My sympathy. That is an awful sight.

Yes my sympathy also MarKay! Poor Lions rose....:-/

oh that is grotesque ,I'm sorry Markay. They deserve extra strength soap

Sympathies - that's what my roses usually look like. Our scourge hasn't been as bad as usual (yet) for a couple of possible reasons:

- It was a dry year last summer and they didn't lay as many eggs for grubs

- I didn't have any roses last year and they forgot my address

- We're nearing the end of a 10-year cycle where apparently things naturally get better

- Paul Zimmerman's technique of BTG spraying is having an effect

All of those are possible, but I'm giving the BTG technique a try in addition to my usual squish and toss as far away as I can. I can't make the soapy water catch the miserable little buggers that fly in all directions. Instead, I just put a gloved hand over the entire infested bloom like what you show, squish the bejeebers out of the whole cluster till nothing squirms then fling the mess into the lawn or a trash bucket so they don't attract more to my roses.

The BTG technique (Bacillus Thuringiensis - BTG) is apparently organic and doesn't hurt any insects that don't chew on your roses. The idea is to spray all your roses during peak JB season, but even now in my first year replanted that isn't feasible. I look for roses that are the usual first offenders - some seem to be in the line of sight/wind for JBs and spray those and their neighbors. When I find one affected I spray it and its neighbors., after dispatching the offenders. Paul Z also recommends putting pots of pelargoniums (annual geraniums) far from your roses and spraying them with BTG. Apparently the little monsters love geraniums even more than roses and they go elsewhere to eat and die.

Regardless, as we've discussed many times on this forum, none of this is a "cure" for JBs but it might help, and if nothing else it gives me something safe to do that feels like I'm helping. There's a certain satisfaction I get at making the little monsters crunch that lets out a fair bit of frustration

Sympathies to everyone facing these monsters for at least the next 6 weeks.

Cynthia

Markay, buy the trap and place it outside your rose garden area. All JB will be there.

Elenazone6, I put up traps one year, but they seemed to attract more than they caught. I wan’t impressed by the numbers in the bag.

Cynthia, it is interesting about the geraniums. Back when I had a veg patch, they loved my pole beans and every evening they’d watch the sunset from the top leaves. It was frustrating because I couldn’t reach them to kil them! I’ve considerex growing beans again just as a trap crop! maybe I could grow them up an old ladder and they I could use the ladder to climb up and kill them all.

I used to think certain roses were more attractive to them than others, but now I think it is more about the size and siting of the rose. they like to sun bathe.

Julia Child is the exception. I think they would eat every bud off her regardless of where she was planted. Poor Julia.

Markay, I had an opposite experience. In my old house one year, I collected tons of bugs from all over the neighborhood. This is why I suggest placing the trap somewhere away from the roses, if possible.

Can you all believe me, one who cries like a baby all the time about my battle, relentless, with my worst insect antagonist, the diabolical Rose Midge Fly, that my roses are hardly to negligibly bothered by Japanese Beetles? It's true.

My rose garden is smack dab in the middle of metropolis in its classic definition. Concrete, asphalt, brick, stone, glass, and steel, crowded together with small islands of floral life here and there is the environment. Japanese Beetles cannot thrive in such a turf starved place. and it's tough for roses, too, but roses can survive even thrive if their care is adjusted to their growing conditions.

My heart does go out to you Japanese Beetle combatants...I know your struggle. Cheer up, it does come to an end in due time.

Moses

Markay, that photo is so disgusting!! You poor thing! I wonder why it is such a good year for them? Are there any predators to Japanese Beetles? I have a cat bird in my front garden every day and I wonder if they eat bugs as large as beetles? I don't seem to have a large problem with Japanese beetles, but this year on the start of the 2nd flush of Julia Child, I am finding Oriental Beetles. But I've noticed they are smaller than I expect. I wondered if that means they are immature? A new generation? They are about 1/4 of the size of the Japanese Beetles in your photo. I'm just dropping them on the ground and stomping on them to keep them from starting a new generation.

Anyway, did I read that beetles are attracted to the smell of 'rotting' blooms? Like the more the bloom ages, the odor attracts the beetle? Thinking that might be part of it, I did remove any blooms except those that were just opening. I have plenty more buds coming on so I am hoping the beetle attack will end soon and Julia Child does bloom into October, so I should be okay and the first flush of blooms there were no beetles around. When I find those white beetle precursers in the soil, I get rid of them to try to keep down the population. I see a few Japanese beetles. My rose Beverly evidently is a favorite of the beetles. I found a lot of them in the last two blooms of the first flush, after the blooms had started to age. Beverly is just pushing out new foliage so I should get another flush of bloom after the beetles are gone.

@elenazone6, I think my trapping issue is that my lot is small and the areas away from the roses are generally more shady and JBs really prefer to hang out in the sun.

For whatever reason the JBs are also drawn to the foliage of Marchesa Boccella which is not currently blooming, but still attracts them!

@prairiemoon2 z6b MA I’ve heard chickens love JBs.

