Good morning, Sammy,

My favorite way to trap them is with alfalfa tea, although I suspect compost tea would work as well, or you might be able to trap them with sweet water. I sometimes trap grasshoppers in quart jars half-filled with a water/molasses blend.

To trap June bugs, I put water in a 5-gallon bucket, filling it up about half-way, throw in a few handfuls of alfalfa rabbit pellets, alfalfa hay or feed cubes or whatever I have handy (you can buy a small bag of rabbit-type alfalfa at a feed store, pet store or usually even on the pet aisle at Wal-mart), and just let it sit there. Every morning and evening, I skim the dead bugs off the top and throw them away. I kill dozens of them that way every year.

Down here in southcentral OK, the early heat brought them out in either late March or in April and they drove me nuts for a couple of weeks and then eventually they were gone. I'm surprised you have them this late. This sure is an odd year.

Do you have any Japanese beetles this year? Dorothy mentioned them a couple of days ago. I don't usually see them this far south.

Dawn

If I remember right, May Flies are the smaller ones, June bugs are the bigger ones, and they live in thr ground as grubs and when they hatch out, Voila! I can't remember if it is the armadillo or possom who love them as food and in the past they would often tear up my flower beds looking for them. I called my bug guy and he now comes and sprinkles granules in my flower beds every year to kill the grubs and I have very few of the june bugs anymore. In fact, I don't see a single bug this morning. When I did have them, I would sweep them up every morning and throw them out to the chickens. They loved them! So, look into getting the granules if you want to be rid of them, I think you can actually buy the product over the counter at wallmart or lowes or somewhere like that, I apologize I do not have a name for you.

Em

Yeah. The granules are available at wal-mart. Killing those grubs is the best way to rid of them. The grubs are the cut worms, of course. (If I recall correctly) Right now I've been sifting my new garden and digging them up making the local bird population become Bonnie stalkers. We haven't had very many of those bugs this year. That late cold did them in. I've seen a few around recently which is odd this late in the season. As Dawn says "it's a strange year" for sure.

bon

Grub worms are insect larva of beetles and many beetle are highly beneficial. Cut worms are not grub worms.

Many grubs produce beetles that are beneficial so if you use those chemicals, you won't have the beneficial beetles to help you control the numbers of pest insects that damage your plants.

I don't like the June bugs, but I'd rather kill them after they hatch by having them drown than kill all the beneficial beetles that also live part of their life cycle as grubs.

If you do use a chemical grub control, you have to time it precisely or it won't work, and lots of people put it out at the wrong time and it has no effect on their grub population anyway.

I used Milky Spore powder once not long after we moved here. It is the best organic control available for grubs. I used it only in the lawn area.

My garden is full of grubs in the spring and I used to dig them up and throw them to my chickens. After I realized in recent years how useful the many kinds of ground beetles are in controlling various insect pests, I stopped feeding grubs to the chickens for the most part. Every now and then if a chicken is with me when I'm digging and I dig up a grub, I give it to her if she sees it because she's going to dig and scratch until she finds it anyway once she knows it is there. I rely on the beneficial bugs on our property to control the pest bugs and it works pretty well. However, I haven't found anything here on our property that will eat the June bugs, so for them, I rely on drowning them in buckets of water with an attractant added to it, and that allows all the beneficial grubs to grow so they can mature into ground beetles that will kill pests.

I have a few June bugs but I haven't considered then much of a problem so far. On the other hand, the Japanese Beetles are terribly destructive. The leaves on the Hollyhocks and grapevines look like lace.

They usually bother the okra, berry vines, and the one year I planted Kentucky Wonder pole beans, they loved them. I didn't, so that one is no longer a problem. I only have one okra plant so maybe they won't find it. LOL So far they haven't paid much attention to the berry vines, so I guess Hollyhock and grapevine are their first choice.

Mayflies look more like a moth or dragonfly than a beetle. They are very short lived as adults, so the season for them here is only about a week. I didn't even notice them this year, but some years they are so bad that I can't stay outside. Those bites hurt and make blood trickle out at the bite mark.

Two days ago I found a pepper plant that had been almost totally eaten. It had a nice big pepper down near the bottom of the plant that I had stuffed one of those multi-cell pots under to hold the pepper out of the soil until it changed colors. I had noticed that it had started to yellow so I looked at it everyday. That morning, there were NO leaves on the plant except the bottom leaves near the pepper. It had two blooms, one huge pepper, and four or five leaves. All of the stems were still intact. It had plants all around it that weren't touched and was inside a cheap tomato cage so it would have been hard for anything to reach inside to eat. I have never had a pepper plant striped of it's leaves before.

I agree that many bugs are beneficial and we have to be careful and consciensous in regards to what we control. That is why I only use the granules to kill the grubs/larvae, etc in my flower beds. The animals that come and tear up my beds and destroy my plants are a nuisance and I will keep them at bay in whatever manner I have too. That said, I still have another 85 acres or so that the grubs and june bugs, possum, armadillo, beaver, fround hogs, moles, skunks, racoons, fox, deer, coyotes, et al are free to roam and do whatever they fancy.

