A few years ago a neighbor told me that June bugs will drown themselves in grape Coolaid, and I think he recommended adding some vinegar and a little dish detergent, but he said I might just add some partially bad/rotten fruit instead of buying Coolaid – we were talking about minimizing June bug damage to tame blackberries at the time. I tried the blackberries but never hardly succeeded in trapping any June bugs, but just this year I accidentally found something that’s seemingly very effective: I was picking blueberries and I found a cluster of some of the worms that defoliate blueberries, so I got some really hot water, probably about 160 degrees or more, from my water stove to drown the worms and make sure they were killed without any chance of crawling out… into that same bucket I then threw some bad blueberries, which made a kind of blueberry tea. A day or two later I noticed a large number of June bugs had gone into the bucket and had either drowned or were swimming around unable to get out, which I had never seen before with fruit (mostly blackberries) in cold water. So it seems mixing the fruit with really hot water is the key to attracting June bugs. I haven’t used vinegar, but I think that might help to keep honeybees from drowning (which hasn’t been a problem for me, even though I have a few dozen hives about 500’ away). I have since experimented with blackberries and really hot water, and that was much more successful than previous attempts with cold water, but the blueberries seem perhaps the most effective.
Interesting. Will have to Google June bugs but always nice to learn new ways to attract and kill pests.
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Imagine Japanese Beetles big enough to this when they hit the windshield.
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