Pea and bean weevil

What brings it on

Usually seen: March, April, May, June

Preventing it

Ordered by how much difference each measure actually makes, not by how often it is repeated.

• Get the seedlings past the vulnerable stage rather than trying to keep the weevil out. Sow into warm soil or raise in modules and plant out with four or five true leaves, and give an early sowing a fleece or mesh cover for its first few weeks — the plants outgrow the damage and the covering comes off before flowering, so nothing is shut away from pollinators.
  ·source

  Sourced guidancehigh confidence

  • Royal Horticultural Society: Pea and bean weevil — non-chemical control
  • Garden Organic — Garden Organic (Henry Doubleday Research Association): Peas and beans — early crop protection

  Checked 2026-08-13

• Water and feed a checked seedling so it grows away quickly. Vigour is the whole of the defence: the same amount of notching that halts a cold, dry, hungry seedling is invisible on one that is growing well.
  ·source

  Horticultural consensusmoderate confidence

  • Agriculture and Horticulture Development Board — AHDB: Pulses — crop establishment and pest tolerance

  Checked 2026-08-13

Dealing with it once it is there

• Nothing needs to be done to an established plant. Notched edges do not spread, do not become anything else, and do not reduce the crop on a pea or bean that is already climbing — the leaf area lost is a few per cent of a plant that makes a great deal of leaf.
  ·source

  GrowingHQ editorial positionhigh confidence

  The management field would otherwise imply an intervention where the correct answer is to leave it alone.

  • GrowingHQ editorial synthesis — GrowingHQ

  Checked 2026-08-13

• Where a whole spring sowing is being held back, sow a replacement batch alongside rather than treating the first one. A later sowing goes into warmer soil, grows through the weevil's active period in a fortnight, and usually catches up with the one that was checked.
  ·source

  Horticultural consensusmoderate confidence

  • Royal Horticultural Society: Pea and bean weevil

  Checked 2026-08-13

Widely repeated, and not supported

Recorded so GrowingHQ can address them. These are not alternative approaches — they are things the evidence does not back.

• “Notched pea and bean leaves mean slugs, so put slug pellets or beer traps out.”

  Slugs rasp irregular holes anywhere on the leaf and leave slime; the weevil takes even semicircular bites from the margin only and leaves nothing behind. Slug controls do not reach a weevil, which spends the day in the soil, and beer traps put out for it catch slugs that were not the problem.

  Horticultural consensusCommonly said, not supportedmoderate confidence

  • Royal Horticultural Society: Pea and bean weevil

  Checked 2026-08-13

What it affects

• Broad bean
• French bean
• Pea
• Runner bean