The first batch of Masked Chafers has emerged as adults and taken flight. If you are seeing lots of beetles flying around well lit areas at night or crawling around they are likely masked Chafers and to a lesser extent some June Bugs. The Masked Chafers you see near lights are all males. The females are usually out burrowing down in the lawn to lay their eggs. The eggs will hatch and the grubs will burrow down deeper to feed until they become adult stage grubs. At this point they head back to the surface to enter their next life stage as beetles and head off to mate and die soon after. Depending on how warm of a fall and winter we have there can be 2-3 life cycles per year.
The best way to control grubs is to apply Allectus in May and Dylox in July. You will never get rid of all the grubs in your landscape but you can managed the population.
Keeping the population low will help prevent Armadillos from being attracted to your landscape. Armadillos can smell the grubs and will dig for them when the population gets large enough for the armadillos to smell them. Grubs are a difficult insect to control and using a proactive approach to keep the population low works much better then treating once damage has been allowed to occur in the Austin area. Plantscape Solutions operates under TDA License number #611373.