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 decided to go with Neem oil to control the Lily beetle but I have purchased neem "carrier" oil. How would I use this compared to neem oil?

The threat of blister beetle poisoning to horses is a very real threat, and if a horse ingests enough blister beetles while eating hay, it can be lethal to the horse within a few hours. As far as I know, this is no cure. At lower levels it can make horses sick with symptoms like colic, but at that lower level the horse usually survives. I know horse people who avoid using alfalfa hay (unless they grow it themselves or buy it from the first cutting) for that reason, but in really horrific drought years, sometimes you have to buy whatever kind of hay you can find that is being trucked in because the hay shortage is so severe that you can't be choosy. Here in OK if you grow alfalfa for hay, you usually can get your first cutting cut, baled and stored well before the blister beetles show up. I don't think I ever see any of the blister beetles before July and most first hay cuttings down here are in May. I don't use neem often enough for it to affect the plants, Amy, but I've read the same thing about neem being systemic. Genearlly I never would use a systemic pesticide (not even an organic one) because I don't want to eat a plant that has taken up the pesticide within itself, so I probably don't use neem more than 3 times a year, and I just spray it on whatever specific plant has a problem. I don't like the smell of it either, but if you need to call in the big guns for a big pest, neem's a great choice. If it is any comfort, George, blister beetles seem to arrive in mass, do their thing, and they go away. OSU says they have only one generation here in OK, so I guess that is something for which to be grateful.

I occasionally see lily leaf beetles now but not often and I don't see much damage (I do destroy the beetles when I see them). This was very different in the past. Today I was out by the leach field filling bird feeders when I noticed a spot of red-orange. This was in an area where I see daylilies (Hemerocallis fulva) and sometimes tiger lilies (Lilium lancifolium). Neither are blooming yet (it's shady), so I trotted over and saw this: I have no idea where this lily came from. I've planted many lilies in the past but most of them succumbed to the beetle during its heyday. The foliage looks intact. We've definitely turned the corner too here in Plymouth. Claire