, parsley, potatoes, onions, garlic, blueberries, currants, carrots, strawberries, squash, radishes.

Next summer I am doing an overhaul of my flower beds and will be very mindful of what I plant because of AGB. I plan to do lots of evergreens and hydrangeas, but I welcome any other suggestions too. As for other preventative measures, I think I will give nematodes a try. My husband and I did talk about pouring boiling water on the soil in our garden boxes before we plant as a way to kill the larvae, though it would take a lot of water. Worth a shot, maybe.

I don't have much to add. I don't struggle with beetle issues in any significant way. I have them right now, more than usual, I added 3 roses last spring and that is a big attractor for them. But luckily they didn't show up until the roses were just about at the end of their first flush of bloom. So I've cut off all the remaining roses to give them less to eat and hoping they will move on. I did find the other morning that they seemed attracted to one variety of rose over the other. I found a dozen of them on a few open blooms of Pope John Paul and only 2 on Julia Child. Once I cut all the PJP blooms off, the next day there were more on the Julia Child, so I got rid of those. I'm not really growing a vegetable garden this year either. I've had a couple of issues but this year we've had a population explosion of rabbits, and I just didn't want to fight with them, so I gave up on that.

It sounds like you are working hard to try to get this under control. I really think it will pay off for you. When I have really focused on one problem in the garden that I really needed to fix, all that effort and focus really makes a difference and you add to your experience as well.

I have always heard that milky spore in lawns helps to reduce the Japanese Beetle population, not sure about Asiatics. Nor do I have experience to back that up. And of course, If you live near an open field or something, that won't help. But something to look into. Good luck.

We are also infested with agb. We have never treated our lawn. We are going to treat it this year for sure in an effort to kill the grub stage of these beetles. I think we will have to treat in the fall and also next spring. Meanwhile, I dig in the soil and near the roots of affected plants to extract the little monsters and deliver them to soapy water during the day, And pick them off at night when I have the inertia. Neem oil is supposed to be effective.

After drowning them a couple of years, they aren't so plentiful anymore. I never used anything else, not even grubex. For now they aren't a nuisance.

I only have a couple of Asiatic lilies and this year didn't see any beetles.

Just so you know, defrost, the red lily beetles are a different critter than the asiatic beetles. The red lily beetles are specific to lilies and a few close relatives. I am also seeing a reduction in them, but not in the asiatic beetles which have broad tastes more like Japanese beetles.

I live in Rhode Island and have been fighting with these Asiatic Garden beetles For the past 5 years since I moved in my house. I live in the middle of a hay field. So that’s obviously where they have to be coming from. This has been by far the worst year ever! They have Destroyed my peppers, carrots and zucchini. I sit there and dig in the soil for a good hour each day picking anywhere from 500-1000 A DAY! I had to resort to sevin and I’m sick over it. I hate having to use pesticides in my garden. I tried the nematodes a few years ago. I didn’t have much luck. After talking to a few different gardening groups I think I’m going to give diatomaceous earth a try. Has anyone used this on AGB?

I too am in RI. This is my first year with the Asiatic Garden Beetle and they are decimating my garden. After spending hours late at night hand picking, I started experimenting with spraying with 2TBSP Castile soap to 1 gallon of water. I caught a few, put them in a shallow container and sprayed them. Not enough to drown them but enough to give them a good coating. They were all dead by morning. Last night I sprayed everything they were eating, both the leaves and ground around the plants. It's hard to tell if it's working as well as my container experiment as they drop and run...but I am hopeful. The soapy mixture doesn't seem to be negatively affecting the plants. At this point, given the damage they are doing, it wouldn't much matter. Will update if the population is diminishing.

Last year I filled a 2 gallon watering can with soapy water, using Dawn. I partially inverted the watering can by hanging it from a post so that it dripped continuously on an area infested by Asian Garden beetles, hiding underground by day. The slow drip definitely succeeded in getting rid of them without harming the plants. The problem is that the beetles are back the following year. This has happened to me three years in a row. I am so still searching for the solution. Grrr! I THINK the solution is to treat the whole lawn for grubs in the fall or spring. I am not sure when is best, and this is completely my theory without talking to experts about it. We have never treated our lawn until now though.

