Control. The easiest method is frequent dusting with rotenone, although a rotenone or DDD spray may be more effective. Note that that is DDD, an analog of DDT. The latter is singularly ineffective with Mexican bean beetles considering how readily it kills the good lady beetles. Methoxychlor, another DDT analog, is good.

ROSE CHAFER (Macrodactylus subspinosus),
familiarly known as rose bug. This is a tan, slender, long-legged beetle, 1/2 inch long feeding on roses, peonies, and sometimes other flowers, in some regions ruinous to foliage of grapes and elms, occasionally other fruits and trees. The larvae, small, white grubs, winter in the soil, especially in sandy areas. They feed briefly on roots of grasses and weeds, then pupate, with beetles emerging as grapes are coming into bloom and continuing through the June rose bloom. There is only one generation a year.

Control. Spraying or dusting with DDT or chlordane is quite effective. Some rose gardens, in a region where rose bugs are particularly numerous, have been protected with cheesecloth fences around the beds.

TORTOISE BEETLES
, also called sweet potato beetles and gold bugs. There are a number of species, all feeding on members of the morning glory family, all leaf eaters. They are rather small, not over 1/4 inch long, very broad, with the body so nearly covering the head they look like tortoises. They are usually yellow or gold with black dots or stripes. The larvae look like moving bits of dirt because they carry about their own excrement and cast skins, packed onto posterior spines.

Control. Spray or dust with DDT, lead arsenate, rotenone, or cryolite.

WHITE-FRINGED BEETLE (Graphognathus spp.),
a probable immigrant from South America, first found in Florida in 1936. The several species known collectively as white-fringed beetle appear in portions of 8 south- eastern states, infesting about 100,000 acres of farm crop and nursery land in Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, North Carolina, Georgia, and Tennessee. The beetle is brownish gray, covered with fine short hairs, and with faint white stripes on the wing covers which are fused so it cannot fly. All the adults are females. They start laying eggs soon after emergence in June or July and continue through 2 or 3 months of feeding. The eggs, cemented in small masses on plant stems, stones, or debris, hatch in 2 to 6 weeks to small, legless grubs which feed below ground on stems, taproots, and seed of several hundred garden plants.