How To Get Rid Of Box Elder Beetles

If you are attached to the box elder tree on your property, get a professional tree sprayer to treat your tree every year just before spring, so that the female beetles would be unable to lay the eggs on the leaves. Always remove all seeds that fall from the elder tree whether they are on firm surfaces or on the grass. This will starve them of their natural food source. Box elder beetles do not in any way damage the tree and they are termed as pests more because of their mere presence and their rather odoriferous defense mechanism. Any pesticide treatment in a house to get rid of box elder beetles must be done just before spring as this is the time that the females will lay eggs and their population could expand.

How Box Elder Beetles Get Into Your House

Box elder beetles would get into your house through open windows or torn screens in patios. So keeping these closed and the screens in good repair is one way to combat the entry of box elder beetles into your house. You can use a vacuum cleaner to get rid of larger collections and kill them by dunking them in a detergent solution or alternatively spraying it on them. You can use the garden hose to get them off the exterior walls of your home or from the trees and plants you may find them on.

Box Elder Beetles Are Not Big, But ...

The beetle is about half an inch long and half as wide. They are not in any way detrimental to humans, like their other household counterparts like mosquitoes, flies or wasps. The one fact that makes them very much abhorred is that they release a very strong smell when they are stepped on, and this one fact alone makes them a very detested form of beetle. They could also stain your curtains with their feces and do seem to congregate in large numbers, which makes them quite a nuisance in a well kept yard. They do feed on fruits and cause them to get deformed and are therefore quite the enemies of fruit orchard owners. They are a prey for rodents and geese and the offensive odor they emit is their natural defense against these predators.

Is Your Neighbor's Elder Tree Giving You Beetles?

Box Elder Beetles are so named because you will always find them around a box elder tree, especially if the tree is a female one. Their normal diet includes a lot of plants, but the seed pod of a female box elder is something that seems to attract box elder beetles. So naturally the one way of removing these box elder beetles from your vicinity is to get rid of the female box elder tree that you may have n your vicinity. But then it is not that simple, and if there are other such trees in your vicinity the elder box beetles could still prosper and visit your home, because they can fly fairly long distances. So a elder tree in your neighborhood can still cause you inconvenience once the beetles have had their feast and then decided to go out visiting people.

Box Elder Beetles - Harmful or Not?

Box elder beetles are not really harmful, and if you can learn to live with them, just keep them out of your home by making sure there are no ways for them to get into the home. And if they do, use the vacuum cleaner to catch them and get rid of them.