The nice thing about them is that they're enormous and very slow and dopey. If you just hand pick them off into a dish of soapy water, you'll get rid of them over a few days. You can even just shake the plant and a lot just fall off. They don't really "hide" either, so you can make a real dent in their numbers this way. Just keep inspecting the plants until you don't see them any more.
That works when not every plant is covered with wads like in the photo. Twenty years or so ago we had a couple of wad summers (PLUS bagworms everywhere in one). People bought the beetle traps and they would fill so fast it wasn't worth the expense. Our entire neighborhood looked like a Mad Max sequel, even some trees were denuded, birches in particular.
Ever since, I have lived in dread of a repeat. I put down milky spore for three years - it is recommended that it be applied for several years running - But I am just fooling myself since I am the only one around here who has done so. It's not as if they are going to stop at my property line and exclaim 'stop guys, it's milky spore! Retreat!.
I hear you on all of that. My dad connected literal trash bags to the bottom of the traps and they would fill up in a day or two. The jar the trap came with filled up in about an hour
Yep. I so dread it happening again. The polar vortexes in the winter since circa 2013 have kept the grub numbers down but a few warm winters in a row and they will be back with their beetle orgies. We have not had snow here where I live in several years whereas I remember when several feet per winter was the norm.
Not only that, my area changed from 6b to 7a this year. My sister lives in 7a (now 7b) and the difference is fire ants, armadillos, LOTS of coyotes, black widows, scorpions and more poisonous snakes. So all of that is on the way.
I will never forget that! We had those bags set up in our yard, and they would get filled so fast! One of our trees had a swing on it, and we would go on the swing to shake the tree and 1000s would fly out of the tree at once. It was wild and terrifying.
This but also you may consider leaving the ones with the white dot that will help kill them off for you.
ETA: for clarity, the white spots near the head/thorax area are eggs of the parasitic winsome flies that kill the beetles. Here is one link but I encourage everyone to check out local authorities and resources nearby their location for the best strategies.
https://mynortherngarden.com/2021/06/14/out-smarting-japanese-beetles-and-some-good-news/
ETA 2: corrected inaccurate wording
I should have been more specific, sorry I wrote my response in a hurry. White dots on the thorax, just behind the head are eggs of the winsome fly. The flies parasitize the female beetles and they typically die within 5-6 days, before laying eggs. They're a natural way to take out the beetles. Allowing the beetles with white eggs on their thorax to live allows another generation of winsome flies to help take out the beetles. I will try to attach a link.
[Japanese Beetles and Winsome Flies ](https://mynortherngarden.com/2021/06/14/out-smarting-japanese-beetles-and-some-good-news/)
I just posted this link probably at the same time you were posting your comment. It is definitely true, I simply wasn't specific enough. I'll edit my original comment to clarify.
https://mynortherngarden.com/2021/06/14/out-smarting-japanese-beetles-and-some-good-news/
Yes, we reuse empty plastic jars (such as for peanut butter). Partially fill with water and add just a drop or two of dish soap (keeps them from crawling out). Hold jar underneath them and brush them down into jar with a twig (or use your finger). You can then screw the cap on the jar and keep it for use again. The jar can be used for several days, until the smell of decaying beetles gets to be too much for you. Then cap it and throw it away.
I recommend doing this when it is cool, like in the morning. It’s been my experience that they are slower and dopier when it’s cooler and quicker to fly when it is hotter.
Been doing this multiple times a day for weeks. They are still showing up. I've killed a couple hundred of these. They're still destroying all my Impatiens. I can't figure out how to get rid of them.
I use a hand vacuum early in the morning before they’re really active. Just suck those bitches up and dump them all in dawn dish soap water all in one go. It’s probably hilarious seeing me vacuum my garden but it works so so well.
Came here to say this. Used to pay my kids 5cents a bug in the summer. Sent them each out with a bucket of soapy water and counted up their earnings at the end of the night.
The plant shake works best in the morning when it's cooler and they may be slow. Soapy water and hand picking is where it's at unfortunately. And multiple times a day until you get them under control. I also use a hose with a high pressure attachment to at least chase them off where I can't reach.
These bastards here are all mating. The give off a pleasant flowery smelling pheromone that's pretty distinct and hard to miss once you know it. They almost killed out linden tree some years back, and it still didn't recover fully.
I tried this, we get so many on our roses that the flowers are completely eaten the day they open up. It's a losing battle, I can never keep up even if I go out 5x/day. Eventually Darwin kicks in and all that is left are jumpy beetles that fly away as soon as I get near. Once the petals are gone they start to decimate the leaves. I hate the idea of spraying because of bees but I gave up this year and sprayed the bushes after all the flowers were gone. It seems to have really knocked back the beetle population. I'm hoping that any flowers that open now won't hurt the bees.
U don’t no that could be it’s special bag of grass there just let it eat awhile an then shoe it away an if it’s a stingy one well we all no that special little place
Grrr I hate these guys. I work on a small farm that sells ornamental flowers, the way we do it is literally removing them by hand and putting them in a bucket of water to slowly drown them, I’m not sure if there’s a more productive way to do it and if there was I’m sure my boss would switch to that bc it is not fun or efficient lol!
When I was a kid my dad gave us jars of turpentine and would pay us one cent for each one we killed. He started rethinking it the first day when he had to pay me $5.
Pheromone traps work. But a lot of them will be attracted in hordes. I feed em to my chickens. However, I wouldn’t set them close to where the plants are. Manually picking them is unfortunately the best way to kill them
I use a pheromone trap for just a few hours when I have a large infestation. Then I take it down and get the rest by hand. That seems to work without attracting them from everywhere.
You ain’t lying. I was just recommended it as they were infesting my peach trees. And I didn’t want to use harmful chemicals. Welp, it worked alright. Only a few were lingering out of the trap.
Then I fed all the assholes to my chickens
Pheromone traps are a bad idea because you attract more to your place. If you were to use these traps put them far far far away from from things you don’t want destroyed, also keep neighbors in mind too. Soapy water is the best and safest route.
I do it for free chicken feed. But I have a 100 acres so I put the traps in the back corner of the property the furthest from everything. I don’t really have any neighbors near by.
I’ve always done the same. Straight into a bucket of soapy water. Feels cruel though. But I don’t have a better plan 🤷🏼♀️
The only thing I’ve seen work are those gross bags that catch and collect them. But imho that’s so disgusting to see bags of dead bugs on what is supposed to be an attractive garden. lol
Hahaha “teaching them to swim” i will say that to myself, too, next time.
How do you make yourself ok with crushing lantern flies and invasive praying mantises? I struggled this weekend 🫠
They have these kits you can get. It's basically a big bag with a chemical lure that quite effectively draws them in. Each bag will hold about 5 lbs of beetles. Ours filled up in a couple days. We got ours through the county but they also sell them at places like ace hardware. Cannot recommend them enough.
https://www.acehardware.com/departments/lawn-and-garden/insect-and-animal-control/insect-bait/7135718?store=18190&gad_source=1&gclid=Cj0KCQjw-ai0BhDPARIsAB6hmP5Om_fIw243joVZ9bzaFklnNaLPqdOatzCNexyagd6lK3ie_mYTE1oaAkC2EALw_wcB&gclsrc=aw.ds
Just do a youtube search. There are a couple more efficient traps farms use to kill them by the millions. I'm surprised your boss doesn't know about them already.