I wonder if anyone considers a barrier, like a hoop house or some kind of small screening around the most vulnerable plantings? Maybe extreme for an ornamental garden, but something to think about for a vegetable garden.

Jill, My sympathies about the hay field. Not a lot you do about the source of your problems. And it sounds like you are just trying to grow the basics. Wish I had another idea.

OP here--I feel for all of you!

I have always had a small urban-ish garden so handpicking worked to reduce the population over a couple of years for me. Beyond that, the the trick has been planting things they don't like. I can't imagine dealing with them if I lived next to a hayfield!

I did some sympathy googling.

-Spun-bonded fabric row covers may protect herb and vegetable planting beds against the predations of adult Asiatic garden beetle, unless larvae have overwintered in weedy garden soil. https://extension.unh.edu/resources/files/Resource000542_Rep564.pdf

-In areas where this pest is common, many gardeners monitor populations by placing a pail of soapy water in the garden next to a low-wattage black light. Beetles attracted to the light fall into the pail and drown. https://www.growveg.com/pests/us-and-canada/asiatic-garden-beetle/

-Possible organic insecticide: https://www.gardensalive.com/product/ybyg-a-new-way-to-control-asiatic-and-japanese-beetles

Update on my war with the Asiatic garden beetle. The mix of 2TBSP of Castile soap per gallon of water seems to be working. I had less beetles last evening so I am hopeful!

Update on beetles here....I took the suggestion someone made, to cut off all the open roses and wait for the beetles to move on. I only have about 6 rose bushes and all of them were about at the end of their 1st bloom cycle when the beetles showed up. I did pick off a couple of dozen beetles into soapy water and then removed about a dozen and a half blooms on the roses. Two had already finished blooming. They are all working on setting another round of buds and Julia Child was the farthest along with that. She has a tendency to bloom continuously. So yesterday and today some of her buds opened. I found one beetle on the flowers and that's it. So I think they have moved on. I'm not seeing them at least.

Actually, I've had more problems from earwigs at night coming out and devouring some of my plantings. They stripped Lamium and even some creeping oregano and thyme, some Heuchera and I suspect are the culprits that made a mess of one of my Clematis. I just don't have the energy to go out there at night and collect them. I have done that in other seasons and it helped a lot.

OK, so did not know the difference between AGB's and Japanese beetles until reading this post - had thought that all were JB's After reading the post, i' realized that the problem beetles were AGB's so ordered the Rescue Japenese & Oriental Beelte Traps.

Setting up the first trap was a wild experience. No problems setting up the trap, opening the bag with the lure and setting the trap. i left the package from the lure in a bucket in the wagon and walked about 20 feet away to dig/transplant a plant. About 5ish minutes. Walking back to the wagon, I could see what looked like a swam of bees (alot of clover in the yard). It wasn't bees, turns out it was around 15-20 beetles trying madly to fly into the bucket with the wrapper. The longer I watched, more beetles arrived. They were everywhere! I grabbed and stuffed the wrapper in the beetle trap but 3 hours later, there was over 100 beetles in the trap.

I would definitely recommend the traps!

I have 2 of those rescue traps. I put them out around 330pm one day and they were both completely full by the morning! It’s all Japanese beetles though no asiatic beetles. Ive Been picking japanese beetles off my veggies during the day now which I never had in the garden before. I think I only created more of a problem with those darn traps. Lol the garden has been such a battle this year!

I tried the same trap. The result is that I had NO idea we had so MANY oriental beetles!! It DEFINITELY works for them. I tried putting a flashlight next to the trap at night, hoping to attract Asiatic garden beetles who would then jump right in the trap. Hah! At most maybe one Asiatic garden beetle entered the trap. I have just emailed the company begging them to develop a pheromone trap for Asiatic garden beetles. I live in eastern MA. Growing region 6.