I was at my father's in MA yesterday and there were beatles everywhere.

I haven't really had much of a cold snap. Our low was 34 degrees and I just picked off 10 RLLBeetles over the weekend. The winter moths are back again too. Although the leaves seem to have opened before they ate them. Hardly any of my maple leaves look damaged. Other years, they were nothing but holes. The caterpillars drop all over you if you walk under the trees though.

Out there today and caught more of the buggers. Have to keep at it until you get rid of them before they make a mess.

Wouldn't it have been nice, though . . . ?

I've only seen one red lily leaf beetle so far this spring, and that was a few days ago. I have mostly intact foliage on tiger lilies, Casa Blancas, and a few others. Only a few bites of leaves taken; you have to look hard to see the damage. I hit the beetle with a permethrin spray I happened to have handy. Probably drowned it.

I had very little beetle damage last year, and I'm hoping that it means that the parasitic wasp has reached here.

If I get a big infestation, I'll go back to using the Bayer Rose and Flower Spray which is a very effective systemic insecticide. However, I'd rather use the absolute minimum because of the possible damage to beneficial bugs like bees.

Claire

My BF was saying that he would like for it to freeze once a week all summer to get rid of the black flies, mosquitoes, and of course the beetles! But I guess that would also do away with the beneficial bugs that Claire mentioned...bees, dragonflies, spiders, etc.

Thanks to this thread I was able to ID and kill a RLLB today. I never had Asiatics till this year...

I just found 10 more today. Looks like I have a crop of them this year.

I haven't seen a single beetle this year, usually inundated by now. I'm praying this good luck continues! I live in SE MA.