Japanese Beetle Traps

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deboy922
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Japanese Beetle Traps

Post by deboy922 » July 9th, 2019, 9:28 am

For those of you who use Japanese beetle traps, how do you place them? Do you put them at the far edges/corners of your property (but away from desirable plants/trees)?

I live on 2 acres, and placed 3 Spectricide traps on the upwind side edge of my yard. Caught about 1 bag total in a couple of hours yesterday afternoon. Should I buy another trap and just put 1 trap in each corner of my 2-acre lot?

Thanks.

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Re: Japanese Beetle Traps

Post by andy10917 » July 9th, 2019, 9:41 am

On an acre+, I am using the Spectracide traps - 4 of them. I have them placed one near the upwind border of the prevailing wind in the front and back yard, and one each 1/3 of the way from the downwind side in the front and back.

I also treat their favorite target plant (a non-blooming Contorted Filbert) with Sevin. This acts as another lure/trap, and the fact that it is non-blooming means the impact on bees is minimal.

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Re: Japanese Beetle Traps

Post by TimmyG » July 9th, 2019, 10:47 am

Excerpt from Re: Grub Dilemma
TimmyG wrote:
May 15th, 2019, 1:54 pm
Just place the traps at the edges of your property, away from shrubs and flower beds.
On a couple acres, I would step it up to at least 8 traps, especially given the catch rate you mentioned. You don't want to be emptying the traps several times a day, and you don't want beetles getting by your outer perimeter. Depending on the shape of your property and the locations of your landscaping, you may even want to place a trap closer to the middle. I'm using three traps at the extremities of my landscaped property, about 3/4 acres. The rest of my 1.33 acres is wooded which isn't a concern with beetles. I don't pay much attention to the direction of prevailing winds since my neighborhood is surrounded by tall trees and winds at ground level are random enough. Experiment, and you'll learn where you need to place traps to maximize the catch and protect key plants.

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Re: Japanese Beetle Traps

Post by andy10917 » July 9th, 2019, 11:30 am

If you think the traps don't draw the Japanese Beetles in, think again. While I was sitting on the porch assembling my four traps (maybe 15 minutes time), I opened the pheromone/wax lure packages. Within a few minutes I had a cloud of Japanese Beetles swarming around me in a cloud - maybe 80 beetles.

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Re: Japanese Beetle Traps

Post by Smolenski7 » July 9th, 2019, 11:44 am

I found this online. I really have never worried too much about Japanese Beetles, they don't seem to be a major problem. However, after reading the first few posts in this thread, I wanted to learn more; this is what I found on 1 website. I was wondering what the guys on this forum think from their practical experience.
Traps

Don't use Japanese beetle traps. Hanging a trap in a home garden is not an effective way to protect plants. And they may attract more insects to your yard.

The traps attract beetles using synthetic female sex pheromone and a blend of chemicals with a strong floral odor. They were developed by researchers to monitor for the presence of Japanese beetles so that management strategies could be implemented.

While these traps can collect an impressive number of beetles, research at the University of Kentucky has demonstrated that more beetles fly toward the traps than are caught. This usually results in more damage to nearby gardens and landscape plants than would have happened if no traps were pres
ent.


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Re: Japanese Beetle Traps

Post by TimmyG » July 9th, 2019, 1:07 pm

Complete hogwash. But you should already know that from reading all my past posts on the use of these pheromone traps, which I'm sure you did, right? ;-)

From Re: Japanese Beetles found on plants... what to do?:
TimmyG wrote:
July 24th, 2017, 1:18 am
micvog wrote:
July 23rd, 2017, 2:46 pm
@TimmyG - one of the concerns I read with the pheromone traps is that they attract Japanese Beetles from the neighborhood. Have you found this to be an issue?
I find that they work beautifully. That's all that matters. The beetles from anywhere and everywhere are attracted to the traps, not your plants. Are they attracted from neighbors' yards? Lets hope so! The neighbors aren't putting out traps. I place a few traps at the extremes of my property, away from favored plants. Think about it: if you only target the beetles (or grubs) in your own yard, you will forever be battling pressure from your neighbors' populations. Target the neighborhood and you keep beetle pressure in check and should never have to apply expensive grub treatments. It pains me to see the mad rush to apply pesticides each year when the pheromone traps are such an inexpensive, effective solution.
Just be sure to use the dual lure to attract both male and female beetles.

