Jmorris, I would guess katydid nymphs, which are like slender green grasshoppers with no wings. They will become adult katydids, nearly 2" with leafshaped green wings. Both young and adults love rose buds, which they slice in a sheer plane. Put a house and garden aerosol in your toolkit and puff them when you see them. They are hard to catch, but you can usually spot them in the vicinity of the characteristic damage. Roseleaf, you are right that beetles will prefer a fragrant red over a non-fragrant red. They will also go to scentless bright yellow roses like Oregold. The rose garden is flooded with rose scent and (if beetles are already present) pheromones. Flower-pest insects are definitely attracted to specific colors, generally light and bright ones. That's why sticky traps are used to monitor for small pest insects. They reflexively fly to a blob of the colors they are wired for-- yellow is the strongest attractor in most cases. Bright yellow Carefree Sunshine gets many more beetles than pale-yellow Prairie Harvest nearby.

A female scientist on National Public Radio stated last week that some of the pesticides used in crop dusting make the bees lose their orientation so they can't find their way back to the hives. She is one of the primary scientists studying this. She said they don't know where the lost bees go, but probably many of them die of the cold nights being exposed to the weather outside the hive. Yes there are mites and pests and those have taken a toll too, but she said that does not explain why a colony of worker bees leave the hive in the morning and never come back home. Today I say my first honey bee of the season. She was alone as far as I could tell, but I was glad to see her among my roses, since last year I did not see my first honeybee until August. I have seen no bumblebees this year, and very few carpenter bees, but it's been very cold here so the bumbles may be staying in their nests until it warms up.

I bet your Ant is really ANTS, Digit! I don't know about carpenter ants, but I have tiny black ants in my yard that "don't exist" from mid-summer thru fall, but every spring they swarm out of "somewhere," and there are millions of them "piled up" on the grass or soil! I'll look out the window and see what looks like a little "pile" of potting soil that somehow was accidentally dumped on the grass, and when I go out to explore the situation I discover it's a writhing "clump" of ants! And they ARE tiny, so there really are MILLIONS of them. They have so undermined the soil under my sidewalk where it meets my little front porch that the sidewalk is now at least a couple inches lower than it originally was, and it's now a BIG step to get up onto the porch! From what I can figure out, it looks to me like they "thrived" for years under---wait for it---the landscape fabric and rock mulch the previous owners had put in! When I was removing all that "STUFF" I found huge nests of them, at least I found the hundreds of tunnels that went down into the, apparently, HUGE cities! They had even eaten huge holes in the (nasty!) landscape fabric! And that stuff is virtually indestructible! When I first found them I thought: No big problem! Funny me!!! At first I just took household insect spray and saturated the tunnels and soil around them. They stood there, stuck their tongues out at me, and laughed at me! After a couple years I discovered that dumping (gallons!) of ammonia down the tunnels helped--kinda! Except for the time I poured it around some HOT stepping stones when I killed the grass near the stones, it seemed to actually help the grass and plants, so I kept pouring--but there were ALWAYS more ants! A few years ago I started using Bug-B-Gon Max on the, also large, omnipresent population of earwigs I've had ever since moving in here. For a couple years they were eating more of my veggies than I was! Since that stuff was working for the earwigs I started sprinkling it in, on, and around the ants and tunnels whenever I found them, and that, finally, seems to be really helping! I'll know more for sure in about a month when they should start Erupting again! I'm not expecting them to be GONE this year, but I do expect them to be noticeably "diminished!" Hoping in a couple years I'll be able to mostly rid my yard of them! If I were you I'd do some Serious Watching this spring, so if they really are there--in a huge city somewhere far down in the underworld--you'll find them as soon as possible and be able to start to "do something" about them. The longer they're there, the worse they'll be. I have NO doubt about that! Good luck, Skybird P.S. HI, BugDoc! Welcome to RMG! Nice to see somebody around here who might know something about "bugs!" If you have time, go to the Who's Here in 2014 thread and introduce yourself. We're glad you found us!

gpwuster-Let me ask you a question and I don't mean this in a hateful way.Can YOU "hold it" for 9 hours? To answer your question,yes,you are expecting too much of him to hold the poop and pee that long! First of all,Monty is still a puppy.I think it is unfair to the dog to keep him crated for 9 hours without a break. That's just my opinion.Could you possibly have someone come in during the day and let him out or maybe you or DH could come home for lunch and let him out? Also,small dogs should not be going 9 hours without food because of blood sugar issues.They need to eat several small meals during the day. Another solution would be closing off an area with a puppy gate (not a closed door).Maybe a laundry room,bathroom or some other small uncarpeted area in the house for him during the day.Place the opened crate,(prop the door open with something heavy) food,water,a few favorite toys and a puppy pad in the enclosed area.I know there is a lot of negative advice about the puppy pads,but when the choice is for the puppy to be locked in a crate for 9 hours a day as opposed to being in a secured area with a puppy pad,in my opinion the puppy pad is better.If he can hold it all night and has never peed/pooped in the crate at night I don't think he will start.I know that all dogs are not the same but I have a 13 year old female Chi that potties on puppy pads when we are not home but when we are she runs to the door and bounces around when she needs to go out.She doesn't pee anywhere else in the house.She doesn't use the puppy pad when someone is here to let her out so that kinda debunks the theory that they will think it is ok to pee in the house if they are pad trained!LOL I am at this moment training a tiny 7 week old Chi-weenie (less than 1 1/2 lbs) to go on the puppy pad.I have had her 3 days and she is already going to the pad by herself to pee.We are still working on the poop thing but she is learning fast.We also take her outside and she does her jobs as well.I am disabled and can't take her outside.She only goes out when DH is here to take her,so pad training is the only other option.She is crated only at night and when we are going to be out for a few hours during the day.She has never peed or pooped in her crate.I'm not saying this is the greatest solution or that I won't be here tomorrow with the same problems others are experiencing.Just that this is what is working for me,so far!LOL