trap Archives » Colin Purrington's blog

My vegetable garden has always been plagued by cucumber beetles, so this year I finally made an attempt at DIY traps, inspired by instructions posted by Lee & Pinero (2016) and Shee (2019). I’m posting details below in case anyone would like to make their own or might be able to suggest improvements.

For the traps I repurposed some Spartan Mosquito Pro Techs and one Spartan Mosquito Eradicator that I had sitting around, first spray-painting the tubes with Krylon Gloss Sun Yellow and the caps with Oleum Spring Green — to emulate yellow flowers subtended by green calyces.

Spartan Mosquito tubes — clean and rinse tubes

Then I drilled multiple 11/64″ holes in the tube and in the cap (which already had several) to allow entrances for the beetles.

Drilling holes in cucumber beetle trap — Drill holes in tube

To attract the beetles I purchased a packet of lures made by AgBio, which I cut up into 5 pieces and stuck to strips of yellow sticky cards. These strips were then placed inside the tubes.

I’ve caught several beetles in each of the tubes, though not the hundreds I was hoping for. All of them were striped cucumber beetles (Acalymma vittatum). Not quite a complete failure, but close.

Striped cucumber beetle (*Acalymma vittatum*)

One likely explanation for the low number of beetles is that cutting the lure into small pieces reduced the attractiveness below some needed threshold. But those lures are so expensive I can’t really stomach using one per tube. What I’d ideally like is a way to use cheaper aromatic oils and scents to make a more affordable lure. I suspect some combination of corn silk oil, cucumber oil, clove oil, etc., would work if I had infinite time to test.

Another possible explanation is the shape of the tube or the number and orientation of the holes, as per discussion in the articles liked above. Perhaps cucumber beetles just prefer gallon milk jugs over thin tubes. Indeed, Shee found that gallon milk jugs seemed to attract plenty of cucumber beetles without even a lure, at least at the start of the season.

If anyone out there has made traps and can offer some suggestions, I’d be grateful.

This post evaluates the claim on the label, “mosquitoes will gather near them”. Per the company, it is the first step in how the device kills mosquitoes. I.e., the device needs to attract mosquitoes if it is going to work.

Evaluating the claim

I used a security camera to record activity around the cap area. Here’s a photograph of how I arranged everything:

Spartan Mosquito Pro Tech with security camera

Below is a 15-second time-lapse to show that small insects such as ants were easily visible, even at night. I think they are Prenolepis imparis, which are 3-4 mm long —mosquitoes are larger and thus would be detectable even in flight.

On the day that began filming (September 2nd, 2020) I counted over a dozen mosquitoes (all Aedes albopictus) landing on my arms and legs within 30 seconds. According to the instruction sheet, the device begins to work instantly, as soon as water is added, so an hour of remote, video observation should be a sufficient amount of time to evaluate the attraction claim.

Spartan Mosquito Pro Tech begins working instantly

I collected continuous footage for over a week, ending observations on September 10th. The mosquitoes were still plentiful on that day.

Results

During 183 hours of footage, I couldn’t find a single mosquito on or near the device. Here are the contents. I also posted a photograph to iNaturalist.

Conclusion

Because the Spartan Mosquito Pro Tech did not attract any mosquitoes, it therefore did not kill any mosquitoes. If my results are generalizable to other yards, the device is worthless as mechanism of mosquito control.

It is noteworthy, I think, that Spartan Mosquito has not made public a single video of mosquitoes gathering around a Pro Tech (or an Eradicator) when it is deployed outside. My guess is that the company has tried many times to get such footage but has not succeeded in attracting a mosquito. It will be interesting to know whether they will be compelled to disclose their efforts in a court of law. I.e., because the company has formally claimed to the EPA that “mosquitoes will gather” around the Pro Tech, the company would be in substantial legal jeopardy if that statement turned out to be false. If that’s what is going on then it seems likely that the EPA Enforcement Office might coordinate with the FTC as well.

Please also see my page, “Spartan Mosquito Pro Tech review“.

Footage

In case anyone might be skeptical of my results, I decided to upload all 183 hours of footage onto YouTube. I had to break it into 16 segments due to size limits on YouTube.