Having my beautiful flower beds full of hard work and a ton of money destroyed however, is just not an option for me...

Em

Em, I understand that. We are in prime armadillo country ourselves and that is why I used the milky spore powder when we moved here. I was afraid we were going to end up breaking an ankle by stepping in one of the dillos' 1,001 holes.

I just take every chance I get to remind people of the beneficials. Often, new gardeners (and some not so new ones too) freak out at the sign of a bug, any bug, so I am on a permanent campaign to get people to know their bugs and know which ones are beneficial and which ones are not.

Carol,

Assuming it couldn't have been a small varmint like a bunny, I'd guess it most likely is blister beetles. They are being reported in many southern areas already and they sure do love pepper foliage. Also, watch for hornworms because they'll strip not just your tomato plants, but other plants from the nightshade family.

Really, we're having a pretty bug-free year here, which doesn't mean I am not seeing them, but rather that the beneficials are doing a good job of controlling everything except the spider mites and grasshoppers. Every year it is always something, so I guess this is my year for hoppers and mites. The mites are a lot worse on unshaded plants, so I guess I need to work harder to plant all the tomato plants where they can have afternoon shade next year. We know that mites are drawn to stressed plants (as well as those with high levels of nitrogen), but I am surprised that getting some shade makes such a good difference in terms of which plants attract mites.

Dawn

Hi Dawn, I totally agree with what you are saying. Totally. Our eco system is already so messed up. When was the last time anyone saw a horny toad? I haven't seen one since I was a kid growing up in the texas panhandle..

It has been a very weird bug year. We had ticks and lots of them very early this year, but I'm not seeing a lot of the other little pesky buggers that I usually fight...

It can be a challenge living out here in the country, but I wouldn't trade it for city life for anything. Now 10 years ago when I lived in the city, I was very skeptical about moving out here.... Now when I do have to go into "town" I really dread it.

Sorry, I got a bit off topic there.

To the OP-- just try some granules in your flower beds. And Dawn is right, it has to be the right time of year, unfortunately I don't happen to know when that is. I leave it all up to my bug guy...(I still have a little city girl in me...)

I'm so very new and from the sound of everyone speaking I need to be highly cautious of my eco system. While I cover my garden with anything I can get my hands on, some of it is old plywood that is warped and kept raised off the ground. When I lift the boards to see what bugs are hiding I found toads sitting contentedly on the moist dirt. There were no bugs, of course.

Crazy, it may be but I'm sifting my dirt. Although time consuming it is giving me a desire effect on weed and grass growth in the new garden beds and also allowing me the opportunity to see what's in there. I've been able to rid it of many grub worms and click beetles, learn how to attract good worms and realize how persistent weeds and grass roots are. The baby grubs are hard to spot. I'm no expert but I think the dirt looks great. When it's moist it reminds me of potting soil or well rotted compost dirt. The plants I have are growing wildly producing growth spurts after I cultivate the soil around them.

Fascinating.

I had to give into pesticide. I want zucchini more than anything else. Squash bugs are in abundance elsewhere in the yard. I've no choice if I'm going to have squash. I've yet to fully read the instruction but I hope to use it as sparingly as possible.

Since placing collars around my seedlings I haven't had any problems with worms cutting them. I didn't think it would work, but I guess it helps.

Aphids are horrid. They sure do lay eggs frequently!

Of course, I've had much more rain than most. It makes me so sad for everyone who hasn't gotten any.

Back when I was a kid we called the little brown beetles that erupted in may MayBeetles and the large shiny green/blue ones that came out in June and July June Bugs. We used to catch these latter, tie thread around them and "fly" in circles around our heads. Since the Japanese Beetles showed up here about 5 years ago, they've been getting worse every year until this year. (I think it was 09 that we caught 9 gallons of them in traps.) The odd thing is that as the JBs have increased, the native beetles have decreased. I wonder what is happening. And for us milky spore is not an option. We couldn't even afford to treat our 5 acres of grass/pasture and there's roughly 150 acres of pasture close to us.

Dawn, I haven't seen a bunny in my neighborhood in 8 years. I think our neighborhood fox family takes care of that problem. My garden has chainlink, then has small hole chicken wire up about two feet around the outside in most places.

The plant is probably 25-30 inches high, and the only leaves left were on the bottom of the plant. It did look like what hornworms do to tomato plants, but I didn't see any damage to tomato plants at all and didn't find a worm. On closer inspection, I can see two plants right beside that one that have a lot of small holes in them like those made by a sucking insect. Those leaves are still on the plant, but are damaged. I guess they just found one that tasted good to them. It may have been a little stressed because it set fruit when it was very small and I left it on the plant until this week. I so rarely have a pest on peppers that it caught me off guard.

