It all depends on JB pressure in your area. Also roses that have less damage one year can be hit hard another year.
Overall only plastic and paper roses are resistant.
Olga

I've found that red roses with no scent are less likely to have beetles. That doesn't mean they're resistant, just less attractive. Last year I used Sunsprite as my sacrificial rose. It is scented and yellow and the beetles loved it. They would eat it and most of the other roses were left alone.

The do love yellow roses. I got rid of a diseased yellow rose in my yard and had much less JBs last year. Coincidence? Of course now I have other yellow roses.....

Rugosas seem to more resistant, especially the foliage. The JBs go for everything else first. I have a mixed row up my driveway and by the end of the season everything is denuded except the rugosas, which are fine. The will go for the flowers but only after other choices.

I'm into my forth season of milky spore and between that and the dry heat, have fewer jbs than I have had--at least, so far. Touch wood.

I actually think fragrant rugosas are the first choice of JBs in my garden. Go figure.
Olga

I have two roses that JB ignore, Fire Meidiland and Francois Rabelais, I've never seen much JB damage on them, just few leaves if any. Both roses are red, scentless, and double.
The favorite JB food was regular Knock Out, Carefree Beauty and Carefree Wonder, all three had in common fewer petals and light fragrance. The rest of the roses do OK with daily squishing and Bayer's spray. Of course, it's managable for me to do because I do not grow hundreeds of roses.
Also, I've noticed the most JB are drawn to the roses grown in full sun, the roses with afternoon shade get less visitors.

Each year we go through the discussion of roses resistant to JBs (there are none) After experience in my mixed-variety rose garden (here in Maine) and living with JBs year after year (some years worse than others) I can tell you that JBs are equal opportunity creatures. Some years it seems they haven't "found" a certain rose, only to act the next year as if they've been eating and congregating on it forever. I believe rugosas are a favorite of theirs, and they will gladly eat the leaves, esp. if the rose is not in bloom.

Once bloomers are good, but if you have a major JB infestation to begin with, they will still come and eat the rose leaves.

The only way to keep them under control is to keep their numbers from expanding by killing every and all JB you see, every day, from July to Sept. Also apply grub killer to your lawn and beg your neighbors to do the same. Remove any trees/shrubs they are attracted to.

What I do is "spot spray" with Bayer Rose & Flower Insect Killer" single or clusters of beetles. Every day while they're out, sometimes two or three times. The biggest attractant to JBs (even more than roses) is other JBs. If you can stop the pile-ups from occurring, you can keep the numbers under control.

Well, it all depends on where you live and grow your roses I guess. I have lived and grown roses in this town since 1975, and in that time I have seen just one JB. I don't know what it is about this area, but they just don't seem to be able to hack the climate. There are other things that make up for them not being here, and that is the thrips. A lot of wheat is grown around about here, and, as many of you know, thrips love wheat. However, once the wheat harvest is over, we are done with them until the next year. I really don't miss the JBs though, and since moving down here from New York state, have seen one to none.

Hi Sis,
No JB's here in Florida. Maybe you should move here. Together we can fight the thrips.
Nancy

Use chemicals. Bayer Advanced Sytstemic 2 in 1 Rose and Flower Care. Use the spray if you have beetles; get the granular version started in the spring and you won't have any beetles and won't have to spray. I had a huge, huge, huge problem with JB and this completely solved it.

Plant a bing cherry tree within 50 ft of your roses. I had JBs bad last year. They devoured 2 cherry trees but left my roses alone.

Lots of good stuff here. Red, scentless promising. Will do Bayer products and check the buildup. And my Golden Wings--yellow and in the afternoon sun is the biggest magnet. Time to go. Also think its time to mow down hedge
of Rugosas which are covered in doubled up beetles all summer. I always feel better having a battle plan. Thanks,
Mary

The Fairy and Coral Flower Carpet are the only roses that the beetles seem to ignore, but it may be because I have so many other roses to choose from. I have also noticed that some of the Meidiland roses are left relatively uneaten, such as Fire and Scarlet Meidiland. I wonder if it is because these roses are TRULY scentless, unlike other roses that seem scentless to my nose but are scented enough to be attractive to the beetles (example: Knockout, Carefree Sunshine, William Baffin)

With all the years we've had jb's, my minis seem to be spared of their attacks

red roses with no scent = Illusion (as previously noted)

I definitely agree that unscented red roses seem to be the least appetizing. What they go after depends on how hungry they are. They adore my white and yellow roses, so I ended up removing those from my garden. They also don't seem to care much for Home Run or Knockout.

Knock Out

{{gwi:292418}}

And Illusion looks like that too. If the pressure is high, all roses look good for JBs. Taller roses are often get more attention, that is why mimis can be OK in the areas with moderate JBs. infestations.
Olga

Does anyone know anything about Larkspur's toxicity to JB? The link below states that it is attractive to JB and when they eat it, it kills them! I have some larkspur growing in my rose bed and if it is a major attractor, I want to dispose of it before the JB arrive.

