Beetle Betsy

Normally I look forward to the summer months as I am an avid insect watcher/lover/photographer.  But this summer, which has been incredibly rainy and then was incredibly hot, seems to have been favorable for a particular species of beetle called an Oriental Beetle.  Not to be confused with the Japanese Beetle, this insect does not seem to harm foliage at all in its adult stage, but the larvae (white grubs) that it produces will chew the crap out of the roots of your grass, garden vegetables and ornamental flowers.

Japanese Beetle

Oriental Beetle

This is the first year that I have my own small garden outside my house.  I tried one last year at my parents' house but it is a 20 minute drive there and over 100 ft from the water source so it was difficult to properly tend to it.  Plus they don't have beetles there so much as they have horrible head buzzers, horse flies, deer flies, mosquitoes...not much fun.  I don't have those at my house.  My husband built me a beautiful raised bed and I planted some stuff in it.

I'm not quite sure what as I didn't pay much attention, but I'm fairly sure it is mostly cucumbers, parsley, a tomato plant, and cosmos.  As an added bonus I have a buttload of sunflowers growing in the back that the birds planted.

I first noticed that there was an excessive amount of beetles a few weeks ago.  I would walk outside and get attacked by them.  They do not bite or sting but will clumsily fly around your head and land in your hair or on your clothes and with their pokey little feet they are hard to get off.  If they land on your skin you will feel it but it does not hurt.  However it scares the crap out of my girls when one lands on them.  I decided to git-r-done.

I first went to Aubuchon.  They only had Japanese beetle traps, but I was desperate so I bought one in hopes it would trap both kinds.  I set it up and watched as Japanese beetles came from no where and fell in.

Japanese beetle trap

Japanese beetle on my flowers, right downwind of the trap and not seeming to care...after 2 rain storms it seems to have lost some of its potency.

  I previously had not seen any of those so it obviously is a strong attractant!  None of the Oriental beetles seemed to be able to make it into the bag though.

Next I tried Ace, then Lowe's, then Home Depot.  No one had anything for these Oriental beetles.  I called up the local agricultural store, L.D. Oliver Seed Company, and they had had them but were sold out and weren't going to get more until Friday.  It was Wednesday and I was really wanting to get these buggers gone before they decided to lay eggs all over the yard.  I bought a bottle of Bayer Grub Control and sprayed that on my garden dirt and on the lawn around it.

Friday came and I went to the Oliver Seed Company.  I was happy to see that they did indeed have the traps for this kind of beetle and happily paid my $9.95 for one.  The boy behind the counter said this was the first year they had carried these traps and they were selling fast.  I took it home and assembled it in the car.  I opened the door to the car and got the pheremone disk out, opened the bag, and put it on the trap structure.

Here is a short, crappy video I took:


BZZZZZT  BZZZZT BZZZZZZZZZZT

That was the sound I heard in my ears.  I looked around and these beetles were coming from every corner of my lawn and swarming around me and the bag.  As I held it beetles were falling into it.  I hadn't even put it on the hanger yet.  I set it down on the ground and tried to assemble the metal hanger (sold separately for $4.95) but the damn metal sleeves that hold the metal rods were too tight.  Cheap thing.  So I had to take it inside and shove a screwdriver into them and wrench them apart and then hammer the rods into the sleeves.  I came back out to a black cloud of beetles around the pheremone.  I picked it up, beetles clinging to my arms and hair and clothes, and pushed it all into the ground.  Instantly there was an inch deep of beetles inside the bag.

Assembled, and already attracting.  The round thing at the top is the pheremone.

  

In 1 minute this is how many there were inside...

I ran back to my car and drove to my parents' house where I was going to spend some of the 100°F afternoon in their air conditioning.  A wind was picking up which was blowing hot air around and it was miserably humid.  About 5 minutes down the road my A/C in my car quit on me.  It made a nasty burning plastic smell and then the compressor stopped working.  Dammit.  I shut it off and rolled down the windows.  My poor Autumn was in the back crying for alternate reasons. First she was too hot, then the wind was blowing her hair into her eyes and mouth and she wanted the windows up, then she was too hot again.  Poor thing eventually went to sleep.

When I left my parents' house 2 hours later and made it back home I was dismayed to see the beetle trap had fallen over in the wind.  The cheesy metal stand had come apart and there was a mass of horned up beetles writhing in one spot.

Spilled Beetles

 I had a horrible thought that perhaps I had just turned these beetles on and they would escape, fertilized and ready to lay eggs, making the matters worse than if I had left them alone in the first place.  I began plucking beetles from the ground and plopping them back in the trap.  But there were so many it would have taken me hours and it was so very hot outside.

That was yesterday.  It rained very hard last night and was insanely windy but the beetle trap stood up to it all and was still standing today.  I went out to check out how much was in there (at this point its actually FUN for me to be doing this.  I need a job.) and as I approached the bag I could hear scritch scratch scritch scratch sounds.  There was a good 2" or more deep pile of beetles in there.  Wow.

And the ground was still moving with more crawling in that direction.  I saw one actually fly and make it out of the bag so I realized that I should probably dump them out so that the pile can start over.  I got a gallon size ZipLoc bag.  The bottom of this trap has a handy zipper lock also so that you can dump it out and reuse it, unlike the Japanese beetle trap pictured earlier in this long post which you have to buy replacement bags.  I placed the open ziploc bag over the bottom of the trap and managed to unzip the trap enough for the beetles to start spilling out.  Yuck.  This is how many I got:

Most of what was in the bag

They are mostly still alive too.  Hopefully not for long.  I zipped the trap bag back up and set it straight again.  Then it rained really hard.  The sun came back out and when I checked on the trap (an hourly process for me at this point:  checking and plucking and tossing in more) there were several beetles flying around it again, more in the bottom, and more crawling up the grass trying to get in.  

I'm both interested to see how many more I catch by the end of the day, and horrified that there are so many of these pests in my yard!  I think I will go buy 2 or 3 more traps and set them around the perimeter of our condo property.  Then I get to check on and empty even more bags!  LOL!  Check out that Oliver Seed Co. if you are in Milton.  I had never been in there before but they seem to have good prices and all sorts of stuff for farming and gardening and they are always having a sale on something!