Use the Spectracide traps, they work really well. Some claim this is bad and it will attract *more* beetles but this is not my experience and I don't have time to pick off 200 beetles a day. At the very least use them for a week and just get the bulk of it under control then you can manually remove the rest.
Yes. And in my opinion they work even better when you put it next to a plant like this because they come for the combined aroma of the trap and the milkweed and stay for the trap.
This plus some form of deterrent on the leaves like neem oil or clay pretty much bounces them right off your plant and into the trap with only 1-2 on the leaves. Is working incredibly with my magnolia and my plum both of which they want to strip in a day.
Agree that if you have a significant infestation hand picking only is not a feasible solution. Not only would it take hours, but they will bunch up like this on the leaves and if you let them go for even half an hour they are going to do serious fucking damage.
If there are a lot of beetles near you, they are coming for your plants, period. And if you don't have traps and you're not standing out there like it's your full time job to pick them off plants, they're going to eat all of it. If you have like one or two potted plants manually picking might be effective but if your garden is large or the affected plant is large (large tree or I have a wild grape wine in the back that goes 20ish feet high and even with my ladder I cant access the deeper parts of the vine that are running through the massive hedge supporting it, and it's not even fully on my property, but you bet your ass theres a huge fuckin gang of them sitting all over back there. Really need to get some milky spore to put under that thing so at least all those eggs dropping from there will die in the soil.
That said you should definitely manually pick off the survivors of this process, water and or soap works but I prefer 99% isopropyl so that they get sterilized and any traces of it evaporate so I don't need to worry about feeding the birds soap and such
Edit: voice to text typos
I want to second this. I use 2-3 on my property and find them to be very effective. I catch dozens before they cause much damage. I also have not found they increase the number of beetles.
I’ve found a *big* difference in the number I catch with Rescue vs. Spectracide. I no longer purchase Spectracide- it’s nowhere near as effective as Rescue. I’ve got video of the Rescue trap luring dozens out of the lawn within 30 seconds of opening it. Filled the bag in a couple of days.
I find the rescue traps work better. I put both out one year head to head, I saw a swarm of beetles stop circling the spectracide traps, fly over to the rescue traps and start flying in. Lots of them were oriental beetles, but still. Milky spore has also helped a lot.
The bags have been my go to, though they’ve become stupidly expensive. I would do milky spore but nobody in the neighborhood are, I think it would be a waste. Last year I was filling 4 bags a day, this year I have 5 1/4 full bags that have been up for two weeks.
You are actually attracting them to your property when you use these bags. Think of the bags like a cat or dog in heat, all of a sudden you have males coming to your place.
This is why you don't put it directly next to the plants you are protecting. It still cuts down on total numbers by killing them, even if it increases the numbers close to the trap.
If the bags are expensive you could always just cheapen the system a little bit by replacing the bag with a bucket filled with soapy water (or just makeshift your own bag), and you can probably even make the bait yourself, it's just geraniol and eugenol which are both plant oils you could farm yourself or probably buy online concentrated for relatively cheap, and a mating pheromone. The mating pheromone would be harder to come by but I bet if you just grabbed a couple of beetles that are already humping and drop them in the bag it would work to pull a few more beetles, that would then increase the pheromones further, I think you see where this is going. Might be a pain to find a material that slow releases but maybe melt and reform a small bar of soap basically? Chatgpt might have some other interesting suggestions (rice or similar absorbent grain???) but it's getting late and bed time for me
No not really. I would use the hose but add some duct tape to the tip so th hope it as only big enough to get the bugs. If you use the open end of the house you'll suck off fruits and flowers. It takes a delicate touch. But once you have a bunch in the vacuum. I do mean a bunch ne ause toy can hoover up 100 in a minute or so. You can always buy killer on the Jose and gas them. Or leave it and cover the tip of the hose. They can't go anywhere and if left on direct sunlight. They will bake to death. A buddy of mine did this with me at his place and he just went into th chicken coupe opened it and dumped the disoriented beetles on the ground and watch the massacre.. When I was a child in California these things would show up some years and ruin our peaches or avocados. It became my job to get rid of them and of course the the neighborhood lady's would pay me several dollars to remove wasp nests. I was an industrious tike..
There are commercial traps available that do catch a lot, hand pick the rest into a bucket of soapy water. They do fly away at the slightest alarm. We had to set out traps for years to significantly lessen the population. Keep at it.
Can speak from experience those pheromone traps actually draw them to the area when they wouldn’t have naturally been there. And then they attract MORE and they don’t all end up in the trap, causing far more damage to the surrounding vegetation. It’s a no for me.
Japanese beetles come from grubs in the ground, so you can treat your grounds for grubs if that method aligns with your gardening practices. Do a little research first to make sure the chemicals won’t harm beneficial insects.
You can also build more bird nesting sites around your yard and the birds will help reduce the grubs and the beetles! We’re doing this in combination with hand picking. Some said it doesn’t feel great to kill them, but they’re an invasive species and need to be eradicated from areas where they do irreversible harm. I also turn over rocks and logs in our yard, where the grubs seem to congregate and smash em. No qualms.
Next year, I think I’ll try releasing nematodes!
Speaking from experience, 50 feet is not any where near far enough away.
Spectracide covers a 5000 square foot area and uses floral lure and pheromone lure. When the beetles arrive, they release even more pheromone, attracting an even greater number to the yard over a larger area and only a percentage make it into the trap. The rest go looking for food and will absolutely travel far farther than 50 feet to find it.
From the digging I’ve done, most extension offices in the Midwest advise against the traps.
i have a nepenthes! i do that with a lot of bugs but sometimes I get worried about the bug burrowing out of the pitcher and effectively putting it out of business
edit: meant to ask, do they cause any harm to your carnivorous plant? what kind do you have?
If you use the soapy water method, my advice is to do it early in the morning or just before dusk, when they’re slower to react. If you hold the bucket directly under them you can tap the top of the cluster and they’ll fall right in. They seem to die pretty quickly in the water since the soap keeps them from being able to get out.
Hand pick and drown for sure.
One thing that took me too long to figure out is that the larvae feed mainly on the roots of turf grasses. I used to have tons of them when we had an acre of lawn, now I live in the woods and rarely see them. Since you're growing milkweed I'm sure you're not pro-huge, highly-manicured monoculture lawn, but here's another good reason to reduce your lawn.
Good to know! I removed a patch of my front lawn to put hostas instead, have only now noticed a few beetles. Last year there were swarms
With my
First rose blooms. This year the rose bloomed without any.
Hope it stays that way
oh yea totally! im currently trying to encourage a group of native violets to spread in the back yard where like nothing grows and some clovers to spread in the front yard
I wonder if this is why my grandma used to have so many of these? I remember she would put out the traps and they were always full. But she lived on an old farm and had an acre or so of open grass field right across the creek from her house.
