The miracle of chemistry

[altivo]

Amazing. The Japanese beetle, Popillia japonica, is a serious pest in North America (for those who didn't know about it.) It's a large, handsome looking beetle that is native to east Asia and Japan, where it has natural enemies that keep its population stable and controlled. Once introduced to America, though, it ran wild. Few native species care to eat the beetle, though I've heard rumors that raccoons will dig up the larvae from under lawns and eat them (eewww, no accounting for raccoons' taste, but I knew that.)

Anyway, last week I noticed a large population of these pests on some wild grapevines near the vegetable garden. They eat leaves, leaving only the skeleton of veins behind, so the damage they do is quite apparent. I started looking around, and sure enough, they have attacked our blueberry bushes and some of the apple trees. They are noted for their resistance to pesticides, but I don't use chemical pesticides anyway. The larvae (and thus the adult beetles) can be exterminated from an area over a period of several years by applications of a bacteria spore to the soil. Like BT on most moths and butterflies, this bacteria causes the larval stage to die, but takes years to establish itself well in the soil. Gary went somewhere and came home with a couple of Japanese beetle traps instead.

I checked and found that some garden experts say the traps are ineffective. They catch only a small percentage of the adult beetles, supposedly, while attracting many more to the area. However, today I observed that the beetles are still there and I want to give my squash and tomatoes a chance to live. So I went and got one of the traps and read the rather vague directions for setting it up.

It consists of four vertical plastic vanes at right angles to one another, with an hourglass shaped plastic bag that hangs beneath them. A sticky pad containing fruit and floral fragrances and some kind of sex attractant is attached to one of the vanes just at the bottom. The scent draws the beetles in and they crash into the vanes, falling into the plastic bag and presumably not being able to find their way out before they suffocate or dessicate or something.

I peeled the cover off the scent pads and affixed them to the trap, which was already hung on a post about ten feet from the infested grapevines but on the far side of their trellis from the garden itself. This just happened to be upwind of the beetles I had noticed.

I had to duck out of there in a hurry. It was like being mobbed by a swarm of bees. I had no idea there were so many Japanese beetles in the area. They are about the size of bees, so you can hear them flying and see them quite easily, especially when there are hundreds about. They are clumsy fliers and apparently when drunk on sex pheromones, they don't look where they are going. Sure enough, they fly right into the yellow plastic vanes and fall into the plastic bag below. I could see the bottom of the hourglass shape starting to swell even as I watched. Standing back and watching the sky, I could see the flight pattern, just as I'm used to seeing bees fly. That little postage stamp sized patch was drawing bugs in from at least half an acre away. I think I'll have to go out in a short while and tie that bag shut at the hourglass waist. A second bag was included with the trap, and I figure any that I seal into the bag and throw into the trash will at least not escape. Anyone want half a pound of Japanese beetles? No? Speak up before they're all gone...

Comments

[jairus-greywolf.livejournal.com]

No thank you I have plenty! I have a plum tree in the front yard that is currently under attack by those beetles. I haven't done anything so far mostly because I'm not overly fond of plums and I've always thought the tree was more of a nuisance.

[altivo.livejournal.com]

Well, here's the deal. They gather and have a food and sex orgy on your plum tree, then lay thousands of eggs in your grass. Next year the eggs hatch into white grubs that eat grass roots, and you have spreading brown patches as the grass dies from having its roots chewed off. Then the raccoons sniff out the beetle larvae and come to feast. They peel the dying sod off to get at the grubs...

Of course, if you don't much care about how the grass looks (I'm not fussy myself, and I like raccoons actually unless they are stealing my duck eggs) then none of this matters much except to your neighbors who are trying to grow roses or something.

Actually, I'd say it's worth the $5 for a trap just to see the amazing results.

[vimsig.livejournal.com]

bless you for thinking of us all but we must decline....

[altivo.livejournal.com]

Me too. They might be tasty, who knows? But I'd rather eat that icon of yours. Mmmm, looks delicious.

I went out to pick blueberries after feeding the horses. I knew there were more ripe. There were so many that my container overflowed and I wasn't done. Have to go back again tomorrow...

[foozzzball.livejournal.com]

Why do these scent pads sound like the greatest practical joke items in the world?

Paste one on the next truck that goes by, affix one to the collar of the neighbourhood bully, get one on an RC plane and play 'Swarm Leader'...

[altivo.livejournal.com]

Actually the floral scent is so strong than anyone with any sense of smell would notice it right away. The instant response I got was partly due to the wind conditions being just right to carry the scent from the trap to the grapevines where a horde of them were feasting just eight or ten feet away. Evidently there were a lot more down under the leaves where I hadn't noticed them.

[chibiabos.livejournal.com]

I dunno, got any 'coon friends on your LJ list? :P

[altivo.livejournal.com]

At least one: linnaeus.

[rustitobuck.livejournal.com]

that just seems like such a cruel joke.

Hey, c'mere to the big sex orgy! Oh heh, did we say orgy, we meant die in a bag.

