Does anyone have experience with these plants being used as an insect repellent and the berries for jelly and/or wine? Recipes would be great!

Where did you get the idea of insect repellent? Usually it takes a plant with strong aromatic oils to be repellent to insects. Not beautybush. I have a wonderful herbal insect repellent that I use every day. The oils in it are cedar, citronella, peppermint, lemongrass and geranium.

As far as I know, the berries are edible to birds but people don't usually consume them. Just because birds eat them doesn't mean they won't poison a person, so do be careful what you eat out there!

I also heard that the crushed berries of the American Beautyberry Bush can be use to repel mosquitoes. No?

No idea, Cheryl but I think if you crushed them and spread them on your skin you'd be purple.

They don't smell strong enough to repel anything.

I read about this recently. The leaves of the Beautyberry are said to repel mosquitos. Here's a link:

http://www.motherearthnews.com...

Ah ha! It's in the leaves! That's neat.

And here I've been waiting for berries! Good news! And I won't be purple!

I'm going to plant a bush or two, and tuck those leaves in the tops of my socks! I'm constantly getting bitten around the ankles.

Meanwhile, I'll be stealing leaves from my neighbor's bush . . don't tell him!

My bush in the forest is a little volunteer. It just happened to grow just behind my gate. How handy! But it is so small yet, Amd judging by the number of skeeters we have I will have to strip the bush of leaves!

I just yanked three huge beautyberry out.
I hate it when I plop things down and through no fault but my own...I have to destroy. Well, actually gave away...but still...

I don't make jelly but not all beautyberry shrubs are the same... I " think" the one you seek is the japonica. Some have bitter berries ...some tasteless...who knows some may be poisonous.

I did save this a few weeks back because this topic has come up before.

UPDATE: One of my students, Fred, does a lot of foraging and has lived his life in mosquito-ladened Florida. He reports: [Beautyberry’s] “jelly is awesome but I really love the beautyberry for its insect repellent properties. After learning about this from a Green Deane class and being an avid forager myself I decided to use the beautyberry as a bug repellent so it wouldn’t slow down my summer foraging (Florida summer mosquitoes can be horrible). I pretty much chopped up a plant(leaves and stems) and boiled it in a pot and let it cool and strained the brown liquid into my blender, about 1 1/2 cups. In a separate pot I warmed some organic neem oil (1 cup) with 1 ounce of beeswax until melted. Then you turn the blender on and pour in the oil mixture very slowly and it becomes a cream. I have to say hands down the best insect repellent ever! Because its a creme on july/august days one application is all you need for the entire day even when your sweating.”

It came from a book about florida edibles I believe.

Anyway, I feel certain you can find a jelly recipe in the net.