I have some Oenothera which grows on the opposite side of my two acres from my rose garden. It is the absolute favorite food of JB. The first year it grew in my garden, it seem to act as a trap crop. The JBs population on those flowers was unbelievable, while the population in the rest of my yard was maintainable by shaking the beetles into a bucket of water in the morning. Last year my self-seeding Oenothera succomd to the drought and I had no plants which survived to bloom stage. The JB population was WAY down. At first I thought is was because this highly fragrant yellow flower was non-existant in my garden. Then the reports came in that JB population was way down everywhere. This year is a banner year for the Oenothera, each evening it permeates the air with its delightful scent.

As a question to the rose experts on this forum, would you cut down the larkspur and the Oenothera in order to avoid attracting the JBs?

Does anyone have experience using trap crops?

Kathy

Here is a link that might be useful: scroll down to Larkspur

This year the beetles have decided to concentrate on Night Owl and Golden Celebration which (thanks Ingrid for your observation) are also the tallest! The Fairy, Sweet Chariot, Bluch Noisette and even Sea Foam are untouched. (However Blush Noisette is new and not tall yet). I have a good deal of mid-day shade in the back part of my garden which seems to be helping those roses-- with the exception of a white rugosa which is 20 feet from any of the other "victims"!! IMHO JB's absolutely love the tender petals of rugosa blooms.

Last year was my first experience with JBs. They targeted my fragrant red roses and Brite Eyes climber, but totally ignored all the red and pink Knockouts right next to these roses. This year I bought Bye-Bye Beetles, so I'm hoping it will do the trick. The JBs showed up around the 4th of July if I remember correctly.

The one hardy shrub rose I have that has no JB damage is Hope for Humanity. Clusters of dark red, double petaled 2-1/2" blooms, lightly fragrant. Described as medium height, mine is still only about 24" tall after a very bad transplant experience a few years ago. I dug it out and replanted it last year, and it is doing great! I thought it was the variety, itself that was deterring the JBs but I'll have to observe next year after having read the comments regarding height, color fragrance etc. I have 3 (8 ft) William Baffin shrub roses that the JBs absolutely love. Their favorite thing in my yard is my 30 foot long cotoneaster hedge, 2nd roses, 3rd rhubarb(?)! Unfortunately, all are in relatively close proximity. After having decent success with Bonide Neem Oil spray on my roses when the JBs first showed up this year, I cut the hedge back to about 4 1/2 feet to be able to reach to spray more easily--really have to keep up with spraying, so I began hand picking. The first time 1 week ago, I picked 775 JBs (out of curiosity, i counted to see how many there were) in just 2 hours of off and on picking. Decreasing numbers since then (only 25 in all today). I have inoculated my lawn with milky spore, and beneficial nematodes to hopefully hit them in the grub stage.

The beetle traps for the past decade works wonder. This year I don't bother to set the trap since I caught so few last year (like 10 beetles per trap, not worth it). But back in 2012 when I first set the trap, I got thousands in each bag and fed them to the birds. The birds have been hunting down the beetles ever since.

I set the traps FAR AWAY from my rose garden, see excerpt from below link: "Research that was conducted at the University of Kentucky indicated that the Japanese beetle traps attract several more beetles than are caught in the traps. Thus, the rose bushes and plants along the flight path of the beetles and in the same area of the traps placement are likely to incur much more damage than if no traps are used."

Japanese Beetle control

This year with no traps, and beetles leave Bolero alone, I also planted a red geranium next to Bolero so the strong scent of geranium distracted the beetles. Pic. taken this year, Bolero barely survived my zone 5a winter so it's so short. I credit the strong scented geranium for deterring both rabbits and beetles from eating super-short Bolero. The plastic is to guard the rabbits, but I will take it off since rabbits haven't eaten Bolero as of August 4, 2022.

Many and tightly packed petals of Austin roses are harder for Beetles to nest inside, so they devour fewer petals like Pink Peace, Betty White, and Knock-outs.

Agree with others' observation that roses in partial shade have less damage than roses in full sun. My garden is very shady, with most roses getting 4 to 6 hours of sun max.

Agree that beetles are less attracted to red and many petals' roses. For the past 12 years, very fragrant W.S. 2000 is never eaten, same with The Dark Lady, and many petals and red roses like Barcelona, Munstead Wood and the Squire.

The thickness of mulch prevents beetles' eggs from hatching into grubs and preventing grubs from burrowing deep into the soil. Six of my decades old trees died after the past two harsh zone 5a winters, so I asked the tree company to grind them into mulch for me. One adult beetle can lay up to 60 eggs, but their eggs get dried out on top of dry mulch. Below info. is from the web:

"Adult beetles are present for about 6 weeks every summer. The adult beetles begin to emerge from the ground in late June and new adults continue to appear throughout July. Each beetle lives from 30 to 45 days."

In early spring I work my soil, and the only place where I find grubs burrowing deep in my dense & heavy clay is near the rainspout where there's no mulch, or soil is made fluffy by acidic rain. But I can't find any grubs in my vegetable beds where I heaped leaves up to 1 foot through the winter.

Early this morning 8/5/22 at 7 am I went out to hunt for Japanese Beetles and I can't find any. The birds got them beforehand. The year with the LEAST beetles is when I piled up the most mulch, like recent 2 years of six trees converted into mulch. Or back in 2016 when I collected 90 bags of leaves from neighbors as mulch. I have all the plants that attract beetles: 150+ varieties of roses for the past decade, a crabapple tree, and a cherry tree.