Hello DIY, I don't come to this board often but I need your help. These things are all over my grape and black/strawberry plants. Is there a good way to remove them en masse?
OP here. What I normally do is drop them into a bucket of soapy water so they drown, but they keep coming back.
>>1015366
What do you drop into the soapy water? The individual beetles?
>>1015363
I can't imagine that there isn't a single information on that online. Did you even try to google first?
Regardless, if you really can't find anything research what they eat, how they reproduce (where they put their eggs) and who there enemies are (competition, parasites).
Then decide on the easiest course. If they lay their eggs on the plants you could try spraying them with soapy water for example.
>>1015363
I've had great results with the following recipie in a spray bottle:
2 Tbls sriracha (or 2 tsp habinero sauce)
1 Tbls dish soap
Fill the rest of the bottle with water
Shake well and spray the shit out of the plants.
>>1015375
Yes, it makes them drown and it reduces the risk spreading their pheromones that you would get from crushing them.
>>1015396
Thanks, I'll try that.
>>1015400
No it doesn't but your still on the right track.
Let's start at a place a little more complex, why are the beetles eating your grapes?
What's their natural forage and why is it missing?
Sriracha is a solid way to kill your grapes and spicey oil treatments are bullshit.
Remove them by hand toss em in soapy/acidic water, this is the best IPM solution for most small infestations, that changes if you have 500 acres of grapes.
Drench the entire plant in this. A permethrin dusting might be a good alternative.
Otherwise there are pheromone traps, but I think those just attract even more beetles to the area
>>1015832
>Otherwise there are pheromone traps, but I think those just attract even more beetles to the area
Probably, but there is something incredibly satisfying about throwing 5lb bags full of the fuckers into a bonfire.
Trapping is more about overall population control.
If you want you can add my snapchat milkface1661 and i em always in my garden
>>1015363
Set fire to your garden, that should get most of them.
Find out what eats them and get a few of those. A lizard will probably do
>>1015363
>Hello DIY, I don't come to this board often but I need your help. These things are all over my grape and black/strawberry plants. Is there a good way to remove them en masse?
It would help a lot if you gave your location....
I am in central-USA.
Back when my mom was alive she had a garden. Some years these things were really bad.
She used these pheromone bag-traps; I don't remember the brand.
You hang it in or right next to the plants that you want to protect. The beetles would pass up everything else once they smelled that scent-bait thing.
The way it worked, the bait was on a piece of cardboard and hung above a plastic bag. The bugs would try to land on the cardboard bait strip--and they'd sit there a while, but eventually they'd fall down into the bag and couldn't get out. They'd die on their own in a couple days.
The bags (full of rotting bugs) smell pretty nasty too. And you MUST keep the trap going with fresh strips and bags. You must check every day and if you see ANY bugs on your plants, then you need to put a new bait strip out there.
>>1016925
Don't forget the snakes to eat the lizards.
>>1016940
Maybe I want to eat the lizards
>>1016944
Fair enough.
Well whatever you do be sure to yell "This is for Pearl Harbor!" before you do it.
had good success using a pheromone strip placed in a bug zapper
>>1015391
We had great success suckering all of our neighbors into bait+trap. The beetles would go to their traps on route to our backyard.
>>1015809
>what's their natural footage and why is it missing
You do realize that Asian Lady Beetles are not naturally from the US, correct? Asking about "normalized" behavior for this species is like asking why astronauts piss in their space suits on the moon when they would piss in a toilet on earth.
TLDR - They eat the grapes because they're not in their natural habitat.
>>1015832
this should have really capped the thread. it doesn't matter where he lives this kills them. get the powerder. dont breath it more than you have to. it if rains reapply.
alternativly you can plant something they like better grape vines crape myrtles peas. traps really seem to make things worse.
>>1018093
>this should have really capped the thread. it doesn't matter where he lives this kills them. get the powerder. dont breath it more than you have to. it if rains reapply.
>alternativly you can plant something they like better grape vines crape myrtles peas. traps really seem to make things worse.
It might depend on where one is located.
I am in IL/USA and the bag traps were usually observed to work way better, in terms of keeping the bugs from eating the plants you wanted to save.
The problem with just putting a chemical on the plants is that when these things are bad, there are HUGE amounts of them.
On a tomato plant that is maybe 3 feet tall and ~2 feet across, you can *easily* get 100 or more beetles on it at once if nothing is being done....
If each one lands on the plant and "only eats a little bit" before dying, then the plants are still going to get eaten full of holes.
The poison doesn't work instantly, and you don't have much hope of killing all the bugs in the area off before your plants are dead.
If you use the scent traps, the beetles never touch the plants you want to save. They fly right by them and go straight for the trap.
>>1015363
Yoko Ono worked on the last Beatles.
>>1016940
you'll also need snake-eating gorillas
Lawnmower over their nest
>>1018655
Then you shoot the gorillas and sell them to Chinese as a delicacy.
