Red Shouldered Beetle Carnage!!!

Morning all.
Well the roses were looking great despite/due to the lack of rain here on the Sunshine Coast.
BUT....overnight the Red Shouldered beetles hit and they have absolutely decimated flowers and now the new growth literally overnight. We have a massive swarm of the hungry little blighters. What to do? I thought cutting back all flowers,buds and new growth to move them on. Leon had another idea. He made a solution of pyrethrum and water up in a small bucket. Took it down and held it under the flower, one light tap and the beetles swarm out of what's left of the petals and drop straight into the bucket and die. Seems their natural defence to any intrusion is to drop to the ground. Very satisfying to kill them without spraying which we are loathe to do. Any good bugs like spiders,ladybeetles etc either fly away unharmed or or hang on. Not sure if this will completely solve our problem but it must help.  Cheers.. Jo

At least it helps you with the overwhelming need for revenge.
  

(And by not spraying with the pyrethrum you save all the bees too!)

I hope they are isolated in Qld, as I have never heard or seen them Jo. Nasty bit of work.

Good idea though , shaking the little devils into a nice lethal bucket of water lol !!

Is this them, Jo?
 
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Not sure if they are the same beetles that we get here. They are orange and love white things. The can cover a white sheet on the clothes line.

The beetles we get tend to like gum trees but will take on a rose if need be. We generally turn on the bug zapper and kill them by the thousands. Generally they are gone on a couple of days. Luckily we have enough gum trees around us to satisfy them during that time and the roses don't fare to bad.

Try this link, it has images of them,
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