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Beetle help!?

10 years ago

Hello all,

My apologies first, for posting this in the wrong forum last night (nature forum, insects)... I don't know how to remove it now.

So I've been seeing damage on some of my plants every morning and assumed it was due to beetles as we have a hundred in the pool every morning, though I rarely see them on my plants. I have very few flowers-- mostly a lot of small conifers, japanese maples, hosta and coleus. The coleus have been holey every morning so I went around the garden with a flashlight tonight and sure enough, beetles everywhere. Japanese beetles, oriental beetles, a similar-sized brown one that I am going to say might be a chafer beetle... even a few different smaller/skinnier/faster beetles. UGH. Too many beetles!

I did plant a flower this year, a clumping daisy (whoops-a-daisy), about a month ago-- it's just a baby and quite small still, maybe a foot high and wide with just a few flowers starting to open on it now. And tonight I saw at least 30 darn beetles on it! One leaf in particular was completely covered...EW.

So I took to google to see what I could do and it seems I may be kind of screwed already, as many suggest grub control which it seems to be too late for, even for preventing next year's issues- apparently these things should be applied in late spring/early summer. I went out and sprayed everything with Safer insecticidal soap bc I had it on hand, but the only bugs listed on the label are tiny soft-bodied things so I doubt it's going to help at all.

Due to the pool issue, I did hang up 2 beetle traps a couple weeks ago (and last summer as well) and I'm wondering if I should take them down. I bought them on amazon after reading tons of conflicting reviews-- yes, many people say that using them will just draw the entire neighborhood's beetles to your yard but in the end it seemed like even if I have to empty my traps every day bc they're all coming to me, then at least in time I will be keeping that many from laying eggs in my soil and in a couple years I will see next to no beetles. At least this was my hope, as that is what the "most popular" reviewer wrote about his experience with the traps I bought. And he updated his review a few times over a couple years. Anyway though, I have the traps up and yet the beetles aren't all going into them, are they?? No. They are not.

Anyone have any good advice? ...Leave the traps up and also buy some kind of spray to get the ones who choose the plants over the traps? Get rid of the traps and do something else entirely? I see a lot of people "knock them into a bucket of soapy water"... yeah I'm not going to be able to do that every night. First, I'm a little bug-phobic and second, who has time for that? I have small children and pets and an old house to take care of; there's no room in my schedule for nightly-beetle-bucketing.

I'm sad, and totally creeped out.

Thanks in advance,

Comments (6)

  • 10 years ago

  • 10 years ago

    Is the damage really that super bad? There are a lot of bites out of the plant but it doesn't look that bad. Some of these beetles will probably be gone in a few weeks and you can just wait them out.

    In the meantime, playing with beetles like these is a great activity for kids--and their beetleophobic parent! They're durable and harmless (to people) and a good introduction to critter appreciation!

  • 10 years ago

    It's not that bad yet but they've only just arrived! And it is that bad on my coleus, the newest one I planted has half the leaves either gone or very holey.

    And I appreciate your general idea but we have plenty of critter appreciation around here... We've saved countless snakes and frogs, raised tadpoles (which included drives to far away pet stores that sold the rare and elusive "flightless fruitfly"), had birthday parties for earthworms, rescued and released mice in fields beyond the neighborhood, and even let snails crawl across our hands before finding them better homes than my hosta. I'm not interested in appreciating this amount of beetle. Not interested in the least.

  • 10 years ago

    Those traps were originally meant to monitor the presence of various insects and they do a good job of calling any in the area to the trap location, and then your garden.

    The best time to apply controls for the larva of many of the beetles is mid August to mid September, just as they hatch and begin feeding. By spring these larva are too big for most of the poisons to work well and they are getting ready to pupate and become the adults you see.

    Keep in mind that these beetles can fly long distances and the presence of them in your garden may not reflect a large number of larva in your soil.

    For advice on what to do do not rely on sites that are selling products to control what ever since they will be trying to sell you what they have to sell.

    Perhaps this article might be of some help.

    http://www.extension.umn.edu/garden/insects/find/japanese-beetles/

    kimmq is kimmsr

  • 10 years ago

    Thanks for the advice on timing for control, and the link. I will get rid of my traps and look into what to use as grub control for August... If anyone has insight on what product has worked best for them or greatly appreciate hearing it.

    One confusion for me is that while I'm seeing a decent amount of both japanese and oriental beetles, it seems that *most* of what I have out there is a brown, similarly-sized beetle that looks like a chafer, from the pics I see online. That's what's mostly on my daisies and coleus. And yet according to the above link, "Adults do not feed so not found at lights or plants." Hmmm...

    Seems also that chafers respond differently to controls, which would obviously present a problem with treating.

    Last thought is that if these adult beetles travel like I'm reading they do, I wonder how much difference even the best grub control will make. I'm only able to treat my little yard after all.

    Sounds like maybe there IS no great answer...

  • 10 years ago

    One place to start with bad insect cont4rol is the soil plants grow in. Plants growing in a good healthy soil will have fewer problems with insect pests and that means the soil pH is close to what those plants need and that the nutrients in that soil are in balance. A very popular "fertilizer" has a lot of Nitrogen which helps plants grow lush and green and that is very attractive to many insect pests, so to counteract that problem the same company will sell you poisons to control those insect pests that the "plant food" they sell is attracting.

    Some people will come here and counter the above and tell you that a good healthy soil will not stop insect pests from the plants, because they don't understand the concept, and no that will not stop all of them. A good healthy soil will, however, help just as you being good and healthy will aid you in repulsing diseases.

    kimmq is kimmsr

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