Not a help THIS year but the best trick is to have a bowl of water with a few drops of dish soap. When you see one of one of their sex orgy's in action brush them in to the bowl - they all drown.

They leave scents for other beetles to come so in the spring watch and dump.

SO NOT buy any Beetle traps. They actually bring MORE to your yard. Also they eat underground when they lay eggs which is why they are so nasty. You are only seeing the above ground damage. so KILL KILL KILL!

To control permanently, apply milky spore disease. You won't see results immediately, but it kills the grubs.

information on using and applying milky spore.

this year.. treat the lawn.. however you wish ... to decimate the grub population eating the roots of your grass ..

in the hope of reducing next years plague ....

IMHO.. you will never be totally rid of them .... and like every plague.. you have up and down years with the populations ....

and .. think this one out... lure traps ... are given as gifts to neighbors upwind .... they are a LURE... i dont lure things to my garden.. in the hopes there will be less.. roll that around your head for a bit.. lol ..

another prevention.. might be to resort to spraying the maters .... sometimes.. it is necessary to go the chemical route ... if you decide such.. learn to do it properly.. with the least amount of chemicals necessary.. AND FOLLOW ALL DIRECTIONS ON THE LABEL PRECISELY... this is not a situation.. where twice as much is twice as good .... it it says half a teaspoon per gallon.. that doesnt mean half the bottle is better.. lol ..

good luck

ken

I use the soapy water trick. Works best in the later evening, when the beetles move very slowly.

Also, as mentioned, apply Milky Spore to the lawn.

I don't do the traps - I cannot stomach even the thought of having to empty them...

Just my opinion, there is nothing you can do to prevent them. We have about 4 acres and have very few grubs (so few that when we dig up a section to check there are none). But they fly in from the neighbors'. That is a good amount of flying. Their favorite plant in my yard is the Knockout roses. They also eat the hibiscus, but don't touch the hydrangea (they do sit on them, but don't eat them). Even if you spray the plant (which I hate to do, who knows what else it kills), they eat the opening roses. I sprayed one rose bush the the leaves were left alone, but the flowers are FULL of beetles (like 6 beetles inside in flower, gross). If you use traps you need to place them far from your garden on their flight path to your garden. If you have a smaller yard don't use them at all.

You want to treat your lawn to save your lawn, but it won't save your gardens unless your neighbors do the same. I do think this year is worse than most, not sure why. I have been collecting them, dunking them into soapy water.

Another trick but it's pretty yucky! Collect a bunch of them - put them in a blender with water - blend and then spray on your flowers - They are one of the few insects that will actually die from eating their kind.

I would use a garage sale blender though! LOL

As others have suggested already, I find a drop of dishwashing liquid in a plastic cup of water does the job. If you find the right time to go out looking for them, you can catch a lot and do that for a week every day/night and you can get them under control in most cases. I don't have many Japanese Beetles, I have Asiatic Beetles, which are the mahogany color ones that are a little smaller than the Japanese beetles, so I don't know the best time to look for the Japanese kind. I see the Asiatics out after dark, between 8 and 10pm is a good time for me. I go out with a flashlight. They are easy to just flick into the water and you can catch earwigs that way too, which are out at the same time.

you peeps are way to UPCLOSE with these bugs for me... lol ...

you know what i really do???

I IGNORE THEM ... they are part of nature.. part of the garden.. who am i to deny them their reign in my garden... ooohhhhmmmmm

now.. oily .... when i was in suburbia.. with that finely manicured monoculture know as a green kentucky blue lawn ... i had all kinds of grub problems in the lawn ... i was always treating the lawn ....

fast forward 10 years ... now on 5 acres.. with a lawn that i now call a meadow ... some grass.. dandylions, yarrow, plantain, and every other weed that takes to mowing .... [all the grass goes dormant in july/august ... only the weeds stay green] .... and i dont have half the problems i used to .... i really think the root of the problem is the monoculture lawn [did you get the pun???] ....

they do not seem to be in plague proportion in my garden this year.. but i am sure they will be next week.. now that i have denied such.. lol

ken

Picking the beetles off and squashing or drowning them only works if there's a light infestation or if you've got lots of time to patrol the garden. By all accounts, milky spore will be effective if you and all your neighbors use it; otherwise as mentioned JBs will fly into your yard from surrounding areas en masse (rose of Sharon, grape plants and roses are like candy to them).

