Is This Brown Beetle a Pest in My Garden?

Joe's Bug

Q. What type of pest is this?  They seem to be on and around several of my fruit trees (apple, pomegranate, plum) but don’t appear to be causing any leaf or bark damage.  I did notice that there were several worm holes in the soil around my grape vines, but didn’t see any of these bugs on my grape leaves.  Are these pests harmful to my vines/trees? If harmful, how can they be controlled and/or eliminated?

-Joe

A. Well Joe this is one of the June beetles. They can also be called scarab beetles. Generally they all look the same except for their color. They are obviously beetles with that hard outer shell and range from ½ to 1 inch in length generally speaking. Colors range from your light brown one to dark brown and shiny metallic colors like the Green June beetle common here.

Green June Beetles attacking Kadota fig at the orchard

            There are so many different types that it is hard to narrow it down unless you were to take it to an entomologist. But some of them, like the Japanese beetle which this is not and does not live in southern Nevada, can cause a lot of damage to plants.

            Another scarab beetle is the Green June Beetle which we will start seeing now can also attack fresh fruits like figs and peaches. Yours is not the Green June beetle either since that pest is a very distinctive metallic green color. I will post in on my blog and it does live in southern Nevada.

White grub larvae attacking the roots of a lawn grass

            The immature form, grubs, of some of these June beetles can cause a lot of damage like white grubs which attack the roots of lawns causing wilting and extensive brown patches. The best I can tell you about this one is that the immature form (the beetle is the adult) could have possibly been attacking the roots of some plants in your garden.

            They could also have been in a compost pile since these grubs do like rotting and decaying plants. Some are actually dung beetles.

            If you don’t see a lot of them and don’t see any damage then don’t worry about it. They are part of some life cycle out in the garden and as long as the numbers are low they are not causing much damage.