Question
QUESTION: I live in Queens County, New York. I am guilty of using a lot of chemicals outside on the yard itself but this summer I decided to quit that and go organic. I am new to this so I am still pretty nervous about what to do what not to do etc. etc. etc. I noticed a lot of blakc beetles over the summer. Please tell me if these are a problem I should worry about and if so, what is the solution? Thanks in advance.

ANSWER: Beetles are beneficial. Researchers in England investigated the activity of Ground Beetles at hundreds of farms, and published their findings this year. Apparently, the Ground Beetles genus includes a lot of weed-seed-eaters.

The seed-eating Beetles are SUPERB weed eradicators.  Hard to believe, I know, but they are really, really good at this.  Add to this the grubs-loving, flea-eating carniverous Ground Beetles and you have a solid case for keeping Ground Beetles contented.

We do want to make the distinction between good Beetles - Ladybugs for instance - and bad Beetles, which includes Japanese Beetles and other pests.  And of course, we don't want to confuse them with non-destructive singing Beatles Paul, Ringo, George and John.  If you find singing Beatles in the yard, I would call your friends.

Pesticides will kill every bug, good and bad.  Weed killers will do almost a good as job as the pesticides.  So it is imperative that you garden organically if you want to protect Ground Beetles.  Dead Beetles are good for nothing.

Thanks for your question,

THE LONG ISLAND GARDENER

---------- FOLLOW-UP ----------

QUESTION: But what can I do about the ones in the lawn. ?  They are black and I don't see how they can be good. I live in Queens. The plot is not that big. I have heard about a white poder you put on the lawn to kill grubs, does this also get the beatles? Are the beetles eating the roots?  Thanks again.

Answer
Just as you wouldn't take a group of people and call them all "rich", or a collection of houses and say they're all "Colonial", you can't take an entire genus of Beetles and say they're all "bad" for the garden.

The particular Beetles we are discussing here, the wing-less, nocturnal "carabids" -- a huge family of Ground Beetles -- is a very, very good Beetle to have. If you had to buy something better, you couldn't find it.  Really.

Most of these black and iridescent Ground Beetles are carnivorous.  They swallow up grubs, and wireworms, and flea larvae, and slugs, and lots of other insects you don't want around.

They also eat weed seeds. One, for example -- Harpalus pensylvanicus -- devours up to 90 percent of the seeds of its favorite weeds.  Here's a report on exactly how they do that, identified last year in a study done in England:

http://voices.yahoo.com/a-study-beetle-appetites-sheds-light-ways-5383289.html?c

Instead of worrying about them, I strongly recommend you start thinking up ways to make them happy. You have all winter to get used to that idea.  Carabids are drawn to suburban lawns.

But making your lawn a friendly place for Ground Beetles is a very good move.  Things that hurt Ground Beetles include roto-tilling your soil, which destroys their larvae and their unhatched eggs. Of course, pesticides are absolutely verbotin.

This is not to say that you have to make life easy for the BAD Beetles. That includes the entire Scarab family.  A list of Scarabs includes Japanese Beetles (Popillia japonica), Oriental Beetles (Exomala orientalis), Asian Garden Beetles (Maladera castanea) and European Chafers (Rhizotrogus majalis), all of which are murder on plants, grass and vegetables. And the Asian Longhorned Beetle (Anoplophora glabripennis), which belongs to the Coleoptera family, can decimate an old tree in a few months.