Cucumber Beetle trap experiment

17 years ago

I bought some Sevin last week in desperation to deal with the cucumber beetles that I find on my cantaloupe plants but decided I just couldn't spray it on the plants because it kills bees and other pollinating insects.

I also discovered ads for a cucumber beetle insecticide "Adios" that works as a bait/insecticide. The bait is a cucurbitacin attractant that works ONLY on the beetles -- the pollinators are attracted only to the blossoms of the plants, not their "fragrance", and Sevin is added to the bait to kill the beetles. (It's half-organic and half-chemical.) Well, Adios has been discontinued because of a "small market".

Cucurbitans are the bitter element that exists in various gourds, melons, and cukes. I did a lot more reading about cucurbitacin attractants for beetles, and they exist in varying amounts in various plants. They're a siren song for (apparently only) Diabroticite beetles (to which the cucumber beetle belongs). The wild African Cucumis has loads of the cucurbitacin. So do the "Hawkesbury bitter melon" and the "buffalo-gourd root".

Well, I don't have any of these plants so decided to see what I could do with what I have. If there's any bitterness in cucumbers, it's in the skin, seeds, and stem-end.

To make "bait", yesterday I saved the peelings of two cukes and tossed them in the blender with enough water to liquify them. Then I poured the mixture into a small white styrofoam cup and added some Sevin to it. Last night I placed the cup under the trellis where my cantaloupe plants are climbing (where the cucumber beetles seem to hang out -- my cukes are in containers on a high deck and I haven't seen one of them there). This morning there were about 9 dead cucumber beetles floating in the mixture. I also saw two of the beetles on the plants themselves, and who knows how many are still hiding. Maybe they just fell in there. But there were only those beetles in the mixture, nothing else, so apparently it works somewhat.

Do you suppose this means this experiment could be successful?

I think I'll scatter some more of those baited/insectide cups or the stuff in some other container (the cup is VERY small compared to the area) under the trellis and see what happens. If anyone's interested, I'll post the results here.

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Comments (2)

cramapple
17 years ago
That sounds kind of interesting. You know what might be cool? If you picked a spot away from your cucumbers and melons. Maybe just the other side of the house would do. Then, just do one cup with your mixture and another without for a control. To introduce randomness, mark out a 10 by 10 grid in your yard and number the intersections 1 through 100. then generate 2 random numbers and place the the control on the first point and the other cup on the second point. (if you just type "random number generator" into google you'll find a bunch. This one works pretty well though. Observe and record. Then do it a minimum of thirty nights which is on the precariously low end of "large" sample size. The more, the better. If you decide to do it, let me know what you get and I can run some stats on it for you and we'll see what happens.
One problem with the thing might be the fact that you won't get exactly the same materials every time you mix your juice. I thought about making one big batch and saving it in the fridge but it would probably start to rot if you tried to keep it for 30 days. I'm not sure if the expansion and contraction that goes along with freezing and thawing would mess with the chemistry but that might be worth a try. Or, if you need to just mix up a new batch every night, go for it. It wouldn't be that big of a deal I suppose.
cramapple
17 years ago
I forgot to mention. You'll need to generate 2 new random numbers and place the cups accordingly each night.