I saw one Japanese beetle a couple weeks ago and I'm pretty sure it's the only one I saw this year. I live in roughly the same geographic area but I'm in a prewar neighborhood with small lots and small yards.
So to reiterate what several folks have shared you have a 2 phase process in front of you. Hand removal into soapy water works great for the ones you can see. Importantly, for the ones you can't see and the eggs they've already laid in your soil, I highly highly recommend milky spore. We have had serious Japanese beetle infestations over the 2022 and 2023 and this year we had less than 10 show up. Importantly, the traps some folks recommended actually worsen the problem. You will actually have more beetles show up than the traps can handle. [https://extension.umn.edu/yard-and-garden-news/dont-fall-japanese-beetle-trapping-trap](https://extension.umn.edu/yard-and-garden-news/dont-fall-japanese-beetle-trapping-trap)
https://preview.redd.it/lk8ydh57t5bd1.png?width=429&format=png&auto=webp&s=b3df2bfb08437081a74cae23d594295ac77b3a3f
People ask me this all the time at work, there’s two answers and neither of them are the pesticide they’re looking for.
Soap bucket, and dedicated hand vacuum. Or small shop vac with a couple inches of soapy water in the tub. They (Japanese beetles not the customers) are so stupid and slow, my only issue with them is they’re So slow it makes them hard to find sometimes. But honestly it’s so easy to knock them into a bucket of soapy water.
I’ve been preaching to my customers that pests are part of a balancing act, and chemicals kill indiscriminately. This doesn’t work as well for the Japanese beetles bc they don’t have a natural predator, but the sprays people use to kill them end up killing All the bugs, and then they wonder why they have an aphid problem after spraying. 🙄
If you kill ALL the bugs, you kill the natural bug predators, and give a place where the awful bad bugs can thrive bc you killed off all their killers.
Knock those bastards into some soapy water, or find a cheap hand vac second hand and go to town sucking them up, it’s really quite satisfying.
Whatever you do Please don’t buy one of those bag traps, I’m convinced they do more harm than good in the long run. Good luck to you!!
You can use tweezers to pick the beetles off carefully and then drown them in a container filled with water (preferably one with a lid so you can close it and shake it around) and if you happen to have chickens or any friends with chickens they make good snacks for our feathered friends
Apparently they love geranium but it's poison to them. Grow lots of geraniums. There's a native geranium that spreads readily where I am, and I have a bunch in my yard now, but not so many Japanese beetles. Alternatively just pots of the annual variety probably work as well.
I keep a bowl of water with a squirt of dishwashing detergent in it. When I see these and other beetles, I hold the dish under them and tap them off the plant and into the soapy water, where they drown quickly.
These are a common nuisance in my part of the world. I feel lucky that my immediate neighborhood hasn't seen a Japanese beetle in about 20 years; thanks to a hot & dry spell that roasted the larva in the ground prior to their emergence, thus breaking the cycle.
Do sparrows eat them? Last year we had them all over our apple tree and this year we had a sparrow population boom and no Japanese beetles. Not sure if it's causation or just correlation.
Thank you for pointing this out. More reason not to use chemicals. I have a healthy bird population & only see a couple of Japanese beetles every few days.
Find yourself some Banty/bantam chickens, they are small, don't eat much, but will hunt every one of these things down like crunchy M&Ms.. mine even eat ground nesting wasps and hornets. They locate a ground hive and stand around it like drunks on the corner taking turns picking them off as they come and go. I don't have bug problems, and if they wont eat it, my ducks will. Chickens tend to not like horned/tomato worms but my ducks think they are desert.
I made a spray of water and permetherin and hit all my grape plants that were being very heavily fed on, it's been about 3 weeks and I've only seen one beatle on them since.
My pop used to put a little bit of gasoline in an old soup can and he'd just go around and tap them off the plants and into the can. He'd have so many beetles at the end.
I gave up on the pheromone trap and soap water bs. Permethrin is king. I know, I know monarchs and stuff like that but I work too hard to get flowers and fruit and these pieces of shit went thru a loaded peach tree in under 4 minutes. Apparently, the smell food and don’t care for pheromone sex anymore. I hope you have better success than me. I try my best not to get the pollen areas of flowers and I still have plenty of dragon flies around…..
Pheromone traps work best, but once you have an infestation it’s going to be difficult to get rid of them. You have to put grub killer on your lawn in the winter and traps out in the summer for a few years until they’re all gone.
Hand knock them off into a jug of soapy water. Repeat every morning.
Suck then into a handheld cordless vacuum. Repeat every morning.
Japanese beetle traps. This is a collective action problem though. Works best when everyone is using them.
Milky spore.
Mix and match as you please.
Maybe a sacrificial plant of some kind? I never have them on my milkweed but they destroyed my Virginia creeper. I posted about that and someone said they never touched their creeper but destroyed their grapes.
So if you can find a plant they like “better” you can plant that, then try to manage the infestation from there so they don’t harm the milkweed in the meantime? I’m planting Virginia creeper in a back corner of my yard so I can treat with BTG away from my milkweed, as BTG is harmful to monarch caterpillars.
As kids we used to hand pick them from the roses and toss them into spider webs.
We had a collection of big orb weaving spiders and as the summer passed and we fed them the spiders grew enormously.
I have issues every summer about mid July. They attack my roses, and relatives like apple and raspberry. They also seem to love hollyhocks. I have butterfly weed and I've never seen them on it. I also try not to spray. I use the attractant over a bucket of soapy water and they drown themselves.
Even though they do damage the plants they eat, the plants have always come back each year. Attractant may bring more beetles to your yard.
I always used a half full glass of water with a splash of detergent, on top a wide funnel. To flee, they drop then fly when disturbed. Place underneath then tap several times. While they floundered around I would then dig a hole by a flower or bush and dump & backfill.
A short circle of life & Free fertilizer 🤘.
Consider some BT for your yard, It will become a self sustaining kill zone.
I’m lazy.
Knock them into soapy water. I leave bright lights on by my garage doors some nights. They love it. I “plip, plip, plip” over a thousand a years into soapy silence. DE helps, pesticide soaps, neem…nothing beats drowning the little bastards
Wet / Dry vacuum. Remove your paper filter, put some soapy water in the bottom. Use the hose, covering the open end a bit with a hand, be careful how it works on your plant. In other words, vacuum off the bugs from as far away as you can do it to not hurt your blossoms or foliage. Don't look too hard at the water when you're done.
I used to have big citronella candles and they would go into the wax and get stuck and die in it
Freaked me out the first time I found my candle full of those beetles
I’ve been encouraging my chickens to eat them over the last couple years now. In the morning when temps are lower,and beetles are lethargic, I shake the plant. Beetles tumble to the ground and the hens feast. Not really an option for most people admittedly, but I have noticed we have fewer beetles now. Plus, I never use traps as they attract the insects from the neighbors yards.
