buford, thanks a lot. I've put up with enough without using some pesticides. Sometimes compomises are necessary. If it was just my small yard, it might not be so bad, but so little is being done about them in my locale, they are going to get out of control from people not fighting them. Some people don't even know they are here yet because they don't grow roses. I did see two homes not far from me with beetle traps. One house less than 2 blocks from me had one hanging right by the mass of roses in their front yard, don't know how often they emptied it. I walked by there after the beetles were gone, and saw no damage to the roses there. BUT all I remember of those roses, they are pink, think Carefree Beauty. Yellow and orange ones are THE worst at attracting them. My favorites, of course. I didn't see it myself, but someone told me that in the park on the mulberry trees down the by creek along a lengthy bike path, they were so bad, they were hanging from the trees in chains. I don't know what the city will do about those, if anything. The only thing I know being done was traps in the city park rose garden. Some garden centers don't seem to get too bothered by them. I figure it's partly due to all that asphalt surrounding them because there is no place left to lay eggs, but as they get worse, the beetles will find it all if it's outside. One mailman last year went to work, came home that evening to a completely defoliated elm tree he had just planted. I will also try to do something about the grubs, but as before, with so few people fighting them, it will do little good. It takes community awareness, effort and dedicated cooperation in the worst heat of the year with high humidity which makes it even more difficult to make any significant inroads toward reducing their numbers. I think you're ok with your imidacloprid if you cut the bloom off after you spray it because of its residual effects, small price to pay for saving a few bees.

The risk would be to roses that are marginally hardy, so given your climate zone, almost all roses should be OK, and certainly Baltimore Belle. Judging from a study that has been discussed here, you might be able to protect foliage against severe JB damage without doing a lot of environmental harm. (Protecting the flowers is much harder because untreated petals are opening every day.) This would entail removing the open flowers first, then spraying with cyfluthrin, Pyola, or azadirachtin. The latter two are organic products. Cyfluthrin is the most effective. You can find a Bayer spray concentrate with cyfluthrin only (not cyfluthrin + Merit-- imidacloprid-- which will cause spider mite problems). Pyola is available from GardensAlive. Azadirachtin is the insecticidal fraction of neem oil which has been removed from the commonly available neem oil products, probably including whatever you are using. Read neem labels on garden counters until you find azadirachtin as an active ingredient. Pyola was more effective in the study, though. The organic products would need to be applied weekly, cyfluthrin every two weeks.

(Blush) Not "superior." Just been doing rose-ID searches longer than you have, that's all. If my knowledge really was "superior" ...I'd already know the name of your rose. ;-) I don't. But I keep trying. :) I went to your PhotoBucket webpage and looked at the newly-added photos of #14. Something about the way the bloom's inner petals look after it has opened up is making me think of Medallion. Medallion's inner petals get a sort of "jumbled" lappearance afer they unfurl. Also, Medallion's bloom-colors do what you described yours as doing ...at least in my yard they do. Medallion was introduced in 1973 ...so it passes your age-test. My (only) Medallion bush suffered severe winter-kill this year, dying almost to the graft-union ...so though it's coming back I'd have to say it is presently in poor condition. But I can tell you from directly observing it that it (1) has comparatively few thorns, (2) the leaves are medium-green, (3) the leaves are "low gloss" (but not "no-gloss"), (4) the leaves' texture is leathery. As for Medallion being in the hybrid-tea Class ...back when mine was in much better health, it sometimes bloomed in "low-numbered" clusters. But your petal-count of (only) 25 blooms keeps throwing me off from Medallion. Please check some more of your rose's blooms to see if they might have more than 25 petals. As of today, the only bloom on my Medallion has 37 petals. That bloom does show a good bit of yellow at the petals' base, even after fading. My piddly-poor Medallion bush does have one bud on it, which is just about to open up. When it pops, I'll post its petal-count ...and if the Japanese Beetles don't destroy it first, a photo. Maybe Medallion is another incorrect guess - but at this point it is the only rose I can think of that "mostly" matches up with your description of your #14-rose's characteristics. Regards, JohnReb

maybe it's bad manners to answer your own post, but I guess I just didn't give my question enough careful thought. I got to thinking that if this is indeed a beetle larva, and given that there are so many of these dang holes, it seemed logical to assume that I must surely see hordes of the adults around at some point. So I sat and thought about the insects most common to me from this creek. Some of the more familiar candidates were easily ruled out. I then crossed off the diving beetles amd similar aquatic possibilities because most of their larval stages were totally water-loving, not high and dry like the mystery suspects. Then I thought of the tiger beetles! THere are HORDES of tiger beetles in this creek.... I flipped through the field guides and there it was, a pretty close description of my subject,complete with a tunneling habit, stout jaws, and even the hooks on the back--my "hinge"--- although I had to go back on-line to find actual pictures of the larvae themselves. So I guess I have my solution, and one more piece of the puzzle that finally fits. And without that horsefly, I'd still never know it was right under my nose all this time. Amazing how little resemblance the "youth" have to their adult forms!!