Bug Traps

I hate wasps, and pretty much anything else that buzzes as it flies around. So I have spent some time looking online for different types of bug traps. Right now we have two yellow green wasp traps outside that work wonders. If we bate them with some Mountain Dew the little monsters are super attracted to them, get stuck in there, and die. Yay!

But unfortunately these traps are hard to find, and so I decided that I was going to make a ton of different types of traps to place around our yard. Hopefully this year won’t end up being as buggy as last year.

One trap I have been looking to make is a box elder bug trap. But unfortunately no one knows how to make a trap for them, or how to bate a trap for them… or at least not ones that I can find. But yesterday I was looking at my wasp trap (trying to convince myself to open it up and dump out the dead, so that I could rebate it.

All of the homemade traps that I could find online used one basic trap – A pop bottle with the top cut off and inverted, making the top of the pop bottle a funnel into the trap. Tape around the top so that the funnel doesn’t come out. Poke holes in it. Tread string through so that it can be hung up.

1)      Thick sticky liquid using sugar and vinegar. Pour the sticky liquid into the trap. Chop up some fruit into small enough pieces that they fit into the trap. Poke some additional holes into the trap to give bugs some greater access. Hang the trap in a “high traffic” area for the bugs.

2)      Wrap the bottle with black paper to create a warm dark space for the bugs. Pour 1 Tablespoon of yeast (for a 2-liter bottle), water to fill the bottle 1/3 of the way full and 1/3 c of sugar. Place this bottle a short distance away from where you are. This mixture is good for a couple of weeks. This is supposed to catch mosquitoes.

3)      Fill the bottle with a sweet liquid. Some examples would be juice, soda, or sugar water. This is supposed to work for wasps.

4)      Put ¼ c of vinegar and ¼ cup of sugar into a bottle. Fill the bottle to just below the funnel with water. This is supposed to catch flies.

5)      For stink bugs the bottle trap is supposed to work well also. Just tape a battery powered light to the bottom of the pop bottle trap. Add something so they can get some grippage to get inside of the bottle. They’re supposed to just get stuck in there and die.

 

Some other things I learned while looking around online were other things to bait for wasps would be chunks of meat. Apparently in the early spring and summer wasps are looking for a protein source and will be attracted to the smell of it. Chicken isn’t supposed to work very well, and cooked meat won’t work as well as raw meat. But I don’t know how I feel about having hunks of rotting meat scattered around my yard. I might try it in one but probably not all. Dish soap and water, mashed grapes, sugar and lemon juice, beer, sugar and water, sugar and vinegar, laundry soap sugar and water, and sweet things like soda or lemonade are all supposed to be good things to bait traps for wasps also.

Empty the traps regularly and bury the dead wasps or flush them down the toilet. The dead wasps can put off a smell or something that will warn other wasps of their fate with the trap. So it might also be helpful to rinse the trap out each time you empty it as well.

I guess I have some pop drinking to do so that I can get busy on making these traps. I’m hoping some if not all of them will work wonders, and my yard won’t be littered with creepy crawlies this year.