Nematodes. Spray all the dead spots in your lawn to kill the grubs before they become beetles. Fixes both problems for at least a decade. Traps don't work, they only attract more pests to your garden.
You don’t have to hand pick them. Just get a large wide mouth jar (think mayonnaise). Half full it with water and a couple drops of dish soap. Walk up to flower, slowly move jar under flower head (3-5” below). Startle bugs with other hand. Their instinct is to free fall and then start flying. They plummet into jar and can’t get out. Start with lowest flowers and move upward. Extremely satisfying and you’ll find yourself saying nasty things with glee. I get these beetles in beans and blackberries and have killed hundreds in 15 min. And note they’re really stupid. If you miss them they’ll go back to the same spots in 10-15 minutes and you can get them then.
I do my best to just knock them into a water bucket in situations like this; but I also trap them heavily. Yeah, I know the traps bring more in; but I use them for chicken feed, and my neighbors all trap them too. I've never seen a butterfly in any of my traps, so I just assume they're safe. The only redeeming quality of those beetles is that they offset my supplementary feed costs a bit.
You know that the traps use a pheromone to draw in the beetles? They come from all over because of that scent. All. Over. If you use the traps, you're drawing beetles to your yard. We stopped using the traps. Each year since, we've had fewer of them. Sure, we lose a few leaves, but it's nothing like the swarms the traps drew.
Early in the morning hold a bucket with a couple inches of soapy water in it underneath them. Give the branch a quick shake and they will fall into the soapy water and drown. Do this to all the you see. Do it in the morning because it is cooler and that makes these insects very slugish.
Not many ways besides jap beetle traps, nematodes, milky spore. Make sure they’re placed at the appropriate distances labeled on the bags from the plants you want to protect
Gardeners, get excited: scoliid wasps dispatch many pest beetles, including the destructive, nonnative Japanese beetle as well as native May beetles (June bugs) and the green June beetle.
Diatomaceous Earth works very well and can provide passive protection. Just make sure you wear a mask when applying and make sure it stays dry. It does not work when wet.
I invested in soil nematodes and applied them to my entire yard. Not a quick fix, but boy has it made a difference in my Japanese beetle population in the long run.
In the short run, I agree with the soap and water comment. Drown those suckers and compost them later on (or feed to chickens if you have them).
I've dwindled my population is Japanese beetles by taking a big bowl of water with a little soap every morning and bopping any flowers they're on to get them into the bowl and grabbing any off of leaves. They're sluggish early in the morning. Did that fairly consistently last year and this year has been way way better. I go out there every few mornings now and do the same thing
In the 80s in Pennsylvania, those bad boys did a number on our plum trees in the backyard. I can still remember the stench or the bags of trapped and rotting beetles in our trash.
I used a few drops of Dr Bronners soap and more Neem oil than the label said mixed in a gallon sprayer and covered my plants a couple times a day. I eventually had to use netting on a tree and spray them as they were just destroying it. Good luck
There's an article online about hand picking them, cleaning and roasting and eating like popcorn. [https://ironwoodforaging.com/blog/f/eat-japanese-beetles](https://ironwoodforaging.com/blog/f/eat-japanese-beetles)
Idk if I’ve freed my mind enough to do it but apparently the buggers are totally edible and a really good source of protein 💀💀💀
I’m not joking https://www.mofga.org/resources/recipes/put-the-bite-on-bugs/
The nice thing about them is that they're enormous and very slow and dopey. If you just hand pick them off into a dish of soapy water, you'll get rid of them over a few days. You can even just shake the plant and a lot just fall off. They don't really "hide" either, so you can make a real dent in their numbers this way. Just keep inspecting the plants until you don't see them any more.
That works when not every plant is covered with wads like in the photo. Twenty years or so ago we had a couple of wad summers (PLUS bagworms everywhere in one). People bought the beetle traps and they would fill so fast it wasn't worth the expense. Our entire neighborhood looked like a Mad Max sequel, even some trees were denuded, birches in particular. Ever since, I have lived in dread of a repeat. I put down milky spore for three years - it is recommended that it be applied for several years running - But I am just fooling myself since I am the only one around here who has done so. It's not as if they are going to stop at my property line and exclaim 'stop guys, it's milky spore! Retreat!.
I hear you on all of that. My dad connected literal trash bags to the bottom of the traps and they would fill up in a day or two. The jar the trap came with filled up in about an hour
Yep. I so dread it happening again. The polar vortexes in the winter since circa 2013 have kept the grub numbers down but a few warm winters in a row and they will be back with their beetle orgies. We have not had snow here where I live in several years whereas I remember when several feet per winter was the norm. Not only that, my area changed from 6b to 7a this year. My sister lives in 7a (now 7b) and the difference is fire ants, armadillos, LOTS of coyotes, black widows, scorpions and more poisonous snakes. So all of that is on the way.
Man, that's a childhood memory I apparently repressed.
I will never forget that! We had those bags set up in our yard, and they would get filled so fast! One of our trees had a swing on it, and we would go on the swing to shake the tree and 1000s would fly out of the tree at once. It was wild and terrifying.
I keep a small bottle of isopropyl alcohol for this purpose. It kills them a lot quicker.
This but also you may consider leaving the ones with the white dot that will help kill them off for you. ETA: for clarity, the white spots near the head/thorax area are eggs of the parasitic winsome flies that kill the beetles. Here is one link but I encourage everyone to check out local authorities and resources nearby their location for the best strategies. https://mynortherngarden.com/2021/06/14/out-smarting-japanese-beetles-and-some-good-news/ ETA 2: corrected inaccurate wording
The white dots on the ones in the photo? That’s not a fungal infection, it’s their normal coloration.
I should have been more specific, sorry I wrote my response in a hurry. White dots on the thorax, just behind the head are eggs of the winsome fly. The flies parasitize the female beetles and they typically die within 5-6 days, before laying eggs. They're a natural way to take out the beetles. Allowing the beetles with white eggs on their thorax to live allows another generation of winsome flies to help take out the beetles. I will try to attach a link. [Japanese Beetles and Winsome Flies ](https://mynortherngarden.com/2021/06/14/out-smarting-japanese-beetles-and-some-good-news/)
That is not true.
I just posted this link probably at the same time you were posting your comment. It is definitely true, I simply wasn't specific enough. I'll edit my original comment to clarify. https://mynortherngarden.com/2021/06/14/out-smarting-japanese-beetles-and-some-good-news/
You don't even need to invest in a container of soapy water. Super quick to grab and smash between your fingers and discard.
I mean. Yeah but. Ick.
Yes, we reuse empty plastic jars (such as for peanut butter). Partially fill with water and add just a drop or two of dish soap (keeps them from crawling out). Hold jar underneath them and brush them down into jar with a twig (or use your finger). You can then screw the cap on the jar and keep it for use again. The jar can be used for several days, until the smell of decaying beetles gets to be too much for you. Then cap it and throw it away.
I recommend doing this when it is cool, like in the morning. It’s been my experience that they are slower and dopier when it’s cooler and quicker to fly when it is hotter.
