Our yard has tons of Japanese beetles crawling over it. The apple and cherry trees were taking the brunt of the attack. I got fed up with the beetle invasion and bought a Bag-A-Bug beetle trap. The trap seems to work, drawing plenty of beetles into the bag, where they get trapped and die. If you’re lazy like me, though, the bag can begin to smell with ammonia from dead beetles.

The directions for the Bag-A-Bug say to change the bag frequently as the smell of rotting beetles is repellant to other beetles. That suggests the question: why not make the plants you want to protect smell like dead beetles? I mean, if this smell is what keeps beetles away, it seems to me the best way to protect your plants is to make them smell like ammonia.

I wonder if hanging a bag of dead beetles (with no pheromone bait) on the trees I wish to protect will keep the beetles away?