I remember in Lawton, one year, the June bugs were so bad that I'd have to dump out the horses water buckets several times a day because they would just be full of beetles. Yuck! Must have been the alfalfa the horses tend to dunk in the water that would attract them.

Every morning, my drive in front of my shop under my security light is completely covered with June bugs. Within an hour, the grackles that roost in cattails at the neighbors pond come in and clean them up. Every single one of them.

MayBeetle! That is what I was trying to say earlier instead of Mayfly....my poor brain....

Thanks!

Are June bugs bad? There are tons of them here, and they don't mess with anything. Everyone's conditions are different, but Dawn really is right, the beneficials do a good job of keeping the others under control. The first couple of months gardening I freaked out about this bug and that bug, but I got through it without using pesticides, and I'm glad I didn't. We haven't had any insect problems at all, plus we have loads of bees of different types, sizes, etc. The grasshoppers concerned me for a while, but then the birds swooped in and wiped them out. I'm not an expert. Just my experience.

Taira

Taira, june bugs in and of themselves are not bad. Its their larvae form I guess you would say that pose a nuisance for me. The armadillos like to come into my flower beds and dig for them. They really try to destrou my beds in the process... So in that way they are bad for me.

I only treat my beds and leave the rest of the yard/land alone and let thhem hatch out and contribute to the eco system how they are supposed to.

But no, June bugs are not bad at all!

Taira,

Normally, the wild birds and our poultry can keep the grasshoppers more or less under control. I'd sat they control them well about 5 years out of 8. Last year was one of those years when there were so many grasshoppers that the birds couldn't eat them all. This year seems the same, though the hopper levels so far this year seem a little lower than last year's. So, if your birds run out of hoppers there, please send them there down to our place. We have lots of birds, but lots more hoppers. My chickens won't even look at grasshoppers any more. I guess they are sick of them. Our wild birds are almost too fat to fly.

I can see the birds working away at eating the hoppers, but more hoppers just keep migrating in. It is one of the hazards of living surrounded by thousands of acres of rangeland. No matter how many the birds eat, more hoppers keep coming and coming and coming. I also think our particular location hurts us this year because we are in the bend of the Red River with drought-plagued Texas on three sides of us and I think their hoppers come here as the vegetation there continues to dry up.

I was hoping for significantly less grasshoppers this year than last year, but when I started seeing full-sized adults in March, and not just the little tiny nymphs, I knew we were in trouble. I am sure our grasshopper population hasn't even peaked yet and things will get worse before they get better.

The June bugs were early here, we don't have Japanese beetles much here yet, and most pest insect populations are down this year, but the grasshoppers make up for it. If it wasn't so hot, I'd be outside walking around the garden with a flyswatter trying to swat and kill them all. It irritates me to walk into the garden and have hoppers come flying up out of the plants.

Without a good population of beneficial insects (plus the birds, bats, dragonflies, frogs, toads, etc.). I don't think I'd have a garden at all by this time of the year because the pests would have eaten every single bit of it.

We need a good wet winter and spring because the grasshopper population always is 'down' during a wet year.

Dawn

I gotcha. You know, I had no idea we had armadillos up here. I am a west Texas girl. You can't throw a rock without hitting one of those suckers down there. My memaw had a good fence around her garden, and it kept most of the critters out. At least we didn't have to worry about deer down there.

Dawn,
I believe if I lived out in the country I'd be real tempted to use pesticides. Around here it's much easier. We just make sure every bird in the neighborhood prefers our house above the rest. We have several bird baths, bird feeders, etc.

Taira I'm a west Texas girl too.. Grew up there. Went back a few months ago for a visit. Don't miss it. Don't miss it at all!!

I grew up in Fort Worth, so wasn't from as far west as y'all were, but have memories of driving through west Texas on hot, dusty days when the the dust devils were spinning their way across the dry fields.

When I was growing up in Fort Worth we had a saying (mainly used to drive our Dallas friends insane) and it was: "Fort Worth--where the West begins. Dallas--where the east peters out." So, I always thought of myself as a West Texan, although really I suppose Fort Worth is on the western edge of North Central Texas.

No matter how hot and dry we are here this year, no matter how bad our plants are suffering, for the folks in West Texas, things are even worse and I hope every day that relief comes in the form of rainfall for all of us.

Dawn, when I was there in April, it was bad, really bad. I remember listening to the news one night and just across the border in NM, they hadn't had any measurable rainfall in 163 days. I think that was the same area that had the fires going a few weeks ago. Yeah, west texas needs rain desperately.

We've been lucky here in NE Ok this year. Yes its hot and its dry, but we've had more rain than most folks. I'm grateful.

Reporting from Owasso, ERod1.

June bugs destroy plants/crops. Vegetables and fruits grow on plants. No crops, no vegetables/fruits. Talk about imbalance in a food chain.