[altivo.livejournal.com]

Well, I wouldn't do that to a wookiee. ;p

These beetle guys though, are illegal immigrants who choose to flaunt the law by stealing my fruits and vegetables. That gives me a certified legal right to do them in. For all I know, they're having a big orgy in that plastic back right now. They were certainly buzzing and squirming around in there. ;D

Just think of it as a sort of Nigerian scam. If they fall for it, they deserve what they get.

[miktar.livejournal.com]

We're having some trouble with them as well, so Kras went out and got the same trap you describe. Didn't quite have the same results though, and seem to be ineffective at luring them. Or perhaps he set it up wrong, I'll have to go check tomorrow.

[altivo.livejournal.com]

The positioning of the scent patch is apparently important. It has to be high enough on the plastic vane to allow the scent to diffuse, but low enough so that the beetles that blunder into it don't bounce right out of the bag. My instructions said to put it in the bottom 1/3 of the vane, which means it is partly below the edge of the plastic bag. The beetles actually started to show up as soon as I peeled the protective cover off the patch and the scent got loose. There was a large concentration of them just a few feet away, though, which certainly helped. I suppose the effectiveness of the chemical bait wears off with time, too. These may have been nice fresh traps and you may have got one that's been sitting around in the stockroom since last year. I didn't see an expiration date on the box, though.

Or maybe my beetles were just exceptionally horny today. The weather might have something to do with that, temperature, humidity, wind speed.

[rustitobuck.livejournal.com]

I can believe that. The weather has a lot to do with my horniness level too.

[altivo.livejournal.com]

Temperature is definitely a factor. At 8 am the temperature was 68F and there was no evident activity around the trap. Now it is 80F and they are flying into it almost as fast as when I first set it up yesterday.

[silver-kiden.livejournal.com]

i say, bake them with honey and brown sugar, then hand them out on halloween

[altivo.livejournal.com]

Don't tempt me. Fortunately, out here we aren't expected to hand out junk on Halloween.

[captpackrat.livejournal.com]

Your beetle trap is doing as well as my bug zapper. Though I suspect the pheromone lure is wearing out, or else we're running low on mosquitoes.

[altivo.livejournal.com]

The lures do wear out. For something non-disposable like a zapper or the propane powered mosquito traps, you should be able to get replacement lure capsules.

[soanos.livejournal.com]

Burn them with fire...
Muahaha...

Microwave them...
Muahahahahaha...

Uhm. Sorry, Must have been carried away, having a large bag or bugs makes me want to disintergate them. :P

I have a suggestion... Pack them in a box and send them to Bill Gates. "Hi, Bill, your latest operating system seemed to be missing a few bugs, so here, have some!" Live bugs would make the joke much more effective though.

[altivo.livejournal.com]

Heh. Except that his latest operating system seems to have more obnoxious bugs than ever before. So bad that we aren't using it at all either at home or at work, and don't plan to either.

The great flood of incoming bugs seemed to slow down well before sunset. I'll have to go out this morning and see whether the ones that were already in the trap managed to get out during the night, but I suspect not. It was cool enough to slow down their activity probably.

[brokkentwolf.livejournal.com]

Wow. I would have liked to have witnessed that. Not that I want J-Beetles in MY garden. :)

[altivo.livejournal.com]

It was pretty amazing all right. I went out a while ago to check, and the ones in the bottom of the hourglass plastic bag are still there. It's made of black plastic so light can't get in. I assume they would go to the light, but its own weight pulls it shut at the "waist" of the hourglass. The beetle falling in is heavy enough to slip through, and then just can't figure out how to get back out I guess.

The trap is not 100% effective. I noticed a few of the little devils still chewing on grape leaves... or fornicating on them on some cases. My mate says those are the gay ones who aren't attracted to the sex pheromone. Maybe he's right. If so, no eggs will be forthcoming which is good.

[brokkentwolf.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I guess if they start decorating their leaves and putting up curtains you can be sure that they're the gay ones. :)

[altivo.livejournal.com]

*ROFL*

[murakozi.livejournal.com]

Heh. I think the floral lure is to bring in the females and the sex lure is to bring in the males.

'course, I remember that we'd sometimes see a pair on one of the vanes of a trap 'making the bug with 2 thoraxes' as it were.

[altivo.livejournal.com]

They definitely aren't shy about that.

[murakozi.livejournal.com]

I remember when we used to have some of those traps set up behind one of the houses we lived in. Two annoying things always stood out to me.

First is that you have to empty the things, and as you discovered, they can fill up fast. I seem to recall that the ones we got came with replacement bags, but you hadda get more bags fairly often.

The second was the effect of rain. It didn't diminish the attractants effectiveness, but some water would of course get into the bags. In the summer, we'd get those quick, intense summer storms, then right after, bright hot sunlight. That'd result in the bags being full of lots of dead, very stinky decomposing beetles. Not a fun smell when you go to check/change the bags.

Of course, like bug zappers, many people tend to place the traps next to the plants they want to protect instead of off a ways.

[altivo.livejournal.com]

Yep, the instructions advise you not to put it too close to plants the beetles find tasty.

These bags have drain holes, so they won't fill with water but the beetles would still be very dead and well-baked from the sun too.