I also am in Wisconsin and have not seen them here yet (this year). I am in Dodge county. Farmerboybill, You can squish the beetles, but a lot of people keep a small bucket of soapy water on hand and knock them off the leaves into the bucket where they die quickly. It's a little more efficient than trying to catch each one. Milky Spore is basically a grub treatment and the idea is it will kill the grubs in the soil before they emerge. The problem with this approach is it will only control those that are in your soil, it won't do anything about those not on your property. The JB can fly for miles to get to food, so you can certainly try it, but I wouldn't place a lot of hope. The good news about controlling the beetles early is that once they find food they emit a chemical signature that attracts more so hopefully you can keep their numbers low if you prevent them from pigging out in your yard.

GIO I'm going to look into finding the red dye as well. Are you planning on water, clove oil, and the red dye? I'd much rather use that than the Sevin... Yes, I'll be using the red dye, water, clove oil and other containers with the dye and tayuya root powder, which I have. No Sevin. The only place I could find the dental disclosing tablets was online. Your dentist might have some tucked away in a cabinet somewhere -- I'm not sure how common their use is these days, though I think they're used to help children brush thoroughly! But check to be sure the dye is #28 red, since #40 red is used sometimes. Also, about the clove oil. One woman tried it when we were experimenting but apparently put it full-strength and *some* liquid Sevin in a plastic cup. She reported that the next morning the bottom of the cup had melted away! I read later that undiluted clove oil WILL melt plastic. I used styrofoam cups and probably a greater dilution of the clove oil with water and didn't have any problems at all. Good point about the yellow containers. I got excited about making it more effective without considering the consequences to the pollinators. However, is the red dye toxic to the pollinators? The red dye will be consumed only by the insects attracted to the lure it's mixed with, and that's ONLY cuke beetles, not the pollinators or other insects. The reason is that the chemical compound, cucurbitacin , is in the lure that attracts cucumber beetles. It exists in varying degrees in all cucurbits, but the beetles flock to some cucurbit plants in droves and less to others, quite likely because of the strength of the odor. OTOH, pollinators are attracted to the cucurbit flowers, mostly through the kind of light emitted by various colors and probably the nectar in them, and cucurbitacin is of no interest to them. (Thus my reluctance to use anything yellow as a container in hopes of attracting the cuke beetles -- that might indeed attract the pollinators, too.) I hope your garden won't be as infested with cuke beetles this summer as last year! The kind of cucurbits you planted may have been the lure for so many (I didn't check your list against the list in the link), so if you can avoid growing them again, maybe the beetles will be smaller in numbers and it won't be a losing battle to keep the numbers low enough that you can harvest most of what you plant. That's about all we can ask of nature! I have Crenshaw melons, tomatoes, and beans out in the garden right now and haven't seem any insects so far except for flea beetles. So when these pests show up (and I know they will) that's when I'll set out the baited traps. I'll report back occasionally on how well it's working. It would be great if you (and anybody else who tries it) could do that, too. Report success OR failure. People have a tendency to not think about insect problems until they show up in THEIR garden, so it's possible that some who aren't interested in killing every insect on their plants will look for a solution a bit later in the season. I've never had to deal with Japanese beetles, but a zapper over a koi or other pond sounds like a great way to get rid of them! Sounds like you have some fun projects to think about!

rouge "I am just not sure if 5 days of frigid temperatures is enough to 'crush' them." I'm not sure either, but our frigid stuff came very rapidly, so hopefully they didn't have time to burrow deeper. I would imagine the grubs were cold and slow to begin with, so maybe their movements were limited. Linda I never quite understood the logic of using milky spore. It might kill the grubs in your own yard, but the beetles certainly don't stop at property lines. If all your neighbors don't use it too, the critters are going to fly into your yard anyway. Heck, they probably come in from miles around. Well, I suppose I take that back. If the grubs are causing damage to your lawn it makes sense to use some treatment. That is if the stuff works. Kevin This post was edited by aachenelf on Thu, Jan 24, 13 at 17:37

The adult Japanese Beetles come in from a very large area so it is unlikely that you "weed" block would actually stop all of them. Last summers overall cooler than normal weather may have had some adverse affect on these buggeers, probably more so then you "weed" block. I don't spend any time watching the adult beetles emerge form the soil so I really cannot say for sure that strips of "weed" block would actually stop them but I would suspect that the desire to reach the surface would create a need to tunnel further to find a way to light.