I have intense Japanese beetle pressure in my yard. No organic method could possibly stop them, and that includes the pick em off and drop em into soapy water method, the fruit cocktail method, and anything else you can think of. They skeletonized several fruit trees in my ignorant early years of orcharding until I discovered carbaryl/Sevin dust. I’m fairly happy with how carbaryl performs. I do have a number of young fruit trees in my yard however. The spraying requirements are reasonably intense (frequent, reapply after rain, etc.) i now have an orchard of 1 year old trees. I’m i now the north, so growth of fruit trees is slow. Each leaf counts. I am not looking forward to seeing those beetles again this June.

There are at least two formulations of imidacloprin used as soil drench for trees. One is specifically labeled for fruit and nuts - but does not adequately control for Japanese beetles. The other (higher concentration) is for landscape trees (you aren't going to eat plant products from them anytime soon) and will murder Japanese beetles. My fruit trees are three years away from bearing anything -interestingly the same amount of time it would take for this stuff to clear out of the soil. I am thinking while they are getting established that I might try the hardcore landscape imidacloprin preparation rather than the one labeled for fruits and nuts. Perhaps this will afford them good protection in their baby years. In three years the product should be decomposed, the trees should come into bearing with fruit safe to eat, and should be able to withstand greater predator pressure from Japanese beetle by virtue of being much larger.

I am concerned about bee populations so I will not do the soil drench until after petal drop and pollination. This should minimize bee exposure. Has anyone else done this? Or do you just stick with carbaryl?