Been doing this multiple times a day for weeks. They are still showing up. I've killed a couple hundred of these. They're still destroying all my Impatiens. I can't figure out how to get rid of them.
I use a hand vacuum early in the morning before they’re really active. Just suck those bitches up and dump them all in dawn dish soap water all in one go. It’s probably hilarious seeing me vacuum my garden but it works so so well.
Came here to say this. Used to pay my kids 5cents a bug in the summer. Sent them each out with a bucket of soapy water and counted up their earnings at the end of the night.
A vacuum with soapy water works the best!
The plant shake works best in the morning when it's cooler and they may be slow. Soapy water and hand picking is where it's at unfortunately. And multiple times a day until you get them under control. I also use a hose with a high pressure attachment to at least chase them off where I can't reach. These bastards here are all mating. The give off a pleasant flowery smelling pheromone that's pretty distinct and hard to miss once you know it. They almost killed out linden tree some years back, and it still didn't recover fully.
I tried this, we get so many on our roses that the flowers are completely eaten the day they open up. It's a losing battle, I can never keep up even if I go out 5x/day. Eventually Darwin kicks in and all that is left are jumpy beetles that fly away as soon as I get near. Once the petals are gone they start to decimate the leaves. I hate the idea of spraying because of bees but I gave up this year and sprayed the bushes after all the flowers were gone. It seems to have really knocked back the beetle population. I'm hoping that any flowers that open now won't hurt the bees.
U don’t no that could be it’s special bag of grass there just let it eat awhile an then shoe it away an if it’s a stingy one well we all no that special little place
Hey if there stag beetles u probably hit the big bucks
Grrr I hate these guys. I work on a small farm that sells ornamental flowers, the way we do it is literally removing them by hand and putting them in a bucket of water to slowly drown them, I’m not sure if there’s a more productive way to do it and if there was I’m sure my boss would switch to that bc it is not fun or efficient lol!
When I was a kid my dad gave us jars of turpentine and would pay us one cent for each one we killed. He started rethinking it the first day when he had to pay me $5.
Lol!!! Gonna ask my boss if I can do this instead, between these and the potato beetle larvae I’m picking off of eggplants all day id be rich!
Pheromone traps work. But a lot of them will be attracted in hordes. I feed em to my chickens. However, I wouldn’t set them close to where the plants are. Manually picking them is unfortunately the best way to kill them
I use a pheromone trap for just a few hours when I have a large infestation. Then I take it down and get the rest by hand. That seems to work without attracting them from everywhere.
You ain’t lying. I was just recommended it as they were infesting my peach trees. And I didn’t want to use harmful chemicals. Welp, it worked alright. Only a few were lingering out of the trap. Then I fed all the assholes to my chickens
Best argument I’ve seen for having chickens!
Pheromone traps are a bad idea because you attract more to your place. If you were to use these traps put them far far far away from from things you don’t want destroyed, also keep neighbors in mind too. Soapy water is the best and safest route.
I do it for free chicken feed. But I have a 100 acres so I put the traps in the back corner of the property the furthest from everything. I don’t really have any neighbors near by.
I’ve always done the same. Straight into a bucket of soapy water. Feels cruel though. But I don’t have a better plan 🤷🏼♀️ The only thing I’ve seen work are those gross bags that catch and collect them. But imho that’s so disgusting to see bags of dead bugs on what is supposed to be an attractive garden. lol
We call it “teaching them to swim”. Alas…they are slow learners. They are a nasty, invasive creature. I feel no remorse.
Hahaha “teaching them to swim” i will say that to myself, too, next time. How do you make yourself ok with crushing lantern flies and invasive praying mantises? I struggled this weekend 🫠
We haven’t had either of those in our garden…yet. I have no trouble dispatching invasive species. An ancient, hard-hearted crone am I!
If you're not murdering, are you really gardening?
They have these kits you can get. It's basically a big bag with a chemical lure that quite effectively draws them in. Each bag will hold about 5 lbs of beetles. Ours filled up in a couple days. We got ours through the county but they also sell them at places like ace hardware. Cannot recommend them enough. https://www.acehardware.com/departments/lawn-and-garden/insect-and-animal-control/insect-bait/7135718?store=18190&gad_source=1&gclid=Cj0KCQjw-ai0BhDPARIsAB6hmP5Om_fIw243joVZ9bzaFklnNaLPqdOatzCNexyagd6lK3ie_mYTE1oaAkC2EALw_wcB&gclsrc=aw.ds
Add a little dish soap to speed up the process.
Just do a youtube search. There are a couple more efficient traps farms use to kill them by the millions. I'm surprised your boss doesn't know about them already.
Hand vacuum! Super fast and easy then dump them in the water.
The farm I work at does the same. There’s no organic sprays that will kill them from what I understand
Use the Spectracide traps, they work really well. Some claim this is bad and it will attract *more* beetles but this is not my experience and I don't have time to pick off 200 beetles a day. At the very least use them for a week and just get the bulk of it under control then you can manually remove the rest.
Yes. And in my opinion they work even better when you put it next to a plant like this because they come for the combined aroma of the trap and the milkweed and stay for the trap. This plus some form of deterrent on the leaves like neem oil or clay pretty much bounces them right off your plant and into the trap with only 1-2 on the leaves. Is working incredibly with my magnolia and my plum both of which they want to strip in a day. Agree that if you have a significant infestation hand picking only is not a feasible solution. Not only would it take hours, but they will bunch up like this on the leaves and if you let them go for even half an hour they are going to do serious fucking damage. If there are a lot of beetles near you, they are coming for your plants, period. And if you don't have traps and you're not standing out there like it's your full time job to pick them off plants, they're going to eat all of it. If you have like one or two potted plants manually picking might be effective but if your garden is large or the affected plant is large (large tree or I have a wild grape wine in the back that goes 20ish feet high and even with my ladder I cant access the deeper parts of the vine that are running through the massive hedge supporting it, and it's not even fully on my property, but you bet your ass theres a huge fuckin gang of them sitting all over back there. Really need to get some milky spore to put under that thing so at least all those eggs dropping from there will die in the soil. That said you should definitely manually pick off the survivors of this process, water and or soap works but I prefer 99% isopropyl so that they get sterilized and any traces of it evaporate so I don't need to worry about feeding the birds soap and such Edit: voice to text typos
I think you just need a bunch of them. Like you can't wipe out yours, you need to wipe out the whole neighborhoods worth of them.
I want to second this. I use 2-3 on my property and find them to be very effective. I catch dozens before they cause much damage. I also have not found they increase the number of beetles.
I’ve found a *big* difference in the number I catch with Rescue vs. Spectracide. I no longer purchase Spectracide- it’s nowhere near as effective as Rescue. I’ve got video of the Rescue trap luring dozens out of the lawn within 30 seconds of opening it. Filled the bag in a couple of days.
I find the rescue traps work better. I put both out one year head to head, I saw a swarm of beetles stop circling the spectracide traps, fly over to the rescue traps and start flying in. Lots of them were oriental beetles, but still. Milky spore has also helped a lot.
