The Great Japanese Beetle Hunt

Thanks to a tiny gap in the screen door that we're going to have to let the land lord know about, we discovered this evening an infestation of Japanese beetles in the living room, kitchen and the back bedroom. They covered the ceiling and lamps until part of the ceiling threatened to turn black with their numbers. But what could we do? I wasn't about to put the children to bed with so many of the beetles around.

We don't keep spray pesticides in the house due to a lung condition I live with. So even fly spray, which I'm not sure would be affective on these little blighters, was not an option. Fly swatter would have taken us forever with the numbers and it might not have caught even ten percent of them with so many being on the ceiling.

Then my husband came up with a great idea.

The vacuum cleaner, we could use the vacuum cleaner with the hose attachment to suck them into the main container then dump them in the garbage can with the lock down lid. It wouldn't be a perfect solution, but it would certainly mean we could get rid of most of them without having to go out and get a chemical that would leave me feeling sick and potentially affect the children as well.

For the next hour we hunted them down, sucking them into the vacuum cleaner. Cries of 'Mummy, there's one here', and 'you've missed one, get it!' rang out from my seven year old. Then there were cries of 'bug bug!' from my four year old as he joined in. Despite the fact this was a job we didn't want to have to do, we managed to turn it into something fun for the evening and the vacuum cleaner was soon full of the nasty little things.

Japanese beetles are now the most wide spread turf pests in the United States, they dine on up to 400 types of plants and lay eggs four times a year, making their numbers difficult to control. Some of the efforts gardeners have used to control them have been less than successful. Pheromone traps attract the beetles, but as these creatures can fly between one and five miles away from their home, the traps attract far more than they kill, actually making matters worse for some homes. Pesticides can help, but there's always a knock off effect with those, ranging from damage to the good grubs in the ground, to potentially poisoning animals and children in your household. However there is an organic method that does help.

It's called Milky Spore disease and when it's applied to the ground it's ingested by the beetle grubs where it multiples until it kills them. Milky Spore continuously regenerates and can last between 3 and 10 years. It's safe to use around children and pets, so is a viable option. Be warned though, it can be a bit pricey.