I noticed the beetles too late this year to effectively control them. Once I noticed them I applied a pesticide to get rid of them. Between the beetles mowing plants down and the pesticide, I seem to have completely lost 3 plants. Sugar Plum, Citronelle, and Total Eclipse (?) all appear to be completely dead. I have a small caramel and carnival silver streak that don't look great but I'm hopeful that they will recover.

My mother had a problem last year so we already had some of her plants protected with plastic netting, which seemed to be quite effective. I'll have to remember to put netting up around June 10 in my yard next year. These particular beetles only seem to be active for 3-4 weeks. Hopefully if I don't feed them expensive plants next year, their numbers will decrease.

Based on their appearance, these were Oriental Beetles, which appear a couple of weeks before Japanese Beetles. Most of the literature I've read on them says they aren't a danger to plants because they aren't voracious feeders. That is complete BS. I had probably a thousand or more of these pests and they ate plants to the ground in just a few days. They seemed to prefer the red and yellow leaved Heuchera over any other plants in my yard. Once they had destroyed the red leaved Heuchera, they moved to the green leaved Heuchera and other plants as well. Evil little bugs for certain.

These beetles are back again. Found 2 Monday, 40 Tuesday, and 130 tonight. I think I have finally identified them as Asiatic garden beetles. They are also attracted to astilbie but I mainly find them on the flower stalks on the astilbie.

Hopefully aggressively going after these bugs early will help this year. So far very little damage.

Over 160 of these guys last night. The buffet is over. I'm officially the crazy guy with a cup and flashlight in the dark.

Well, I collected over a hundred per night for a couple of weeks. After that it slowed down gradually until I'm only collecting fewer than 10 per night now. So far, no plant casualties from these evil bugs this year.

My neighbors are probably worried about my mental health, though as I spend a considerable amount of time roaming the yard each evening with a flashlight and a cup of water.

Are you finding them under the leaves, in the dark? Have you tried anything other than hand-picking them? Any repellents, etc?

They are generally just sitting there on the leaves, munching away. I tried spraying last year but it didn't seem all that effective. It is time consuming but hand picking them seems to have been very effective this year. When I try to hand pick them, if I miss, they fall to the ground and often just lay there motionless.

I plan to spray some type of grub control in the next 2 weeks based on what I've read that says to apply it ~6 weeks after numbers of beetles has peaked.

Thanks! I have been reading about diatomaceous earth. I will go out tonight and see what I find, but want something for when I can't do this hand-picking.

I don't think DE is going to do much of anything to control beetles. Most of what I have read indicates you can use broad based insecticides with limited effectiveness on the adult beetles. Effective control seems to be tied to controlling the grubs which are most susceptible to control ~6 weeks after the peak of adult beetle activity.