Beetle Pest Control Illinois

Beetles are attracted to your home year-round. They find their way into your home to find shelter and food. Once they’ve found their way inside, they need to be dealt with immediately. Otherwise, they can damage your clothes, food, decor, furniture, and other packaged goods. To avoid a beetle problem in your home, call American Pest Control, your solution for pest control in Illinois. We’ll prevent beetles from ever entering your home.

There are over 350,000 different kinds of beetle species, and more are being discovered. While beetles come in many different shapes, sizes, and colors, every beetle has shell-like wings, chewing mouthparts, and two antennae. Knowing what beetles look like can help you get rid of beetles for good. Plus, it can help professional exterminators know how to better target and remove the pests from your home.

Japanese beetles are an invasive species. They were originally from Japan, but they came to the East Coast of the US in the early 1900s. Since then, they’ve been spreading slowly westward. They don’t enter homes in large numbers, but they’re a danger to yard plants and gardens.

What Japanese Beetles Look Like

You can recognize Japanese beetles by these features:

• Metallic Coloring: Their heads are a shiny metallic green, and their wing covers are copper-brown.
• Length: Each is about 1/3 to 1/2 an inch long.
• White Hairs: The sides of their bodies have two tufts of white hair near the front and five more near the back.
• Grubs: Their young are from 1/8 of an inch to one inch, shaped like the letter “C,” and have a tan head, white or cream bodies, and visible legs.

Damage Caused by Japanese Beetles

An infestation of Japanese beetles can do major damage to your garden, decorative plants, and/or crops. They eat about 300 different types of plants, including:

• Fruit trees, such as plum, cherry, and apple, among others
• Linden trees
• Rose bushes
• Crabapple trees
• Crape myrtle trees
• Birch trees

Every year, Japanese beetles destroy many crops in the Eastern and Midwestern United States. They “skeletonize” leaves, which means they eat all the tissue in a leaf except the veins, leaving only a skeleton behind. They also bite into fruits and flower buds.

Japanese beetle grubs eat the roots of grasses, killing them gradually and loosening soil. You might notice your grass turning off-color. As you water it, it may improve slightly for a time or not improve at all. Separate patches may die, and the soil may feel like a sponge when you walk on it. Finally, you may be able to pull up the loose turf by hand to see grubs crawling underneath.

Long-Term Effects on Plants

If you have healthy older trees, they can survive an attack by Japanese beetles. But if you have younger trees or other plants that were struggling to begin with, Japanese beetles can kill or permanently damage them.

A flowering plant like a rose bush won’t be completely killed by Japanese beetles, but they will often destroy their flower buds.

If you have a garden or an orchard, your herbs, vegetables, and fruits can survive a small amount of damage from Japanese beetles. But if the infestation continues too long, your plants may not be able to grow or produce as much food as you would like.

Signs of a Japanese Beetle Infestation

If you have Japanese beetles on your property, you’ll see these signs:

• Leaves that have been reduced to skeletons while still on the plant
• The presence of a single Japanese beetle, which often means there are others, because they send out a signal to attract other beetles while feeding
• Japanese beetle grubs burrowing in your soil
• Beetles on the ground under trees and bushes
• Brown patches of grass and/or loose turf

Tips for Getting Rid of Japanese Beetles

If you have rows of plants, you can protect them with row covers. This is often needed for about two months during the summer, starting in May or June, when Japanese beetles feed on plants. Be sure to let pollinators in, though, if you need them.

You can also pull the beetles off of your plants by hand, dropping each one into a bucket of water and dishwasher detergent, or you can shake them off onto a cloth on the ground.

Asian lady beetles look almost the same as ladybugs, but they are actually a different species from Asia. They also act differently—particularly by being a nuisance and a pest during the winter, when they might invade your home.

Appearance of Asian Lady Beetles

It’s easier to see the difference between a ladybug and an Asian lady beetle when they’re side-by-side. The Asian variety is bigger and longer, and there are other ways you can identify an Asian lady beetle on its own:

• It may be yellow, red, orange, or tan.
• The white markings on its black head will be in a rough “M” shape, though this “M” can be thin or broken.
• It may or may not have black spots on its wing covers.

Behavior of Asian Lady Beetles

Asian lady beetles often stay in gardens, eating smaller insects such as aphids. This can be helpful because aphids damage plants. However, lady beetles can also become pests by:

• Landing on windows in large numbers
• Scraping human skin if they land on you or your family members
• Excreting a yellow liquid with a bad odor
• Invading homes during the winter or spring

How Asian Lady Beetles Enter Your Home

Watch out for Asian lady beetles if your home is near fields or woods. As the weather cools, they search for warm places to spend the winter. They may gather on your windows, doors, shingles, and siding, or enter attics and other areas you don’t use often. (Note that they sometimes also invade homes in the spring.)

These beetles look for ways to enter homes, such as spaces around door frames or windows. Once in your home, they’ll search for warm hiding places and sources of humidity and moisture. They’re also attracted to areas with contrasting light and dark colors.

Dangers of Asian Lady Beetles in the Home

Asian lady beetle infestations are not extremely dangerous to most people, but they are a problem. Their excretions—which they use to drive away predators—smell terrible. They also smell bad if you step on them.

Plus, the excretion can leave a yellow stain on fabrics, carpets, or wallpaper. These excretions can become even more offensive when the beetles gather on a warm surface or around an entry point in a wall.

Some people also have an allergic reaction to Asian lady beetles. This can happen when they release their excretion or when beetles die inside your home. Also, these beetles can bite when they’re looking for food or moisture.

Tips for Getting Rid of Asian Lady Beetles

The fastest way to remove Asian lady beetles is to suck them up with a vacuum cleaner. You shouldn’t try to pick them up because they will release their yellow excretion, staining your home.

Luckily, you can try to prevent them from entering your home in the first place:

• Fix any holes in your door and window screens, or install new ones.
• Place screens over any vents in your attic.
• Repair cracks or holes in your walls.
• Seal or plug any spaces around your pipes and windows.
• Put new weather stripping around your doors if you see gaps.

At the same time, these small insects may have found a way into your home that you haven’t discovered. If they keep returning, contact American Pest Control and we will use professional methods to eliminate the infestation.