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Natural pest control broad bean beetle

 
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Hi,
Wondering if any of you have experience of natural ways of controlling broad bean beetle. We're in Sweden. Looking for natural pest predators that we can attract to our garden or suitable companion plants. Struggling to find information on this...
Thanks,
Alice
 
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Location: Isle of Skye, Scotland. Nearly 70 inches rain a year
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I stumbled on this post, which seems to have got no replies. This seems to be for good reason! A quick search turns up RHS information which says there are no natural controls.
Lifecycle of Bruchus rufimanus (paraphrased from RHS link):
The adults feed on pollen whilst the grubs feed within seeds. Bean seed beetle larvae feed within a range of bean (legume) seeds. Adults lay eggs on developing pods, The grubs bore into the developing seed and are usually unnoticable in green beans picked for food (extra protein!). The grubs pupate inside the seed and we normally only notice the exit hole after they emerge. Since they only feed on the cotyledon leaving the seed embryo undamaged, the seeds normally germinate OK.
I have heard of putting seeds in the freezer to kill any bugs, which may be worth a try if you are saving seeds to regrow. They may have alternative host plants in the area however, and still come in to your crop from elsewhere.
 
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Location: Southeastern Norway, half coastal - half inland climate
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I have only grown broad beans from saved seed from my own garden for five years, so the following is not very thoroughly tried and tested: The first year there were no beetles - the second there were many.  From the seed I saved that year I quite carefully picked out and threw away all seeds that had (or looked like they might have) larvae or beetles in them. In some cases where I saw damage as I was taking the seeds from the pod, I also threw away undamaged seeds from that pod. The next two years there were basically no beetles - this (fifth) year there were some again, but less than the bad (second) year. The reason the beetles returned this year may be completely random, or it may be because I planted some new seeds from another garden in between the seeds I had saved myself. However, it seems reasonable to me that thoroughly getting rid of infected seed would reduce the problem from year to year - both by reducing the population of beetles and by selecting seed that was for some reason (reasons?) not preferred by the beetles. Presumably this will be less successful if others are growing a lot of broad beans quite close to your garden or field.

When I said I "quite carefully" removed even possibly infected beans, I mean I actually looked at both sides of every bean that I considered saving to replant. They were mostly completely dry when I took them from the pods, but the beetles had mostly not emerged - even so I can often see a small circular mark on the bean skin, matching the size and shape of the holes the beetles eventually emerge from. I think the larva gnaw all the way to just beneath the skin before pupating, because these circular marks will be there for a while before anything more happens. So I removed all the "marked" beans, and any with actual holes in, and also any with suspicious looking spots or dimples. I then left the ones I thought looked good to dry some more, and checked them a bit more superficially again before storing them. This sounds fiddly, but seems to have been worth it - a couple of hours work to quality control two to three hundred beans, which resulted in a few thousand beans with close to zero beetle problems the next two seasons (and some beetle free back up seed left over).
 
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