I reluctantly use a pyrethrin spray to control Japanese beetles, used in the evening or early morning to try to limit the effect on bees (pyrethrins are highly toxic to bees) and only on plants that are very susceptible to JB damage.

If you don't want to bother with spraying or other controls, it's best not to grow plants they preferentially attack. There are lots of good choices that can be found online.

The idea of blending Japanese beetles corpses into a liquid and spraying them on plants is appealing, but doesn't work. They could care less about their dead comrades.

Another plant they absolutely love is hollyhocks. And yes, a light infestation can be controlled by hand picking (which I used to do), but if you have upwards of 50 on a single plant, that ain't going to work.

I would definitely go the milky spore route. A friend did it and it worked. Get your neighbors to cooperate. Tell them you'll do it for them and explain that it will kill their grass eventually if they aren't gardeners. That will scare them, lol.

I've done an exhaustive search on how to control this devil and for the most part Milky Spore seems to be the preferred way for control (perhaps not 100% getting rid of) the grubs.

Milky Spores doesn't work either. The beetles will just fly into your yard from the neighbors' yards who didn't use Milky Spores.

The only way to control these is with chemicals. Sadly, no organic method will work. I've had great success with the Bayer products.

I have a small garden, 1/4 acre, not 5 like Ken has and insect damage is very noticeable and takes some of the pleasure of the garden away if I allow it to get to that point. I make the time to patrol the garden and I've never used a chemical in 25 years of gardening. It doesn't take that much time and effort in a garden of my size to keep things manageable. I don't have to have every leaf perfect and can tolerate minor amounts of damage. It just requires consistency at the right times. In my garden at least. If you have a larger garden or a larger infestation, maybe it takes more time, but hand picking is very effective.

Japanese Beetles are slow and easily can be knocked off a plant with one tiny flick of a finger. I ignore things 75% of the time. Many insects are not even on my radar screen. Aphids are one of them. I leave them for the ladybugs. But earwigs and Asiatic beetles [and Japanese Beetles] make a real mess of the foliage on lots of plants. I was out last night and found a fair amount of them but nothing overwhelming. It only took me 20 minutes. I've been keeping up with it. Plus I have a lot of birds in the yard but I don't think they eat earwigs or Asiatic or Japanese beetles.

If hand picking keeps me from having to pick up a chemical that is going to be a problem for bees, butterflies and beneficial insects, then it's a small price to pay.

Mostly I do what Ken does and ignore them. They seem to be in rather small numbers this year. I did apply Milky Spore to the lawn last year, but really it's a futile attempt because they will just fly in from the neighborhood.
I do use only Bayer Insect control on only the ones that are really feeling the "crunch" lol and ONLY when necessary. Seems to work for me :)

Cathy

I don't have JBs, so I can only report one method I've heard others have used. Some gardeners write off July-August in their gardens and deadhead all the favorite JB blooms--roses, etc.--JB "candy." Thus there is less to attract JBs to the garden. By the time the roses go into their fall blooming cycle, most/all the JBs are gone.

I suspect such a method won't keep all the JBs out of your garden, or if you have a really heavy plague of them, it may not help at all, but it must at least be a relief not to see an orgy of JBs carrying on daily on your rose blooms--since there are no blooms.

Kate

If you visit the Winter Sowing Forum,and look for the posting:
Castor Bean Plant, some one over there has posted a picture of a J.B. dead, on a Castor Bean Plant,very interesting,go check it out.

Dublinbay, I pretty much end up doing that (cutting the blooms off the roses). Another thing I think I am going to do is move the rose away from the hibiscus (Kopper King). I think the hibiscus would get eaten less if the rose wasn't right there.

The JBs at my house are not slow! I approach the rose bush which has probably 50 on it and as soon as I pick 2 off the rest fly off or play dead (dropping to the ground). The best time is first thing in the morning. I was out picking at 7:30 before I went to work.

Well, that's interesting, Sue and Dublinbay. I don't have a lot of roses in the garden and the few that I do, have an early bloom period in the beginning of June and I cut them all back low after that, so there are very few blooms on my roses right now. I will have more later and I have noticed that the later bloom is pretty free of problems. I also have a Kopper King Hibiscus that so far has only had some little caterpillar do minor damage, but no beetles eating it.

I have had few JB probs over the years. Not many of my neighbors garden or have more than grass and foundation plantings. No roses for blocks around me for the most part. A few Rose of Sharon's but that's about it. So maybe there is a low population in our neighborhood.