I can't complain about beetles so far this year though they might kick in. I can complain about the lack of rain combined with heat. We had the rainiest May ever but hardly a drop in June or July. I've never seen my garden so stressed. Not having irrigation , I have to water with the hose. I think the lack of water must have dried up a lot of beetle grubs. Weather.com predicted about a 90% of rain a few days ago and it was supposedly going to be 1 or 2 " but we got about 1/3 ". It must be a computer making these predictions. Sometimes it can it go from 100% chance of rain to 10% chance of rain in a few hours. Seems like whatever changed would have been a factor that would have moderated the 100% prediction. I can't trust weather.com about rain though they're not bad predictors of temps. What online weather site do you use?

We are in the same boat. We had great rain in late winter and early spring. Now we are barely getting any. The forecast is always predicting 'showers' and even when they predict downpours, it almost always covers the South Shore only and we never see it. I don't know why they tease us saying rain is coming instead of being more specific about where it's probably going. And of course, the lack of rain, was just about starting to have an effect when this heat wave showed up. So, I am watering. And I don't have automatic irrigation either. I do have rain barrels that I have to use watering can by watering can, which I do except when the heat index is 100F like it is today. I can't stand out there watering like that. I prefer watering by hand, but in the heat I just set the sprinkler and keep moving it around up until late morning, take a break and start up again when the back is in full shade. Then after supper, about 7p once the sun is off my front bed, I am sitting out there in a lawn chair watering my most affected beds.

We may get some relief on Thurs/Fri or Sat with downpours moving through the area. We'll see. *sigh*

And no, I have no weather forecast that I actually trust.

@erasmus_gw and @prairiemoon2 z6b MA I feel your pain. The few rain producing systems that have passed through seem to go right around us splitting to track both to the north and south. My rain barrels have been dry for several weeks.

Yes, that's just what happens here too.

I appreciate the bug clusters because when the beetles are coupled, thrupled etc. they don’t fly off abd it is easier to get them all. lol!

I'm going to jump on the commiserate bandwagon. Mine are as awful as ever, many of my buds looking just like your photo. I have treated my lawn, I have tried the traps, cut off buds to keep the temptation away from them, sprayed neem oil...you name it I've tried it. Nothing seems to help. I have resorted to two things: 1) Cutting off as many forming buds as I can until "the season" ends. 2) Spending every morning (first thing before the sun is fully up, when the beetles are still basically sleeping) and every evening drowning as many as possible into a bucket of soapy water. I can't stand seeing a single one alive, it becomes my summer mission to destroy as many as possible to the point where I do it a bit obsessively.

I know there are always going to be garden pests that make our lives harder, it's the nature of the hobby. But nothing makes me feel as defeated as JB's do. To watch what I spend huge portions of my time caring for get massacred day after day is so depressing and angering. It's like if a painter just finishes a work of art, and as soon as it dries someone comes over with a box cutter and slices it to pieces.

Pity party over.

Does any animal or bird eat these pests? I know with conservation and the native campaign, and as I've been doing for decades - organic gardening - the idea is to allow the ecology to work the way it needs to. But there do seem to be pests that if left on their own just don't seem to have a natural predator that you can depend on to keep the balance. As far as I know I never see anything eating the Japanese or Oriental beetles but is that because they were an accidental import?

Sometimes it seems like I see fewer and fewer bugs and too many neighbors spraying for mosquitoes and I worry we are reducing bugs that other animals and birds depend on. That doesn't seem to be the case with these beetles. And reading John's account of how many are on his property, especially making it difficult to grow food, we have to try to do what we can to deal with them.

@prairiemoon2 z6b MA, I do know a couple of things that eat them, one I have taken active steps in encouraging an increased population on my property, and the other I'm still considering adding to my property--bats and guinea fowl.

For the bats I have added bat houses to some of the trees around my property (I live on nearly 3 acres, 2 of which are wooded). I just did this in the springtime, so I have not noticed an increase of them *yet*. I'm hoping that by next year they will have caught on to these new housing options and take up residence.

Guinea fowl supposedly eat large numbers of JBs. I do live on a property that allows them, but they are noisy. Obnoxiously noisy as times. I do have neighbors in close proximity to me that I have to be mindful of, so I'm still not sure I want to go this route.

Ang - Bats! You know when we first moved here, we used to see a bat or two. That was decades ago. Don't they eat mosquitoes? Our town has sprayed for mosquitoes for decades too. Plus we are urban/ suburban here, and we did have a small swampy area that was filled in from development and since then, we've stopped seeing a lot of things.

Guinea fowls - how do they eat the Japanese Beetles if they fly and are on the tops of plants? It's not like they are on the ground for them to find. And I think I've heard about how noisy they are.

In a natural environment, there isn't all that much conflict between human activity and animals and insects, As soon as you start dividing into acres and 1/4 acres, you can see how much you have disturbed the natural order and our puny efforts to try to put things right...

I really hope your Bat houses find occupants!

hmmm… I’m not sure bats would do much good since beetles are active during the day and bats are active at night,

Commiserating…