Originally Posted by Silound:
...stink bugs, which are natural predators of Japanese Beetles.
Some research indicates that any sort of baited trap apparently will attract more to the area than they will catch (worsening the effect). A ground spread or spray on your lawn that kills larva in late July and early August will actually help kill them off.
I had never heard about the Stink Bugs, and we never had them in PA up until a few years ago. Japanese Beetles we have in droves.
They like to eat Cherry leaves and I used Sevin to control them.
A running joke was "If you're gonna get beetle traps, get them for your neighbors." It does pull them away from your plants to a large extent, I always put them on the very far ends of the property as far away as I could from the gardens and orchard.
I LOVED spraying them with Sevin. They'd literally rain out of the trees in just a few minutes. They'd succumb to a very low dilution, about a fourth of what's called for. I was always surprised they were so prolific, yet so easy to kill.
If you guys ever want to see something incredibly gross, get in the path of gypsy moth caterpillars eating a forest. They continually move in a giant sheet of grossness, hundreds of yards wide. If they're crawling across a highway and you stop the truck on a grade, you need 4 wheel drive to get going again. They're an inch deep, slicker than ice, and cover your car with green snot. It's one of the grossest and most fascinating things I've ever witnessed.
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