They're here!

Another foreign invader to worry about...and there seems to be nothing to combat them.

Paulf wrote: ↑Thu Jul 11, 2024 10:42 pm Another foreign invader to worry about...and there seems to be nothing to combat them.

The best idea that I have come up with was to buy one of the scent lures that the sell for traps. Build a little Styrofoam raft and put the lure on it and send it out to the middle of the pond. The beetles will flock to the lure and fall into the water to feed the fish, or so I hope.

My old idea was to take a lure and place it in the middle of the closest busy intersection. It did seem to work as there was a bit of a greasy spot on the road.

Depending on where you live and the climate, milky spore or chemical grub control. Getting them before the grubs turn into beetles as well as the efforts you mentioned for the ones that survive or travel to your place.

I spray them with soapy water. Kills them in a matter of minutes. A few years back they came in waves into SC Wisconsin. I hooked up my garden sprayer to a hose and let them have it. They took off in a swarm only to fall on my roof and driveway.

MissS wrote: ↑Thu Jul 11, 2024 11:02 pm

Paulf wrote: ↑Thu Jul 11, 2024 10:42 pm Another foreign invader to worry about...and there seems to be nothing to combat them.

The best idea that I have come up with was to buy one of the scent lures that the sell for traps. Build a little Styrofoam raft and put the lure on it and send it out to the middle of the pond. The beetles will flock to the lure and fall into the water to feed the fish, or so I hope.

My old idea was to take a lure and place it in the middle of the closest busy intersection. It did seem to work as there was a bit of a greasy spot on the road.

I bought a scent trap many years ago and for the last time. When they bunch up in the trap and start to rot, the smell would repel a skunk! I tried to give it to my neighbor but she said no thanks.

Used to have them by the hundreds, or more. Did a little investigating and finally figure out that they were attracted to my plum trees. Waited until my wife was on an Alaska cruise and cut one completely down and girded the other. I now hang my bird feeders on what's left of the one I girded. It was 2 years before I no longer saw any beetles. I still have a couple fly in occasionally, a spray bottle of diluted Dawn kills them instantly.

Brenda never noticed that the trees were gone, because I hauled the brush to the dump and vacuumed up the sawdust. That has been several years ago. We live on Kentucky Lake and are surrounded by TVA forest. I will occasionally take a tour and gird and spray any wild plums that I find. It's a constant battle, but much better than the alternative.

Ken4230 wrote: ↑Fri Jul 12, 2024 8:39 pm Used to have them by the hundreds, or more. Did a little investigating and finally figure out that they were attracted to my plum trees.

I grew up near a private school that had 2 big athletic fields with a stream running between them. As kids we used to go over there in the summer to fly kites or launch model rockets on the field. I'm not sure if I found this out because I saw someone else picking, or I discovered it on my own, but the banks of the stream were lined with blackberry bushes. I would go over and wade through the prickers and pick a quart of blackberries (not counting what I ate) and bring them home. There were also tons of Japanese Beetles (which found their way the few hundred yards to my father's raspberry bushes, or vice-versa).

One year I went over to pick blackberries and the bushes were all gone, maybe 150' on each side of the stream. I always wondered why they did that, whether to discourage people from coming in there, because of the Japanese Beetles, or because invariably balls would wind up in the bushes and the kids would get torn up by the thorns trying to retrieve them. They eventually fenced everything in, so no more summer adventure over there.

Ken4230 wrote: ↑Fri Jul 12, 2024 8:39 pmWaited until my wife was on an Alaska cruise and cut one completely down and girded the other. Brenda never noticed that the trees were gone, because I hauled the brush to the dump and vacuumed up the sawdust.

That seems...well, I guess sometimes a man has to do what a man has to do.