How To Get Rid Of Mexican Bean Beetles In Your Garden
The Mexican bean beetles are found throughout the United States except for other dry areas; these insects are just like the Japanese Beetles, damaging your plant by leaving the skeleton of foliage around your garden. These insects look like a ladybug, but with the color “yellow”, that eat leaves. The name “bean beetle may fool a lot of people” and think they only eat beans. However, they are partial to beans but can also affect other plants like beet, squash, pea, and tomatoes crop.
The bean beetles are laid sometime in late spring to early summer. While the cocooning larvae will rest on the underside of a leaf for five days before emerging into an adult bean beetle, the adult bean beetle usually emerges in early spring when the soil is warm, but they can also hide and emerge at any time during the summer.
Furthermore, female bean beetle will feed for 2-3 weeks before laying eggs. The female beetles lay eggs every two days frequently. Those eggs are generally laid in clusters of 30 to 40, and eggs will hatch 1 to 3 weeks later. The larvae feed on foliage before the pupa stage. To identify this insect; the adult bean beetle is small, about a ¼ inch long, their bodies change from bright yellow to orange-yellow as they get older. They have 16 black spots displayed on their tan, yellow bodies. With these tips, you can be able to get rid of the Mexican bean beetle from your garden.
Trap crop: This is a great way to trick the pests in finding somewhere else to cause their damage. The bean beetles are attracted to soybeans. Put this in your garden, once you see that they have infested the soybean crop, pull it, and put it in trash bags for a week or two, and burn the plant to kill the bugs and their eggs. Do this process when they are in their second generation. Meaning, do it when you find the bright yellow larvae so that they don’t get any chance to reproduce.
Pick them out: The Mexican bean beetles and their larvae are easy to kill. Not explosively gooey and not stinky, don’t worry about that if you are the squeamish type. Just wrap the leaf you find them eating on and wrap them around with leaf and pop them. Easy as that it is kind of therapeutic.
Use milky spore: This is a beneficial bacteria that will kill the larvae when you spray it on them. If you also have the Japanese beetle as a problem in your garden, this method will also work as well. It is killing two pests with one method. You’re welcome.
Leave it to the professional: Get professional help to help you remove these pests from your home and garden. Pest control Greensboro NC by Go-Forth knows what to use that is safe for your plants and the environment without causing any harm. You can get a professional through your local phone book and other ways.