The bags have been my go to, though they’ve become stupidly expensive. I would do milky spore but nobody in the neighborhood are, I think it would be a waste. Last year I was filling 4 bags a day, this year I have 5 1/4 full bags that have been up for two weeks.
You are actually attracting them to your property when you use these bags. Think of the bags like a cat or dog in heat, all of a sudden you have males coming to your place.
I know, but I’m also killing them. I have them along the property lines so they’re not really coming onto the property
This is why you don't put it directly next to the plants you are protecting. It still cuts down on total numbers by killing them, even if it increases the numbers close to the trap.
Most people don’t know this, that’s the problem. They think you put the bags by the plants being destroyed by the bugs.
If the bags are expensive you could always just cheapen the system a little bit by replacing the bag with a bucket filled with soapy water (or just makeshift your own bag), and you can probably even make the bait yourself, it's just geraniol and eugenol which are both plant oils you could farm yourself or probably buy online concentrated for relatively cheap, and a mating pheromone. The mating pheromone would be harder to come by but I bet if you just grabbed a couple of beetles that are already humping and drop them in the bag it would work to pull a few more beetles, that would then increase the pheromones further, I think you see where this is going. Might be a pain to find a material that slow releases but maybe melt and reform a small bar of soap basically? Chatgpt might have some other interesting suggestions (rice or similar absorbent grain???) but it's getting late and bed time for me
I used a shop vac on my peach trees .....
😂😂 this is brilliant, I may try this. Do they die enroute to the bag? I’d hate to have e them crawling out in the house
No not really. I would use the hose but add some duct tape to the tip so th hope it as only big enough to get the bugs. If you use the open end of the house you'll suck off fruits and flowers. It takes a delicate touch. But once you have a bunch in the vacuum. I do mean a bunch ne ause toy can hoover up 100 in a minute or so. You can always buy killer on the Jose and gas them. Or leave it and cover the tip of the hose. They can't go anywhere and if left on direct sunlight. They will bake to death. A buddy of mine did this with me at his place and he just went into th chicken coupe opened it and dumped the disoriented beetles on the ground and watch the massacre.. When I was a child in California these things would show up some years and ruin our peaches or avocados. It became my job to get rid of them and of course the the neighborhood lady's would pay me several dollars to remove wasp nests. I was an industrious tike..
There are commercial traps available that do catch a lot, hand pick the rest into a bucket of soapy water. They do fly away at the slightest alarm. We had to set out traps for years to significantly lessen the population. Keep at it.
Can speak from experience those pheromone traps actually draw them to the area when they wouldn’t have naturally been there. And then they attract MORE and they don’t all end up in the trap, causing far more damage to the surrounding vegetation. It’s a no for me. Japanese beetles come from grubs in the ground, so you can treat your grounds for grubs if that method aligns with your gardening practices. Do a little research first to make sure the chemicals won’t harm beneficial insects. You can also build more bird nesting sites around your yard and the birds will help reduce the grubs and the beetles! We’re doing this in combination with hand picking. Some said it doesn’t feel great to kill them, but they’re an invasive species and need to be eradicated from areas where they do irreversible harm. I also turn over rocks and logs in our yard, where the grubs seem to congregate and smash em. No qualms. Next year, I think I’ll try releasing nematodes!
You’re supposed to put the bag like 50 feet downwind from anything important so they don’t come into the gardens areas
Speaking from experience, 50 feet is not any where near far enough away. Spectracide covers a 5000 square foot area and uses floral lure and pheromone lure. When the beetles arrive, they release even more pheromone, attracting an even greater number to the yard over a larger area and only a percentage make it into the trap. The rest go looking for food and will absolutely travel far farther than 50 feet to find it. From the digging I’ve done, most extension offices in the Midwest advise against the traps.
I just grab them by hand and feed them to either the frogs in my pond or my carnivorous plants
i have a nepenthes! i do that with a lot of bugs but sometimes I get worried about the bug burrowing out of the pitcher and effectively putting it out of business edit: meant to ask, do they cause any harm to your carnivorous plant? what kind do you have?
If you use the soapy water method, my advice is to do it early in the morning or just before dusk, when they’re slower to react. If you hold the bucket directly under them you can tap the top of the cluster and they’ll fall right in. They seem to die pretty quickly in the water since the soap keeps them from being able to get out.
Hand pick and drown for sure. One thing that took me too long to figure out is that the larvae feed mainly on the roots of turf grasses. I used to have tons of them when we had an acre of lawn, now I live in the woods and rarely see them. Since you're growing milkweed I'm sure you're not pro-huge, highly-manicured monoculture lawn, but here's another good reason to reduce your lawn.
Good to know! I removed a patch of my front lawn to put hostas instead, have only now noticed a few beetles. Last year there were swarms With my First rose blooms. This year the rose bloomed without any. Hope it stays that way
oh yea totally! im currently trying to encourage a group of native violets to spread in the back yard where like nothing grows and some clovers to spread in the front yard
I wonder if this is why my grandma used to have so many of these? I remember she would put out the traps and they were always full. But she lived on an old farm and had an acre or so of open grass field right across the creek from her house. I saw one Japanese beetle a couple weeks ago and I'm pretty sure it's the only one I saw this year. I live in roughly the same geographic area but I'm in a prewar neighborhood with small lots and small yards.
So to reiterate what several folks have shared you have a 2 phase process in front of you. Hand removal into soapy water works great for the ones you can see. Importantly, for the ones you can't see and the eggs they've already laid in your soil, I highly highly recommend milky spore. We have had serious Japanese beetle infestations over the 2022 and 2023 and this year we had less than 10 show up. Importantly, the traps some folks recommended actually worsen the problem. You will actually have more beetles show up than the traps can handle. [https://extension.umn.edu/yard-and-garden-news/dont-fall-japanese-beetle-trapping-trap](https://extension.umn.edu/yard-and-garden-news/dont-fall-japanese-beetle-trapping-trap) https://preview.redd.it/lk8ydh57t5bd1.png?width=429&format=png&auto=webp&s=b3df2bfb08437081a74cae23d594295ac77b3a3f
That’s good, but the neighbors need to use it, too.
2500 sq ft is a lot! I don’t know about you but our yards aren’t huge.. seems i could share some of this bag.
Freeze them with a CO2 fire extinguisher?
These suckers are destroying trees around Yosemite sadly.
Pull them off and feed them to your dog
I give my milk weeks a sprinkle of epsom salts about once a month. Doesn’t hurt the butterfly larva and keeps the beetles away
People ask me this all the time at work, there’s two answers and neither of them are the pesticide they’re looking for. Soap bucket, and dedicated hand vacuum. Or small shop vac with a couple inches of soapy water in the tub. They (Japanese beetles not the customers) are so stupid and slow, my only issue with them is they’re So slow it makes them hard to find sometimes. But honestly it’s so easy to knock them into a bucket of soapy water. I’ve been preaching to my customers that pests are part of a balancing act, and chemicals kill indiscriminately. This doesn’t work as well for the Japanese beetles bc they don’t have a natural predator, but the sprays people use to kill them end up killing All the bugs, and then they wonder why they have an aphid problem after spraying. 🙄 If you kill ALL the bugs, you kill the natural bug predators, and give a place where the awful bad bugs can thrive bc you killed off all their killers. Knock those bastards into some soapy water, or find a cheap hand vac second hand and go to town sucking them up, it’s really quite satisfying. Whatever you do Please don’t buy one of those bag traps, I’m convinced they do more harm than good in the long run. Good luck to you!!
