Alas, Zuzu, I'm not rid of them, and probably never will be. I've already lost hundreds of buds that look like tiny little burnt match sticks. But after reading several scientific articles about the control of the Rose Midge (including a study done in a Petaluma nursery near you), I learned that sometimes the best one can hope to do is to keep the population low enough to continue to get some new blooms after the first flush. The Midge population is usually too small in the early spring to abort the entire first flush of blooms, but it doesn't take long for the population to grow exponentially because their regeneration/life cycle is just 12 - 14 days.
There are several ways to combat the population if one chooses to use chemicals. One of the challenges is that Midge eggs are deposited into a tiny hole that the fly bores into the base of a bud or inside the soft tissue of a new shoot. As a result, contact insecticides, insecticidal soaps or horticultural oil sprays are typically useless against the miniscule larva inside the bud (but can temporarily knock down the adult fly population the insecticide comes into direct contact with). Insecticidal soaps, horticultural oils, and pyrethrin sprays (not to be confused with synthetic permethrin sprays) are "easier" on the environment because of their short, temporary impact.
On the other hand, certain kinds of systemic insecticides (like imidicloprid, which is absorbed and distributed within the plant) will kill the Midge larva after they hatch and begin feeding on the tissue inside the bud. There are typically 8 - 12 larva inside each bud, so it doesn't stop the destruction of that particular bud, but it prevents those larva from maturing, emerging from the bud, dropping to the ground and pupating into Midge flies in two week's time. This can reduce the Midge's population growth inside the garden, but doesn't do anything against flies coming into the garden from other locations, who can still damage emerging buds by laying new eggs in them.
Imidicloprid can also be applied directly to the soil as a diluted drench, and this can prevent the larva from pupating and developing into the Midge fly. Unfortunately, it also kills lots of other insects and ground-dwelling organisms (I've read mixed research results where earthworms are concerned). Whenever potent insecticides are applied, I believe it is best not to use granules so that birds won't eat them and get poisoned. I believe imidicloprid granules can be toxic to birds, so in my opinion the liquid form is better -- but it's important to apply it at dusk after the bees have returned to their nests. Otherwise, I think imidicloprid can kill bees that come into direct contact with it from a sprayer or from wet residue. There's some debate as to whether imidicloprid is harmful to bees from the pollen of plants that absorb it.
An alternative to using imidicloprid as a soil drench is to use Azadirachtin, which is derived from the Neem plant (but is not Neem oil). It works as a larvicide; once the larva come into contact with it, they cannot evolve past the larva stage due to the way the chemical interacts with their development.
To say the least, it's complicated, and I absolutely hate using insecticides because I don't like killing anything, whether it's a "beneficial" insect or not. I've made some difficult choices to try to keep the garden blooming without totally wrecking the backyard ecosystem.