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Re: Japanese Beetle Traps

Post by TimmyG » July 9th, 2019, 1:17 pm

Don't use Japanese beetle traps. Hanging a trap in a home garden is not an effective way to protect plants. And they may attract more insects to your yard.
If your home garden and yard are a postage stamp, then the concerns would be valid. Don't use pheromone traps in your home garden if all of your plants are within spitting distance of each other. You've gotta place these traps away from the plants that the beetles otherwise want to munch on. But if you have a large yard with expanses of lawn between landscaped beds, these work wonders.

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Re: Japanese Beetle Traps

Post by deboy922 » July 9th, 2019, 2:17 pm

Thanks for the feedback everyone.

I also used sevin on 2 crabapples and a weeping cherry, as they were getting hammered. I like the idea of reducing the sevin usage in conjunction with the traps.

Looking forward to seeing some caught beetles when I get home from work...but not looking forward to dumping the the bags...messy and smelly.

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Re: Japanese Beetle Traps

Post by deboy922 » July 10th, 2019, 8:06 am

Caught 2-1/2 bags of beetles yesterday. 1 trap was completely full and overflowing.

For the last 3 days, I "shake off" the beetles on my 6 fruit trees, that I do not like to spray with Sevin. There were less beetles on them yesterday than the previous 2 days. So hopefully, the traps are helping.

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Re: Japanese Beetle Traps

Post by andy10917 » July 10th, 2019, 8:17 am

I'm seeing next to no beetles in the traps now, and the favorite target plant is seeing almost no activity. I'll stay vigilant, but there is hope that I've wiped out a large portion of the local population.

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Re: Japanese Beetle Traps

Post by deboy922 » July 10th, 2019, 8:39 am

andy10917 wrote:
July 10th, 2019, 8:17 am
I'm seeing next to no beetles in the traps now, and the favorite target plant is seeing almost no activity. I'll stay vigilant, but there is hope that I've wiped out a large portion of the local population.
Hoping to do the same here. My 2 acre lot is surrounded by farmland for 1/2+ of a mile in all directions. I have seen almost no beetles on the corn & beans around me. On Sunday I had beetles literally boiling out of the ground by the thousands on my lot. I am hoping that the traps and sevin wipe out (greatly reduce) my local beetle population. With no rain, the one application of sevin has kept the beetles completely off of the trees I sprayed.

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Re: Japanese Beetle Traps

Post by TimmyG » July 10th, 2019, 10:37 am

I put out my first trap yesterday mid afternoon and there wasn't a single beetle in there by dusk. Also no beetles on the contorted filbert yet, so no Sevin either. My wife and I have both seen a few Japanese beetles out there (not including the brown ones that just seem to want to go swimming in the pool), but either the general population hasn't surfaced yet, or we're having a repeat of last year. Until last year, we've always had a healthy population and a good catch for the chickens to snack on, but last year they just up and disappeared. I saw a few here and there but not enough to justify the cost of the lures. Yes we're happy that we don't have damage from Japanese beetles, but we miss the fun of watching the chickens go absolutely nuts on a heaping pile of sun-baked beetles.

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Re: Japanese Beetle Traps

Post by TimmyG » July 10th, 2019, 4:38 pm

I checked a couple hours ago during the baking sun and saw beetles almost covering the bottom of the one Tanglefoot trap. I still don't have remotely the same pressure as you guys, but the chickens will enjoy them nonetheless. And I now have reason to set up at least a second trap for now.

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Re: Japanese Beetle Traps

Post by Masbustelo » July 10th, 2019, 10:08 pm

I'm in Northern Illinois and the Japanese Beetles love my grape leaves. I have about 150 feet of trellis. Usually they show up in the hundreds for two weeks or so. This year Ive counted 20, total. We had minus 30 last winter, may be that did them in?

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Re: Japanese Beetle Traps

Post by deboy922 » July 11th, 2019, 7:42 am

Masbustelo wrote:
July 10th, 2019, 10:08 pm
I'm in Northern Illinois and the Japanese Beetles love my grape leaves. I have about 150 feet of trellis. Usually they show up in the hundreds for two weeks or so. This year Ive counted 20, total. We had minus 30 last winter, may be that did them in?
You must have sent them to me in north-central Indiana :-)

Yesterday, 2 traps were half full, and the 3rd trap was over-flowing.