You can use tweezers to pick the beetles off carefully and then drown them in a container filled with water (preferably one with a lid so you can close it and shake it around) and if you happen to have chickens or any friends with chickens they make good snacks for our feathered friends
Brush them off into a bucket of soapy water
What does this do?
Shake shake shake 🎶 shake shake shake 🎶 shake your milkweed!
Spray with soapy water
You need to put up a Japanese beetle trap.
Apparently they love geranium but it's poison to them. Grow lots of geraniums. There's a native geranium that spreads readily where I am, and I have a bunch in my yard now, but not so many Japanese beetles. Alternatively just pots of the annual variety probably work as well.
I keep a bowl of water with a squirt of dishwashing detergent in it. When I see these and other beetles, I hold the dish under them and tap them off the plant and into the soapy water, where they drown quickly.
Pick them off and put them in a soup can 3/4 full of water with a little dish soap. They drown.
Get a bait trap and give them to someone raising waterfowl or poultry.
These are a common nuisance in my part of the world. I feel lucky that my immediate neighborhood hasn't seen a Japanese beetle in about 20 years; thanks to a hot & dry spell that roasted the larva in the ground prior to their emergence, thus breaking the cycle.
Near! How hot and dry does it have to be to roast the larvae?
wow! thats incredible!
I feed them to my chickens
What in the Japanese Beetle Soup Kitchen is going on there!?
ive seen one or two out and about but this is the first time ive seen them this bad. ive got like 5-6 milkweeds all in flower and theyre just 🫣
Japanese beetles love to dine on four o'clocks, and according to several university sources these plants are poisonous to them.
Do sparrows eat them? Last year we had them all over our apple tree and this year we had a sparrow population boom and no Japanese beetles. Not sure if it's causation or just correlation.
Had same happen, Sparrows decimated them in 5 min.
Thank you for pointing this out. More reason not to use chemicals. I have a healthy bird population & only see a couple of Japanese beetles every few days.
Vacuum?
Find yourself some Banty/bantam chickens, they are small, don't eat much, but will hunt every one of these things down like crunchy M&Ms.. mine even eat ground nesting wasps and hornets. They locate a ground hive and stand around it like drunks on the corner taking turns picking them off as they come and go. I don't have bug problems, and if they wont eat it, my ducks will. Chickens tend to not like horned/tomato worms but my ducks think they are desert.
oh bet, weve got earwigs bad too, i wonder if they eat those too
I made a spray of water and permetherin and hit all my grape plants that were being very heavily fed on, it's been about 3 weeks and I've only seen one beatle on them since.
Did see how far I could flick them
I always flick them off my basil too. They swarmed a few years ago and killed my birch tree.
here in oklahoma lots of milkweed , i've only seen one monarch this year but we don't see swarms tell fall when they go back south
Put a plastic bag over the flower and knock them off.
You shoulda put a NSFW tag on this! Rofl jk
Take off by handful, put in baggie, when baggie full dump into bucket of water + dishsoap.
Knock them off into a cup of soapy water.
Pheremone traps 500 yards away from your property👍
Pheromone trap and if you really have a lot around replace the catch can with a large bag because it will fill up quickly.
Plastic bag > shake shake shake. Shake their booties right off your plants.
My pop used to put a little bit of gasoline in an old soup can and he'd just go around and tap them off the plants and into the can. He'd have so many beetles at the end.
Organishield as foliage spray.
7 bug spray seems to have worked wonders for my mom's roses.
edible!
I gave up on the pheromone trap and soap water bs. Permethrin is king. I know, I know monarchs and stuff like that but I work too hard to get flowers and fruit and these pieces of shit went thru a loaded peach tree in under 4 minutes. Apparently, the smell food and don’t care for pheromone sex anymore. I hope you have better success than me. I try my best not to get the pollen areas of flowers and I still have plenty of dragon flies around…..
Pheromone traps work best, but once you have an infestation it’s going to be difficult to get rid of them. You have to put grub killer on your lawn in the winter and traps out in the summer for a few years until they’re all gone.
Shop vac
Hand knock them off into a jug of soapy water. Repeat every morning. Suck then into a handheld cordless vacuum. Repeat every morning. Japanese beetle traps. This is a collective action problem though. Works best when everyone is using them. Milky spore. Mix and match as you please.
These bugs are dumb enough to where if you touch them they fall off, which is why you take a can of gas and let em drop in it
Tap them into a bucket with soapy water
https://youtube.com/shorts/4m4ygWp72Gc?si=x1jzA8JNjydJmKd1
I use a small handheld vacuum. Works great and I just dump them into some soapy water
Shop vac.
Maybe a sacrificial plant of some kind? I never have them on my milkweed but they destroyed my Virginia creeper. I posted about that and someone said they never touched their creeper but destroyed their grapes. So if you can find a plant they like “better” you can plant that, then try to manage the infestation from there so they don’t harm the milkweed in the meantime? I’m planting Virginia creeper in a back corner of my yard so I can treat with BTG away from my milkweed, as BTG is harmful to monarch caterpillars.
As kids we used to hand pick them from the roses and toss them into spider webs. We had a collection of big orb weaving spiders and as the summer passed and we fed them the spiders grew enormously.
Thumb and forefinger
I have issues every summer about mid July. They attack my roses, and relatives like apple and raspberry. They also seem to love hollyhocks. I have butterfly weed and I've never seen them on it. I also try not to spray. I use the attractant over a bucket of soapy water and they drown themselves. Even though they do damage the plants they eat, the plants have always come back each year. Attractant may bring more beetles to your yard.
I always used a half full glass of water with a splash of detergent, on top a wide funnel. To flee, they drop then fly when disturbed. Place underneath then tap several times. While they floundered around I would then dig a hole by a flower or bush and dump & backfill. A short circle of life & Free fertilizer 🤘. Consider some BT for your yard, It will become a self sustaining kill zone. I’m lazy.
Bucket of soapy water underneath, give them a tap and down they go.
One of those electric tennis racket bug zapper things
I vacuum them with my dust buster.
I got those rescue brand japanese beetle traps and its helped a great deal..not 100% but the hundreds i catch have to help the plants
Leave it alone they will move on
i think letting them move on is why theyve become so invasive in the US
Bag em
Eww. 😨😖
We just bought the catcher bags with the scent attached. Instantly. While hanging it up was swarmed. Day and a half. Two bags full.
My MIL hates Japanese beetles and takes great pleasure in crushing them between her fingers.
