Beetle Traps: Worthless

If ever there were a way to rob homeowners of their dollars, the prime example has got to be "beetle traps." If you've been suckered into buying any one of these products, manufacturers of the trap just love you to pieces, also folks in your neighborhood you've never seen or met. They love you, too, because they don't have beetles decimating their roses and bedding plants.

Despite heavy advertising by beetle trap manufacturers, the traps won't make the garden safe from beetles. Emptied with some regularity, traps draw beetles (and sometimes beneficial insects) from distant areas. The drawing card is the artificial female hormone inside the trap. Entomologists have long known that "dispar" was the female scent drawing males for mating. Chemical labs took the clue and created "disparlure," the female scent, to make beetle traps work. Unfortunately, traps cannot handle the overflow, so male beetles pretty much own the landscape.