I probably say this every July, but gosh it seems like a bad year for Japanese beetles. My cannas and morning glories are really getting hammered.

My friend Suki has (make that had) beautiful pink New Dawn roses around her pool this year. They looked fantastic in June, crawling up her pool fence and offering hundreds of blooms on either side of it.

Then the Japanese beetles arrived at the beginning of July. They really love roses.

At first it seemed like a manageable problem. Suki has lots of hummingbirds, so pesticides were out of the question. So she tried knocking them off by hand into a bucket of soapy water.

This works best early in the morning, when the beetles are sluggish. And it works pretty well, judging by the number of carcasses in the bucket.

But this method alone wasn’t keeping up with the number of beetles on her roses.

Clearly more drastic means of bug control were called for. So she went online to gardeners.com and found what they call a Catch-Can Japanese beetle trap. Here’s a “link”:http://www.gardeners.com/ to the site (sorry – looks like they’re sold out now).

Here it is in her yard:

She found three more traps at the hardware store, with disposable plastic bags to hold the trapped beetles.

Suki set the traps in the four corners of her yard, each one about 50 feet out from the corners of the pool fence. You want to set the traps well away from the plants the beetles are attacking.

Each trap has a white strip with pheremone and floral lures to attract the beetles.

You can see the white lure just below the yellow plastic.

They work!

And more beetles swarming on nearby bushes.

One theoretical concern is whether you are also drawing all of your neighbors’ beetles with these traps. But a week later, Suki says her invasion seems to have abated. The trap from gardeners.com works best, she says, and you can also reuse the plastic canister that traps the beetles.

Her cleomes by the pool are doing swell and have not been bothered by beetles.

Her zinnias, lilies and gladiolas have also not been bothered much by the bugs. Love these red velvet glads.

Suki’s also a great cook. Check out her “Feeding Frenzy blog”:http://blogs.foodnetwork.com/food/feedingfrenzy/ at foodnetwork.com. That’s her on the right.

For more on beetle traps, here’s a “link”:http://www.saferbrand.com/ on saferbrand.com and a “link”:http://victorpest.com/ to victorpest.com.