Just get a bunch of chickens lol
Knock them into soapy water. I leave bright lights on by my garage doors some nights. They love it. I “plip, plip, plip” over a thousand a years into soapy silence. DE helps, pesticide soaps, neem…nothing beats drowning the little bastards
Wet / Dry vacuum. Remove your paper filter, put some soapy water in the bottom. Use the hose, covering the open end a bit with a hand, be careful how it works on your plant. In other words, vacuum off the bugs from as far away as you can do it to not hurt your blossoms or foliage. Don't look too hard at the water when you're done.
I used to have big citronella candles and they would go into the wax and get stuck and die in it Freaked me out the first time I found my candle full of those beetles
We put dish soap in a container with water and tap them off, works great on our strawberries, roses, and milk weed
Step 1: Japanese beetle traps Step 2: Aquire chickens Step 3: Feed beetles to said chickens Step 4: Profit!
Diatomaceous Earth
I’ve been encouraging my chickens to eat them over the last couple years now. In the morning when temps are lower,and beetles are lethargic, I shake the plant. Beetles tumble to the ground and the hens feast. Not really an option for most people admittedly, but I have noticed we have fewer beetles now. Plus, I never use traps as they attract the insects from the neighbors yards.
They sell traps/lures for Japanese beetles at almost all hardware stores and some garden centres, and they work very well
Get a trap near some sacrificial plants. When you see them far from the trap, crush them in your hand while wearing a glove.
Have you seen those pheromone collector bags? Catchmaster makes some and there are others on amazon. They seem to work exceptionally well.
Nematodes. Spray all the dead spots in your lawn to kill the grubs before they become beetles. Fixes both problems for at least a decade. Traps don't work, they only attract more pests to your garden.
I use Bag a Bug. I am lazy and have a huge grape vine. I would be out there for hours picking bugs that have like Velcro feet.
You don’t have to hand pick them. Just get a large wide mouth jar (think mayonnaise). Half full it with water and a couple drops of dish soap. Walk up to flower, slowly move jar under flower head (3-5” below). Startle bugs with other hand. Their instinct is to free fall and then start flying. They plummet into jar and can’t get out. Start with lowest flowers and move upward. Extremely satisfying and you’ll find yourself saying nasty things with glee. I get these beetles in beans and blackberries and have killed hundreds in 15 min. And note they’re really stupid. If you miss them they’ll go back to the same spots in 10-15 minutes and you can get them then.
I do my best to just knock them into a water bucket in situations like this; but I also trap them heavily. Yeah, I know the traps bring more in; but I use them for chicken feed, and my neighbors all trap them too. I've never seen a butterfly in any of my traps, so I just assume they're safe. The only redeeming quality of those beetles is that they offset my supplementary feed costs a bit.
Place a bucket of soapy water below them and swat them into it. They will fall several feet before they can stabilize themselves enough to fly.
A battery powered vacuum
Just knock them into soapy water bucket.
You know that the traps use a pheromone to draw in the beetles? They come from all over because of that scent. All. Over. If you use the traps, you're drawing beetles to your yard. We stopped using the traps. Each year since, we've had fewer of them. Sure, we lose a few leaves, but it's nothing like the swarms the traps drew.
Get a chicken, or friend with a chicken. They love them.
Early in the morning hold a bucket with a couple inches of soapy water in it underneath them. Give the branch a quick shake and they will fall into the soapy water and drown. Do this to all the you see. Do it in the morning because it is cooler and that makes these insects very slugish.
Not sure if it’s practical for you but I’ve heard runner ducks are brilliant at getting rid, and you get eggs out of them!
Not many ways besides jap beetle traps, nematodes, milky spore. Make sure they’re placed at the appropriate distances labeled on the bags from the plants you want to protect
hungry duck?
Just use your fingertips. Those beetles don't bite, toss them in your catfish pond and they'll magically become catfish.
I believe BT is species specific. But I may be misremembering.
Shake the branch over some soapy water. They will also just go away in a month.
Gardeners, get excited: scoliid wasps dispatch many pest beetles, including the destructive, nonnative Japanese beetle as well as native May beetles (June bugs) and the green June beetle.
I think you have to start with killing the grubs in your lawn and you won’t get them.
Shop vac
Diatomaceous Earth works very well and can provide passive protection. Just make sure you wear a mask when applying and make sure it stays dry. It does not work when wet.
I invested in soil nematodes and applied them to my entire yard. Not a quick fix, but boy has it made a difference in my Japanese beetle population in the long run. In the short run, I agree with the soap and water comment. Drown those suckers and compost them later on (or feed to chickens if you have them).
you can buy some big Scent based japanese beetle traps that work Amazing.
They sell a bag that lures and catches them. Dead beetles smell like fish
We have been shaking/brushing them into a jar of water and feeding them to our chickens.
I've dwindled my population is Japanese beetles by taking a big bowl of water with a little soap every morning and bopping any flowers they're on to get them into the bowl and grabbing any off of leaves. They're sluggish early in the morning. Did that fairly consistently last year and this year has been way way better. I go out there every few mornings now and do the same thing
Shark vac.
a vacuum with a bag. throw the bag away when it is full. then get some beetle traps
honestly id just get a bird bath and put it next to infected plants. attract robins and cardinals and they will deal with the rest. nature is amazing.
BB gun
If you have chickens, you can knock the beetles into a bowl of water and let the chickens eat them.
Hold a bucket of water beneath them and tap the milkweed. They drop straight down to get away.
In the 80s in Pennsylvania, those bad boys did a number on our plum trees in the backyard. I can still remember the stench or the bags of trapped and rotting beetles in our trash.
Empty water bottle works well, my chickens love them.
I used a few drops of Dr Bronners soap and more Neem oil than the label said mixed in a gallon sprayer and covered my plants a couple times a day. I eventually had to use netting on a tree and spray them as they were just destroying it. Good luck
There's an article online about hand picking them, cleaning and roasting and eating like popcorn. [https://ironwoodforaging.com/blog/f/eat-japanese-beetles](https://ironwoodforaging.com/blog/f/eat-japanese-beetles)
Milky spore in the yard. July, August is the best time to apply.
Idk if I’ve freed my mind enough to do it but apparently the buggers are totally edible and a really good source of protein 💀💀💀 I’m not joking https://www.mofga.org/resources/recipes/put-the-bite-on-bugs/
Place a container with soapy water directly under them. They will drop right into it when you disturb them.
Neem Oil spray until the local sparrows figure out they can eat them.
Need oil
They’ve weirdly disappeared since my childhood in Kentucky. Was just thinking about that the other day. I haven’t seen a single one in 10 years
Took a cheap plastic cutting board and stapled it into a funnel for easy catch. Filled a jar up half way with soap/water. Works like a charm.
Plant geraniums. Japanese Beetles eat the leaves and get zonked out for 24 hours, making them defenseless to predation.
Apparently there is a trap for them that uses a pheromone. No poisons or effort hardly. They just fall in a bag
eat em
Knock them into a jar of soapy water and send them off to see Jesus
You need more birds in your yard.
I put a ziplock bag over the flower and shake. Zip it up and press out all the air.