It is a little late in the season for this, but I wanted to get a little feedback from the community before dedicating time to an experiment. I have an idea I would like to try next year for controlling Japanese beetles. As we know, Japanese Beetles are stupid. They barely know how to fly and they fall off of plants with the slightest disturbance. This gave rise to the most common form of organic control, shaking beetles off of plants and catching them in a container of soapy water. This inspired my idea for using artificial wind. First, my reasoning.

1. Japanese Beetles will fall from a plant with only a slight disturbance.

2. Japanese Beetles are attracted to plants that have other Japanese Beetles.

It is therefore important to clear your plants of these pests early and often. This said, I have observed a brisk gust of wind causing a small swarm of Japanese Beetles to fly away from an old apple tree near my garden.

My idea is this. Initially, I would like to use a leaf blower and "sweep" my garden, or at least infested areas, two or three times a day. Hopefully, this would knock down the beetles and maybe cause them to fly away to less windy places. Unlike the shake and catch method, this idea is, at least theoretically, scalable as well.

My question to you fine folks is - am I crazy? Does anybody think this has potential?

I thank you for your time in reading this wordy post.