You may or may not recall, that this summer I decided to track how many paper wasps, carpenter bees, and the like would meet an untimely death as a direct result of my hand/shoe. The interim report showed a tally (as of early June) of 1 bald-faced hornet, 15 carpenter bees, and 14 paper wasps. Well, the final numbers are in...
It appears the wasp and bee activity tapered off mid-summer, with totals of only 16 carpenter bees and 17 paper wasps. The mid-summer also brought on a newcomer to the tally, Japanese beetles. For those not familiar, Japanese beetles are a major pest, their grubs feed on the roots of grasses and the adults feed on almost every plant, including but not limited to, my hops! They also love crepe myrtle trees and we have two. Here's a couple photos to give you an idea of the problem.
This is the crepe myrtle in full bloom, around the middle of June. The Japanese beetles had this completely devoid of flowers by the end of June or early July. A close inspection of the tree, even when this initial photo was taken, finds hundred of Japanese beetles and they're even trying to make more!
Good thing for me, they have a very stupid defense mechanism (in my opinion anyway). When startled, the beetles drop straight downward before flying off somewhere else. So, I capitalize on this by placing a bucket of soapy water underneath a branch and then startling them. Sure, it may sound time intensive (or possibly like a waste of time), and it is, but if you take a close look at the tally, it was very fruitful. So fruitful, in fact, that I had to switch from the standard tally method to the box tally. Total Japanese beetle kills (+/- 25 or so) for 2010: 702! I can't wait for 2011!
3 comments:
OH YEAH! You killed 702 beetles AND you got to use the box tally? I can't remember the last time I had to use that... forestry summer camp? We miss you guys, but we'll be in Asheville Dec 27th until January 2nd or 3rd or 4th or... Then we'll be NC residents by March (likely sooner).
So a quick Google search for "box tally" resulted in nothing helpful. so i pose this question with full humility, and, acknowledgment that an Eagle Scout should probably know this - but yet... What is, and how does one use the Box Tally?
The box tally is a way to save space and tally more. Each box is worth 10. You start with dots in the four corners, then the four sides, then the two diagonal lines = 10. Maybe it's only a forestry thing.
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