The lily leaf beetles ate my tiger lilies to the ground a couple of years ago - I've got 4 little stunted ones left that I'm trying to save. In my vigilance I've found lily leaf larvae on potatoes, chinese lantern (physalis) and violets. I'm trying to eradicate the chinese lantern and violet and I'm half tempted to let the beetles do it for me but they'll just move on to something else. Saturday I had 2 generations of larvae working on the chinese lanterns - all lined up in a row munching away, disgusting but also made it easy to pull up the whole plant and dump it in a bucket of soapy water. If I'm feeling particularly vengeful I dump some alcohol in with the soap. Any success stories? Happy Gardening!

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.

Just had my first run-in with them. I remembered this post, and when I saw a bright red beetle on a plant (this is an established garden whose house we bought, and moved into in February), I checked online. Looks like the same thing. Grabbed all the ones I could find (non-aggressive, apparently), and squished them. Haven't yet checked for eggs, as I'm not clear on what to look for. However, I saw multiple pairs apparently mating, so they may not have had a chance to lay yet. Die, bright red beetle, die! Suzanne

I've only seen one red lily leaf beetle so far this spring, and that was a few days ago. I have mostly intact foliage on tiger lilies, Casa Blancas, and a few others. Only a few bites of leaves taken; you have to look hard to see the damage. I hit the beetle with a permethrin spray I happened to have handy. Probably drowned it. I had very little beetle damage last year, and I'm hoping that it means that the parasitic wasp has reached here. If I get a big infestation, I'll go back to using the Bayer Rose and Flower Spray which is a very effective systemic insecticide. However, I'd rather use the absolute minimum because of the possible damage to beneficial bugs like bees. Claire