• I am troubled by a yellowish with black dots beetle about the size of a ladybug. Is this a pest I should be worried about? I'd show a picture but I don't know how yet. Thanks for any info.

It kinda sounds like a cucumber beetle. They are attracted to yellow.. so flowers of pumpkins, squash, cucumbers, melons.. they go for those plants right away. I lost my pumpkins to them last year, and I just ended up ripping up most of my cucumber vines because they started getting a case of wilt, that the beetles can pass on to the vines, eventually killing it.

Here's a couple of photos..
striped cucumber beetle

spotted cucumber beetle

Some facts about cucumber beetles .

Meg

Hi! May be I can help you with the picture thing - do you have a pic on your computer of it? Here's some info that helped someone else get their pictures on the forum:

You want to open a free photo account with someplace - I recommend photobucket.com. Once you sign up, make sure you go into 'account options' and check 'make public - YES' (otherwise nobody but you can see the pics) Then, upload your jpegs to their site. Your pictures will show up with 3 lines of code below it...the 1st or 3rd one is the one you want for here. I copied and pasted the 1st & 3rd lines from a pic I uploaded to photobucket...

Result from pasting line 1:
http://i19.photobucket.com/albums/b175/reboakly/smile5.gif

Result from pasting line 3:


If ya need any help shoot me a PM and I'd be glad to help!

It'll be much easier for these great folks to ID your bug with a pic

Thanks to all. The cucumber beetle looks like the problem. It sounds like a trip to the garden center for some help is in order here.

Regarding the photo problem: Thanks, Ill try that.