I think the Asiatic beetles came into the garden in organic soil that someone gave me two years ago. I have more than I ever had before since then. The Asiatic have been slow moving and there aren't 50 at a time on any plant. I don't think I found even 25 in the whole garden last night. So it's easy to just hold a cup under them and even if they try to drop, they drop into the water. I had that problem with red lily beetle, who are much faster moving and they love to drop and they turn over when they drop so their brown underside blends in with the soil and you can't see them. I found that using a 5 gallon bucket with a few inches of water in the bottom and holding that under the whole branch they were on, solved that problem. I found it much less frustrating to try to catch them that way. Hardly any of them got away.

I seem to remember there is a time of day when the JB are slow, but I forgot when that is.

Someone made a good suggestion to me. Go to your neighbors and offer them free Japanese Beetle traps. Then the beetles will all go to their yards. LOL.

I never noticed Japanese beetles in this area until a few years ago. Since they got here they have been going strong, and don't seem to be very picky about what they will eat. I think I read that they will eat over 400 different species. Some years they will eat things that they never did before. They also tend to focus on specific species until they look like crap and then move on to something fresh that is in its prime.

I try to go out with soapy water several times a day. I don't know if it makes much of a dent in the population. But it makes me feel better, especially when I get them during an orgy :) Luckily they don't like any of our trees, because I don't know how I would handle that. Their favorites in our yard are: raspberries, all vining beans, cannas, rhubarb, salvias, persicarias, cupheas, dahlias, hibiscus, hollyhocks, and zinnias. They have also been seen munching on castor bean. I haven't seen any bodies nearby though. I have seen them eating 4 o'clocks too, which is also supposed to be poisonous to them.

We have plenty of birds and I never saw them eat one. We don't have much lawn and never water it either, but the last few years it has been rainier than usual. I have been thinking about using milky spore lately as well. It might not work, but at least it shouldn't do any harm, right?

I have noticed that the beasts take to one of my roses in particular - Wildberry Breeze. It's almost like a trap plant. They'll mosey over to some of the other rugosas here and there, I'll find occasional stray orgies going on, but for the most part they congregate on that one bush. I've often wondered if it's the color of the flower and/or form of the flower (hot pink, single bloom), but not sure since I'm not well versed in beetle dining preferences.

So it's not too bad to deal with, and like Prarie, I spend 15-20 minutes to deal with the problem so I can enjoy my plantings as opposed to nuking the plants, though I'm usually out there every other evening or third evening due to time constraints. Yea, I get some damage because I'm not super-diligent, but I can live with that, especially since they really only bother the rugosas, occasionally the paniculata hydrangea but not much.

I started to go out last night about 9pm and when I got to the door it was raining lightly. So I went back and got a hooded sweatshirt and went out anyway, thinking I would be right back in because there would be no bugs out in the rain. What was I thinking? lol They were out in force. I found them on Chrysanthemums, Echinaceas, Basil, Salivas, Julia Child Rose and surprisingly, Ninebark Summer Wine where they were a little camouflaged. 9pm is a good time for me with these Asiatics. They are out in force at that point. I went out at 3am last week, just because I found myself awake and couldn't sleep and I was curious to see if they were out at that hour. There were hardly any at that hour.

Yea - ignore them until they completely devour 4 roses!! Milkey Spore does work - not this year but next.

So if i buy a trap and put that a 100 ft. from my garden the beetles will all flock to that location? This seems to be the easiest solution. Then after it is filled up, then what? Apply gas and light on fire?

I saw my first japanese beetle yesterday on a rose.
Seek and destroy...he lasted maybe a milli-second once in site.

Regarding Traps:

"Because these obnoxious, metallic green and brown beetles feed on over 250 different species of plants (roses, lindens and maples are favored), high expectations are given to traps to help save the day. Japanese beetle traps are very effective in attracting and trapping adult Japanese beetles, but they are ineffective in protecting your susceptible trees and shrubs from Japanese beetle feeding damage.
This seemingly contradictory answer requires an explanation. Japanese beetle traps, sold at most garden center outlets, usually contain two separate, chemical lures. One lure is a feeding attractant that attracts both male and female beetles. The second lure is a pheromone that attracts male beetles. These lures work very well in attracting hundreds, even thousands of adult beetles toward the trap.
Therein lies the problem. Many adult beetles are attracted into the area around the trap, but they do not necessarily get caught inside the trap. Susceptible plant species located nearby can be more heavily damaged than if the traps were not used at all. This can be true even if the trap is full of captured adults.
If you would like to experiment with Japanese beetle traps, be sure to locate them as far away as possible from the plants you are trying to protect. Placing a trap in the middle of your rose garden, for example, is just asking for trouble."

