Where’d the Japanese Beetles Go This Year?

Mike in Massillon asks, ‘maybe this has been discussed in other shows, but this year Japanese beetles have been like non-existent. I was just wondering, does this mean we’re going to have an attack of them next year in your experience?’

In my 35 years of doing this, what I’ve seen is the insects kind of run on a clock pendulum timing You’ll see them where they’re really really bad you’re filling four five beetle bags a week and then the pendulum will swing back the other way and we’ll have a year like this year where almost nobody sees them.

Things run in cycles. We had a hard winter last year, there’s some other things that can affect the insect life cycle. Even mosquitoes really weren’t what we’ve seen in past years this year, especially with as much moisture as we had. So I think that’s one of the advantages when we all complain about the cold winter. There are some pluses: we have no poisonous snakes, no poisonous spiders really, and the insects are really knocked down when we have a hard winter like that.

Don’t get me wrong, they are coming back. It’s just a matter of time, and you will see they’re not as bad or, you know, really bad next year, so I don’t think you’re going to see a return to really bad in a single season. Like I said, It’ll progressively come back and you’ll see a lot of them, then it’ll progressively go to another year like this year. That’s what I’ve experienced at least in the 35 years I’ve been doing it.

-Matt

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