I have one particularly friendly young hen who I hold up to the trees, and she acts as a beetle vacuum. I’m sure we look rather ridiculous, I know I make myself laugh while we are working together.
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That is awesome!
They arrived a couple weeks ago but didn’t become pestilent until a few days ago. Cherry trees have the worst infections. Second worse in the orchard are the blackberry bushes along the perimeter. Some on the plum trees, but minor on comparisons. Only a few so far on apples and pears. None found on peach trees, which is odd, since a few years ago they nearly defoliated a couple of them.
We got to Agway too late. All sold out of traps and lures, with no idea when more might come in. We have been doing the picking them off by hand. However, we’ve been using a small bucket of soapy water rather than diluted gin.
Are they evolving? I remember when you could almost just stare at them and they would drop into the bucket. They are still pretty easy to knock off a leaf and let them fall, but at least a few are flying away.
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I have also noticed that they seem to be evolving. I won’t say getting smarter because, well, I hate them. They do seem to be getting faster at flying off or rolling off a leaf and into the grass before I have a chance to get to them.
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I noticed that too. I think they are learning to smell the Dawn ! LOL
Funny . . . they were more anxious to have a martini than a swim in Dawn!
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I think you should post a video of this on this forum. Absolutely.
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I’ll see if I can’t get someone to record us. 
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The season seems especially short this year. Only a handful of beetles in the orchard since the day before yesterday.
Japanese beetle season seems lesser here as well. I emptied the traps yesterday and it was much less than prior years. I wonder if the white mite that infects them is starting to take hold in some regions and controlling their populations?
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I haven’t had many Japanese beetles, but I’m getting tons of the related Asiatic garden beetles. They’re like Japanese beetles, but nocturnal. I’ve been going out every night at dusk to give them a nice soapy bath. Depending on how thorough I am, I’ll probably get between 40 and 100 every night, and more will be there the next day. Definitely not even making a dent in the overall population. However, they seem to settle in to a given plant for the night, so it’s reducing the damage on individual plants. Some plants that were getting dangerously skeletonized are starting to recover, even if I find beetles on them every night.
It looks like the best selective control option is BeetleGone, but it’s absurdly expensive.
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That kind of looks like the clay colored beetle ? I used beetlegone and if you want to convert it to grubgone you can blend it up and viola. Last year it was like 45 bucks for a bag but maybe you can find people to group buy some since you do not need a ton. I did it last year and i think it worked better than my current plan of drawing them all to my yard to infect them with milky spore cerveza which is more of a long term plan.
Here is what the JBs did to my blue lake pole bean. It was savage
Mine have not calmed down really still lots of em.
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Mine have been gone for over a week.
I can only think to credit the one spray of the cherry tree that I did, early in the month.
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I’ve only taken three Japanese beetles off one of my plants, but those orange turds are all over my raspberries every night! I’ve been Knocking them into a can and crushing them, then tossing them in the compost.
I had seen nothing but increases in the population for at least 7 years in a row. . . this year there is a huge drop!
We had a very mild winter, so it’s not that.
Not sure what is curbing the population here but it’s nice to see!
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My Prelude raspberry primocanes’ leaves got just about shredded, other rasps weren’t as badly hit. They just about defoliated my three pluots, for some reason they love those leaves. They also took out a few leaves on various apples. They are some voracious little buggers.
Surprisingly, they pretty much left my Juliet and Romeo bush cherries alone, and did very little damage to my blackberries. They haven’t done hardly anything to our six rows of green beans, either.
I think they’re starting to wind down here, I can’t recall when they started exactly, but maybe about mid June?
Exactly. I have June 15th marked on my calendar every year so I know when to start checking. I didn’t see anything until almost July this year.
I haven’t seen many for about 2 weeks. Peak season was short this year for whatever reason. It was nice!
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I thought about getting some, but it’s currently almost $70 a bag. That’d do if I just want to spray the flowers and fruits, but I’d need at least 2 bags of I want to treat my lawn for grubs. Too rich for my blood. Hand picking seems to be mitigating the damage, and the numbers have started to go down.
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Not fair. After a two week absence, the Japanese beetles have returned to the orchard.
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Oh Nooooooo! I’ve never heard of that! Here they come. They eat and destroy. And they leave and don’t show back up till the next summer! That is awful. Like ‘Groundhog Day’.
I have noticed a bit of a second surge this year myself. I wouldn’t say they ever completely left but it seemed to die down and then I got hit bad again this past week. The beetles almost look smaller too…late hatchings? I didn’t think their life cycle accommodated a second generation in one summer.