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Re: Japanese Beetle Traps

Post by deboy922 » July 12th, 2019, 9:30 am

About 1.5 bags of beetles Thursday...so 2.5 Tues, 2 Wed, 1.5 Thurs...will it be 1 bag today?

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Re: Japanese Beetle Traps

Post by deboy922 » July 12th, 2019, 7:33 pm

Just dumped 2.5 bags of beetles. Not sure if I am attracting them from miles away, but I do not see them on my plants and trees, so the trapping will continue.

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Re: Japanese Beetle Traps

Post by deboy922 » July 16th, 2019, 9:06 am

Still trapping 1+ bags daily. Minimal damage on plants and trees (much less than past years). Putting a reminder on my calendar to get traps out next year in late June instead of July 8th this year.

Read an article from Purdue University on Japanese Beetles. Found it interesting that they do not recommend traps. Here is link to article: https://extension.entm.purdue.edu/publi ... /E-75.html

Here is the excerpt from the article on traps: "Traps. Pheromone traps have long been used to monitor the activity of the Japanese beetle. The “Bag-A-Bug” trap utilizes both a pheromone and a floral scent to catch both sexes of the beetle. However, these traps are not recommended for beetle management because they attract more beetles than they can control, often resulting in increased plant damage. Do not put traps in or near plants that are susceptible to Japanese beetle."

Based on my very little experience of just this year with traps, I plan to use them again next year, as I feel they reduced the damage on my plants and trees (and reduced my usage of insecticide-Sevin). Putting the traps at the edges of my property, seems to have kept the beetles away from my yard.

I do need to improve my method of disposing of the trapped beetles. I have been dumping the trapped beetles into a garbage bag. But the smell of the rotting beetles is atrocious...it permeates a garbage bag with a knot sealing the bag. I have placed the bags at the end of my driveway to keep the smell away from the house. Tomorrow is garbage pickup day, and I fear the garbage men will call the police, thinking that I have cut-up body parts decomposing in my trash :-)

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Re: Japanese Beetle Traps

Post by TimmyG » July 16th, 2019, 11:33 am

deboy922, I already addressed that sentiment above when Smolenski7 shared a similar excerpt. Moral of the story: don't do something stupid like hanging a pheromone trap in a susceptible plant. There's a reason that they sell shepherd's hooks for these things; you want to hang them out in the open, away from susceptible plants. Also, I wholly disagree with the statement that "they attract more beetles than they can control". As I said above, hogwash. As long as you use enough traps placed appropriately, on a property that can accommodate them, they will trap the vast majority of beetles from not only your property but also neighboring properties while leaving your precious plants relatively unharmed. Yes, you will still find some beetles on your plants, but you should be seeing far less on them than if you hadn't set up traps.

Fortunately, you seem to have done excellent work in placing your traps and have experimented for yourself. Thankfully, you have not been deterred by these university naysayers.

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Re: Japanese Beetle Traps

Post by deboy922 » July 16th, 2019, 12:13 pm

TimmyG wrote:
July 16th, 2019, 11:33 am
deboy922, I already addressed that sentiment above when Smolenski7 shared a similar excerpt. Moral of the story: don't do something stupid like hanging a pheromone trap in a susceptible plant. There's a reason that they sell shepherd's hooks for these things; you want to hang them out in the open, away from susceptible plants. Also, I wholly disagree with the statement that "they attract more beetles than they can control". As I said above, hogwash. As long as you use enough traps placed appropriately, on a property that can accommodate them, they will trap the vast majority of beetles from not only your property but also neighboring properties while leaving your precious plants relatively unharmed. Yes, you will still find some beetles on your plants, but you should be seeing far less on them than if you hadn't set up traps.

Fortunately, you seem to have done excellent work in placing your traps and have experimented for yourself. Thankfully, you have not been deterred by these university naysayers.
TimmyG - I agree and thank you, as your posts helped me to use the traps. I know I only have 1 year of experience with the traps, but I have fought Japanese beetles for 20+ years, and my plants and trees have fared very well this year. Next year, I will use traps again (but put them out before 7/8) and use Sevin sparingly.

Thanks again.

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