Japanese Beetle Control: Don't Invite Them with Traps

The Japanese beetle is the bane of the home gardener, arriving just as the vegetables and flowers are at their peak in early to mid-summer. The Japanese beetle never arrives alone, but comes in hordes and devours everything from a gardener's fresh vegetables to prized flowers. The Japanese beetle has a voracious appetite and gardeners unwittingly invite the Japanese beetle over for a meal with the very beetle traps they place around their yards to trap the beetle in.

People try to control the Japanese beetle population in their gardens and yards by using commercial beetle traps. Bad idea, the beetle traps only serve as an invite for the Japanese beetles to come on over and help themselves to the fruits of your labor.

Beetle traps contain pheromone, which does attract the Japanese beetle into the traps, but the pheromone in the beetle traps also attracts more Japanese beetles into your yard. The more beetle traps you have, the more Japanese beetles you will have in your yard, and the less control you will have over the damage the beetles do to your vegetation.

The best way to control the Japanese beetle population in your yard is with insecticide. Liquid Sevin spray insecticide is more effective than beetle traps, however the liquid Sevin will only be effective for a few days and will have to be re-applied throughout the weeks that the Japanese beetles are migrating.

If you don't like the idea of using chemicals to control the Japanese beetle population in your yard or garden, there is a 'green' option that is better than beetle traps but more time consuming than spray insecticide. You can pick the Japanese beetles off by hand, or shake them off limbs, then put them in a bucket of warm, soapy water. Japanese beetles are not hard to kill, and if you don't invite them with beetle traps, you should only have a small beetle population to control in your yard.