The JB's don't bother an heirloom rose I have (name unknown, I lost the tag), but they LOVE the pink knockouts. Now that I think of it, they only seem to really bother one of the 3, so I think it even matters if it is a double or single. But they COVER the one they love. It is absolutely gross. It looks like the flowers were dipped in glue and then beatles.

"Apply gas and light on fire?"
OMG! I think tea just shot out my nose! Love the idea. You'll feel better at least.

Your best bet is to garden with plants that are not eaten by Japanese beetles. There are a lot of things they will not touch. You can spray with milky spore (needs to be done for three consecutive years and then every so many years after) or you can spread poison on your lawn. They will simply fly to your yard from your neighbors yard or from the fields near your home.

The Japanese beetles emerge here on July 1 and remain until frost. I enjoy my roses in May and June and then remove the blooms for the rest of the summer. Otherwise I have huge gardens in a five acre lawn and no other plants that the beetles will eat. As I see it, why fight nature when it almost always wins.
BC

You do not need to apply Milky Spore for more then 1 year because the act of killing one grub causes billions of Milky Spores to enter the soil.

Once a grub eats the product it dies and explodes (basically) MORE Milky Spore. In fact the more grubs it kills the better protection the NEXT year.

The only thing they like in my garden are Black Eye Susan's.

uh oh, speaking of all this jap beetle stuff, i just found 1 on my pink velour crepe myrtle.

This was helpful. Ordered the milky spore bacteria today. Will go out at 8:00 tonight and knock the adults in a 5 gallon bucket with soapy water. They are all over our newly planted orchard.

dawnbowman - where are you located ??? I have not seen one this year and only a few in 2014 - 2011 was the worst and they are pretty much gone now! Milky Spore SEEMED to work but they seem to be gone from S Wisconsin.

Dawn, I'll suggest a great solution for you and your orchard. It's a product called Surround WP. It's a spray consisting of kaolin clay and some additives to allow it to be in water and applied with your sprayer.

The clay dries on the foliage and fruit, forming a barrier that beetles, weevils, caterpillars, and a host of other pests don't like to feed on or even lay their eggs on.

A couple of coatings will probably do it for the JB season; it wears off in time but the beetles don't stick around very long.

I don't recommend Surround for ornamentals because the coating is....well, kaolin clay! It's ugly. Looks pretty awful on our ornamental plants, but I sure use it in my veggie garden on leafy stuff, squash stems, and vegetables themselves.

It's used in commercial orchards, by the way. So if you feel overwhelmed, then there's one more useful tool for you.

there is a very active fruit forum ... and besides rhiz ... they do things a lot differently than us non-orchard peeps ...

never know where you will find your muse ...

ken

Wow! Lot's of great ideas, but most won't work...don't waste your sanity or household funding on traps and chemicals. You have to know the insect's vulnerability and have the willingness to go to town on them a few days a week when they come out to breed...usually in the month of July...the little buggers bee-line straight for anything resembling roses, vining plants and assorted fruiting trees...treating you garden like government cheese.

Here's the trick. The Japanese beetle's vulnerabilty is temperature and it's innate tuck & roll defense strategy. When the sun goes down and the temperature drops the beetles do not fly. Simply put your non-dominant hand under the leaf of the plant and then lightly tap the leaf with the other and they will fall directly into your palm...they don't bite, sting or scratch...no worries. You can humanely crush them between your digits or if you're a wimp you can put them in a jar at the end of your raiding mission...cap the jar and let the sun bake them the next day...empty jar of baked beetles in the trash, rinse and repeat the following evening.

I guarantee they will get the hint and you can have your garden back.

I had one Knockout rose that they just LOVED! I took it out. As soon as the buds would form, they were all over it. They just devoured this poor rose. I do spray some of my roses with soapy water if it gets bad, but other than that, I have other plants that I can enjoy which they never seem to touch - hydrangeas, coneflowers, sedums, catmint, daylilies, etc.

Early morning when it's cool works well for knocking them into soapy water as well. If you are in an area where it's too cool for milky spore to do well, there are nematodes that can be applied annually that will attack the grubs in the soil.