Since you are going to be gone for a week, you could disbud your roses right before leaving.

Silicates added to your watering routine have been reported to reduce leaf attack. See the earlier thread:

http://forums2.gardenweb.com/forums/load/roses/msg0400135319709.html

This post was edited by henry_kuska on Fri, Jun 21, 13 at 22:27

Imidacloprid - Merit, or the insecticide in many Bayer formulations, will kill JB's dead. If you have the time, you can mix up a little tank - say, 1 gallon and mist your buds and flowers every day or two. It will do a pretty good job of controlling them long-term, but JB's will get through on a daily basis and can do a lot of damage to rose buds/flowers in just a day's time.

I used to hate them exclusively, but now I could care less - they're nothing compared to thrips.

I'm with Henry, cut off all of the blooms before you leave. I'm almost bloomed out, so the expected arrival of JBs in the next two weeks will have little impact. Although, they will chew on foliage if there is nothing else around.

Thank you for the advice-- I will cut all buds off before I leave. I was actually talking about this with my husband earlier today. Then I walked out to the rose garden for my morning "beetle patrol," and saw that deer had eaten most every bud in the garden last night. :)

I tried a different insecticide for JB's late last summer that seems to be significantly better than Merit or Sevin which are both contact killers & only gave me about 2 days of limited control. I live 2 blocks from a large irrigated University athletic field so JB's are present in unbelievable numbers in my yard. This new pesticide is called Demand CS & it appears to have both a residual kill & repel affect on the JB's for about 10 days so hoping I only have to spray 3x a month. Below is a link to a rose blog where I found out about this spray.

Here is a link that might be useful: rose blog

This post was edited by wirosarian on Sun, Jun 23, 13 at 12:18

Dang! That's good info! I will order and try some!

10 days would be a life-saver for July - 3-4 sprays and you'd have the entire JB life-cycle controlled for a season.

rosetom....if you use Demand CS, you should know that it is sensitive to the pH of your water so you should use Indicate 5 or something like it. Check link below, about 1/2 way down the page.

Here is a link that might be useful: rosemania.com

That's OK - got plenty of Indicate 5!

There here has been a noticeable shift in our yard from Japanese to Oriental beetles, to the point where the beetle damage is merely annoying--there are many blooms that survive the invaders.

I'm not the only one who has noticed this--I've linked a popular press article.

Here is a link that might be useful: North Shore Sun Article on Beetle Decline