What is this???

[Charlie]

Darren, are you sure you have Japanese Beetles? They are rare west of Alabama and big efforts are made to detect and eradicate them when they reach California via airplanes from infested areas and commercial plant shipments into CA.

Here is what the CA Dept of Food and Agriculture says on its website:

"The beetle is currently found in coastal and adjacent states from Maine to Alabama with small infestations westward beyond the Mississippi River. Three infestations of this pest have been eradicated from California."

Charlie

[roadrunner]

Darren - based on your description of the size of your beetles ("They are so big that they are really clumsy and slow"), the fact that their food preference is fruit, and most importantly it would be major news if there was a Japanese beetle infestation in California I think it is likely that you are dealing with the green fruit beetle (Cotinus mutabilis) also known as the fig beetle.  Can you post some pics?  This beetle is much larger than Japanese beetles at about 1 1/4" in length.  Japanese beetles are 6/10" in length.  Japanese beetles also have very distinctive white spots on the sides of their abdomen.  If you'd been dealing with Japanese beetles all these years I'd think the agriculture people would have been in your area like a swarm of locusts.  

The GFB is a very common beetle here in Arizona as well as much of the west and is a real pest on many fruits for a few weeks in normally late June into July here.  They can really make a mess of peaches, nectarines, and plums to name a few of their favorites.  

Both are scarab beetles and if memory serves David in Vietnam had quite a time with a couple of different scarab beetles eating blossoms last year for a few weeks.  I have my annual few weeks dealing with at least 3 different species of rose chafers making mincemeat out of my rose blossoms. (also scarabs)

Here are links for each beetle:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Figeater_beetle
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_beetle

dave

[davidwood]

Dave or anyone, do you know of a trap you can buy for these Scarabs, I did go on eBay and all I can see is for Japanese Beetle, not sure if that would work for Scarabs.

I keep a very close eye on my Samba Dancer cv, on a few occasions I have discovered [usually on the underside of the leaf] these very tiny little black wormy things, they are wriggling about and I assumed that they have developed from eggs and will become beetles[about 30 or 40, maybe not and they become something else but since I have been destroying whatever they are I have had less beetles[or scarabs].
Very strange that I only ever have them on Samba Dancer, I first noticed them buried in a developing bud, they are black, about an eighth of an inch long and thick as a pencil lead.

[farmer d]

Charlie and Dave you guys are awesome.  Thank you for pointing out my big error on this one.  What I have grown up observing is definitely the green fig beetle.  I didn't realize how much larger and mostly green these are compared to the JB.  Those small pics on the front of the home garden insect spray bottles of the JB they always show was what I was basing it on.  Good to know the difference.  Too bad the JB isn't slow and clumsy like the GFB - total organic killing by hand can occur then.  Only problem is sometimes there are so many you can only get so many at once while the rest fly away.  But they'll be back...

Check out the pic - these guys can really be intimidating just by their looks, size and numbers but again they're really clumsy and slow...

Farmer D

[roadrunner]

Good grief Darren that's quite an attack in that pic.  Fortunately here the adults only hang around for a few weeks.  My neighbors with fruit trees have the most trouble.  How long do you have to put up with them in your area?

dave

[blupit007]

Gross!!!!

[roadrunner]

David I found some traps online doing a search for rose chafer traps.  Rose chafers are a type of scarab beetle that feed on rose blossoms as well as other flowers.  There are many species.  Insect traps are not my field of expertise so I have no idea if they would work for your species of flower feeding beetles.  I remember that they were scarabs but couldn't come up with a specific species ID.  Many types of traps use specific phermones to attract the target pest so they may not work for yours.  I've used the hand picking and destroying method which can be effective if you don't have a major infestation.  Doing this can decrease the following year's adult population.  I know in my rose chafer case I've had a remarkable reduction in this year's population after spending several nights removing and destroying the little monsters from my rose blooms last summer.  I also don't have enough expertise with pesticides for a recommendation.

dave

[roadrunner]

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What this forum needs is a good entomologist.