The blackberries were on the bush and they looked delicious but the same black and orange beetles that were all over the agarita bushes every year were parked on my blackberry bush eating the little bulbous sections of each berry before they were fully ripe. I remembered a trick i had seen a farmer do in arizona when squirrels were eating the fruit off her trees. I went to the health foods grocery and bought some mesh produce bags with a drawstring. I swatted all the beetles off of a particular branch and then placed the bag around the end of it, making sure the berries were inside, and then pulled the drawstring tight around the branch until there was no space between the sinch of the bag and the branch. I did this two more times eith other branches until all the berries were in bags.
It worked. The berries in the bags ripened unbothered by the beetles and once i removed the bag and picked the berries the plant was able to put out more flowers for the bees.
