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We have no honeybees now. I used a Bayer product containing a small amount (label says .012%) of the active ingredient imidacloprid, and 4 and 5 days later and after a heavy rain, I found a very disoriented large black wasplike insect and a bumblebee the next evening on a rose I had sprayed. This was in fighting a bad Japanese Beetle infestation this year.

Luckily I didn't spray everything with it, but I don't want to use it again, or if I do, only on blooms that have swarms of them, and then cut the bloom off.

I'm looking for a safer alternative. Many have been using Sevin? which is also toxic to beneficial insects. I think I'll try Pyrethrin or some other alternative.

But home gardening is nothing compared to the ag industry, plus they are making their way west and haven't hit the CA fruit orchards or grape growers but have been spotted in the Pacific NW. It's hard to predict what CA would do in an attempt to eradicate them, one can imagine, they cannot afford to lose their grape and fruit crops, also berries.

Buzzzzzzzz kill - The loss of billions of bees raises questions about our pesticide controls - LAT

I hope they can come up with something safer. The U of MI has something in the test phase for home gardeners (an innoculation on adult beetles that they spread from one to another), and there is Milky Spore for lawns, but I don't know about anything for the ag industry.

I did a lot of reading about it this summer but can't remember it all now.

My mailman told me how he went to work one morning and when he got home that night, a swarm had completely defoliated a new elm tree he had planted.