Friends Don’t Let Friends Use Beetle Bags – 05.06.07

I was at the local garden center yesterday when a worried looking man and his wife asked the clerk for directions to the Japanese Beetle traps.

“Eeeep…!!!”

I stopped myself and managed a little cough. It was none of my business. Besides, who am I anyway to be giving advice on beetles?

The clerk obligingly directed the shopper to a large and colorful display that explains why these hideously ugly traps pop up like weeds on the lawns of ambitious homeowners.

The idea with these traps is that the odor of the female virgin beetle implanted on a disk hovering over a plastic bag on a stick convinces all the other beetles to fly into the bag from which there is no escape. It’s kinda like their own Hotel California. They can check out but they can never leave.

Actually, the traps work amazingly well if you get your jollies by collecting a bag of beetles. They do, indeed, fly right into that bag and stay there.

But if your goal instead is to protect your plants from the beetle invasion, the traps don’t work one whit. Instead of protecting the plants they attract even MORE beetles to your yard where most of them stop for a handy plant snack on the way. Countless university researchers have demonstrated that only highly strategic use of the bags, which most homeowners, especially those with neighbors, can’t manage.

Around here the beetles show up with alarming predictability on June 1. I don’t know if they coordinate their emergence from under my lawn for that date or if I’m just particularly alert then, but that’s when I suddenly see LOTS of Japanese Beetles.

So if traps are out of the question, what’s a gardener to do?

Well, of course, there’s always the nuclear approach of spraying chemicals. But what if you’re like me and are worried about the birds, bees and other critters that could suffer collateral damage?

The experts (who, by the way, seem to have quite a lot of time on their hands) suggest a strategy of “hand picking.” That means you go out there every day, pick the beetles off the bushes and drop them into a bucket of soapy water, thereby committing beetle genocide with your own bare hands.

I have to admit that as satisfying as this sounds, in the past this strategy has not worked for me. What is one person with just two hands against THOUSANDS of beetles? Not to mention the fact that I’m totally creeped out by touching bugs. But in reading more about hand picking in preparation for the impending invasion, I see there is a method to the madness.

The idea is that if you can get out there early enough and frequently enough, you can minimize the damage. See, beetles and beetle damage beget more beetles and beetle damage. Once the beasties get a start on the bushes, other beetles come to join the feast. If you can stop them in the first place—or at least minimize them—then fewer beetles will be motivated to join them.

Of course, that still supposes that you have time on your hands to go out every single cotton pickin’ day to pick bugs.

Nevertheless, I figure I’ll give it a try. I can always fall back on the organic insecticidal soaps and other home remedies I’ve been reading about. In the meantime, I will continue to squelch the urge to lecture strangers about the beetle bags. But I will still hold forth among my pals on the subject, cause "Friends don’t let friends use beetle bags."