I am so sorry for "preaching" at you PattiOh. I know that not everyone can or would want to keep chickens and guineas, etc. I am just so freaked about everything right now. Please forgive me. I keep a jar with alchohol and water around. I pick off bugs and drop them into the alchohol. Especially great for when I find a tick crawling on me. Eeeek! The baggie thing is a great idea. That would save me from extra walking too. I am so crippled up now that I apprecitiate anything that saves me from haveing to do extra walking. I completely understand where you are coming from. Several years back we had millions of Japanese beetles move onto our property and they devoured everything with leaves and flowers! The next two years we also had grasshoppers. They were so bad that the Pumpkin farmers a few miles from me lost their entire crop, which is 1/3 of their year's income. Nothing worked to get rid of the grasshoppers. They ate up everything, leaves, veggies, fruit and even would jump on me and my animals. I tried every organic method and homemade spray. As fast as I got rid of them, more would move down out of the prairie. I finally declared WAR and got some Sevins! Regarding bees - I heard last night that scientists now believe that they know what is killing off the honey bees world wide. Cell phones. The signals disorient the homing of bees and they cannot find their way back to the hive. The entire colony will starve without the workers bees bringing food into the colony. Poor things.

I've been through it all - tried hand-picking them, sprayed a couple of times, etc, and after 3 seasons of decimated lillies, I actively dug many bulbs out and threw them away. Last Spring/Summer'14, after I had done a lot of web-searching, I began watering with a spinosad solution once the tips emerged. I watered them with either a spinosad or neem solution every 5-8 days, RELIGIOUSLY, and my lillies all did well. These beetles reproduce like crazy, so you really need to treat at least weekly!!! Water the soil AND the leaves (especially the underside of the leaves) with the treatment solution.

You can not "dig up the bulbs, dry them, store them". Lilies do not go dormant like other bulbs. They will just get dehydrated and die. You can find some useful info about controlling the beetles here.

I have managed to keep a few lilies. I would grow a ton more if it weren't for the RLLB. I hand pick them off every year. I haven't had to do that much this year and the foliage on my Orania is looking really good. I take a large 5 gallon bucket with a few inches of water in the bottom and hold that under the leaf they are sitting on and just flick them in. They do like to drop and turn over on their back so all that is showing is a brown underside and I can't see them at all when they do that. The large bucket with a handle makes the whole process a whole lot easier and more successful. I pour the water with the beetles onto the driveway and step on them. I had Nicotiana 'Lime' for two years running because it reseeded for me, but had none this year. They were growing right next to the Lilies but I didn't notice the beetles on them.