Billbugs Eating Your Lawn?

Did you know that billbugs can damage your lawn by chewing holes in the grass to lay eggs? If you're seeing problems with your yard, it might be due to these pests

Billbugs are weevils, usually called snout-beetles, so they look probably look familiar. There are several other pests in Virginia that fall into this category, including the grain weevil.

What Do Billbugs Look Like?

Why Are Billbugs Bad For My Yard?

How Do I Keep Billbugs Away From My Lawn?

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What Do Billbugs Look Like?

Billbugs are small, less than a half-inch, and brown, dark gray, or black. Their shell is hard and has a pitted texture. They are often confused with the Annual Bluegrass Weevil because they both have characteristically long snouts and stress lawns. The larvae are white and legless, the grubs are white with legs. Billbugs will overwinter as adults and become active throughout the warmer months. Females can lay 2-5 eggs a day, ranging up to 200 eggs over a lifetime. The eggs will hatch in about a week.

Billbugs can fly, but rarely do so. They can still spread rapidly through an area, especially in neighborhoods were lawn are touching.

Why Are Billbugs Bad For My Yard?

Billbugs harm yards by stressing the turfgrass and ornamental plants. They are especially damaging pests because both the larvae and the mature adults damage grass. The adults will feed on the grasses and then insert eggs into the holes in the stems. Once the eggs hatch, the larvae will also feed on the stem, tunneling up and down the plants. Once they have exhausted the juices from that stem, they will exit and bore into another stem to continue feeding.

As this process continues, the plants will wilt and grasses in the lawn will start to die off. It's often misdiagnosed as a watering problem because the grass will turn brown in patches, similar to a drought effect.

How Do I Keep Billbugs Away From My Lawn?

Billbugs are tricky because of their hard shell and the larvae living inside the plant stems. You can plant resistant turf varieties known to be less appealing to billbugs. You can also use biological controls, like fungal diseases or parasites that target billbugs specifically. It's important to keep your lawn tidy and healthy, and avoid a thatching effect in the grass and undergrowth.

Another good method of control is applying professional pest control treatments at the appropriate time of year when the treatments are most effective against both the billbug adults and larvae.

We'd love to answer questions or help with any of your pest control needs! Call Virginia Pest Pro today!

For even more information on local Virginia pests, check out our other blog posts and pest library