June Bugs
June bugs or June beetles are brown or dark green measure around 2.5cm long and 1.5cm wide. Their undersides have a metallic green or gold colour.
Brown june beetle (left), Brown june beetle grub (right)-photos Later’s Canada
Description
June bugs are ugly suckers! They have spiny legs and that feels strange when they land on you. One night while we were outside they were landing all over us (A few years ago). These were the Brown June Bug. Green June Bugs are a little later in the spring and appear in May or June. Green June Beetles fly around in the day and the brown ones fly at night.
Green june beetle on a peach (left), Green june beetle larva (left)-photos Clemson University
Habitat & Lifecycle
June bugs are found everywhere in North America and many other parts of the world. The larvae is a white to yellow grub. They have rows of stiff short hair to aid them in movement. They overwinter as grubs deep in the soil (lawn) and move to the surface in the spring to feed. Green June Beetles mature in June and become adults in early July. One generation per year. Females lay eggs in late summer. Adults of the Brown June Bug emerge in the spring. They are nocturnal. Lifecycle is three years. (See photo below diet and damage)
Grub damage on grass (left)-University of Nebraska, Grub damage on potatoes (right)-Michigan State University
Diet & Damage
When they are adults June Bugs do little damage, however get rid of them since after they lay their eggs in the soil and your lawn the grubs do a lot of damage! Adult june bugs eat leaves of walnut, oak, and foilage from many plants. The grubs feed on organic matter in the soil and damage grass in your lawn as they eat the roots. They will eat roots of your ornamentals, weed roots and other seedling roots, corn, roses and potatoes. Lawn grasses wilt and turn brown and will eventually die from root loss.
June Bug Lifecycle-Utah State University
How To Control June Bugs
- Milky Spore Disease
Milky Spore is a naturally occurring bacterium (Bacillus popillae-Dutky) that will get rid of June bugs organically. It works on many common lawn grubs including June Bug & Japanese Beetle larvae and doesn’t harm earthworms. You sprinkle it on your lawn like grass seeds just before a rain or water it well into the soil for 15 minutes or longer right after you put it down. Don’t mow your grass until the Spore has been watered into the soil. Milky Spore has been known to last 15 years or more with only one treatment! - Small Mammals & Birds
Skunks, armadillos and other small mammals will often be seen pulling back the turf in search of grubs. Bears have been know to do this as well but not usually in your gardens as a rule. Birds are great control on lawns….attract them with bird baths. Your chickens will also eat them but they’ll eat the grass too so it would be wise to only have them eating away in your orchards. - Hand Pick
If you see any damage, dig around in the soil or lift pieces of turf and destroy the grubs when you find them. Collect the beetles in the morning when they are not very active and destroy. You will find them on many plants and they are easy to shake them off. A flashlight in the evening will attract them and you can destroy them using stomp method or drop in hot soapy water. - Ensure a Healthy Lawn
Cut your grass higher in the summer as beetles prefer to lay their eggs in short grass. Keep your lawns well-drained and aerated. In the spring don’t water your lawns too often to ensure deep root growth.
March 31st, 2008 at 9:46 am
Thank you for telling me a way to get rid of these nasty little june bugs, ive always ben afriad of them b/c they always attack me and i cannot go outside in the summer so i miss out on alot of good and fun things, im going to buy alot of this “MILKY SPORE” stuff so that i can kill them!!!
how do you kill cockroaches too?
March 17th, 2008 at 2:41 pm
By the way, it’s not that they like water. They just can’t swim. They land there and get stuck. They aren’t very “bright” bugs. They want to go out into the yard to bury themselves to lay eggs. Those eggs turn into grubs (worms). Three years later, the grubs turn into the beetles to start their cycle again. They will keep multiplying if you don’t stop them.
March 17th, 2008 at 2:36 pm
Five years ago we moved into a new house in northern IL. In June, the beetles came out. Wow! I have never seen so many. They swarmed the light bulbs but left the people alone. In the morning, there were hundreds lying around. This went on for weeks. I swept and vacuumed, but more came. I put them in gasoline and wrapped them in plastic bags. Nothing worked. More came. It was scary. After some research, I learned these were the result of bad lawn management. We have a very large yard. I noticed no problem with the lawn until fall, and then the skunks started to roll up the sod looking for white grubs. These grubs become the beetles in the late spring. It’s a three year lifecycle.
So, I finally got rid of them! It took three years of July grub treatments on the lawn. This is not cheap for several acres, but it worked. The lawn is re-established and the beetles are gone. You can’t get rid of them the year they show up without an exterminator who sprays around the whole house and lawn. After three years of lawn treatments, your problems will be over too. I didn’t have the problem at my old house, because I used a GrubEx treatment as a preventative.
August 4th, 2007 at 10:07 pm
I have a question. Every time we dont have the cover on our pool june bugs get in there, why do they go for water? also why do the go for the hair too? i hate it when they get stuck in my hair! plz reply
August 4th, 2007 at 7:37 am
Wow!!! I thought I was one of the only ones that could not fully explain what type of Creature a group of friends and I saw…to the disbelief of our eyes!! It was about 1 1/2′in. around in diameter, and about 1in thick.
At first it appeared to be a black minature demon -looking manifestation just posted on the wall of the bedroom….it was movin very slowly and creepy from what seemed like underneath it’s body…and it was so scary looking. Kind of like a scorpion/june bug that was the shiniest green metallic color underneath, but a dull green, that was quite dark in hue…almost black…on top and it had the distinct looking eyes, very detailed and we could not seem to kill it easily…The outer body was like a shell or like an inside of a walnut shell. It would not crush. We literally spent 20-25 minutes trying with all of our might to kill this beast of an insect!! In order to finally rest assured at it’s death, we had to dismantle it and throw it as far away from my home as we possibly could. It was the most terrifying lil’ monster of a bug, that any of us had ever seen!! Is there perhaps a new breed being loosed upon the earth? It was the ugliest thing I have seen in the history of bugs in my 28years.
Just curious if this was some type of clone that got loose or what??? LOL!! Beware tho, this very well may be fullfillment of end time prohecy!!
Tish In: Fresno, California
July 3rd, 2007 at 9:29 pm
How do I get rid of June bugs that come out at dusk? They take over our patio and we have to go inside to get away from them! They don’t do any damage they’re just bothersome!!!
Please send me an answer.
Deb
June 30th, 2007 at 5:21 pm
We were just wandering if June bugs have eyes. Or can they see??
They are all over our yard and are always crashing into the house and parked cars everything. Even us!!! Can they see???
June 3rd, 2007 at 10:21 am
Is there anyway to keep the “June bugs” that come out at night away? They invade our deck just after sunset and bombard us for the next 2 or so hours. They come down the chimney and somehow get into the house. It’s nothing to kill around 20 or so inside during their ‘witching hours”! You should hear then bouncing off the windows and siding–it sounds like hail hitting!
No one seems to have a remedy–even on line I can’t find anything. Please respond with any suggestions.
These bugs are brown, soft and run into things. They swarm our homes at night by the hundreds.
Any help would be greatly appreciated! Desparate in Pennsylvania!
May 11th, 2007 at 9:11 am
Where do the Brown June bugs go during the daytime?
May 8th, 2007 at 12:28 am
Forgot to say, compared to a few pictures of June Bugs that I have seen online here, it had more of a dull, dark matte coloring to it and was more fatter looking and solid. I am very curious as to what this bug could be. I should have collected it to show to health officials or something….it was that bizzare.