Cut the top 3rd of the bottle off. Drop a spoonful of bait into the bottom of the bottle. Push the top portion of the bottle (inverted) into the bottom and secure with 3 or 4 staples.
Use the trap for several weeks, then toss it out. The bait is protected from rain and pets. This trap has proven to work better than messy beer traps or spreading the slug bait onto the ground.
I've made a similar trap, inverted and sealed with hot melt adhesive instead of glue as a yellow jacket trap. Little bit of wine and sugar and water as bait. What is interesting is that when insects are trapped and die and start to smell, trap attracts fllies which add to mix. None of my home made yellow jacket traps work as well as the engineered commercial ones but instead of disposing you can refill with wine/sugar bait. Frank
snipped-for-privacy@dol.net (Frank Logullo) wrote in news: snipped-for-privacy@posting.google.com:
I've heard that they like higher malt content better (Colt-45, Magnum), but due to the legal drinking age for slugs, they will probably take whatever they can get. When I was in college, the cheapest was Milwakee's Best ("The Beast") @ 50 cents a can.
Not sure what is the best bait. I've been looking for a product called "Sluggo" for some time without any luck. There are a variety of baits available at your garden center. The thing about this trap is that the bait will not wash away. Slugs are attracted to yeast, so a small ball of yeast dough should work. Maybe a small sponge holding Budweiser will work.
Bud light is only fit for slug traps :-) If you only staple the thing shut how do you keep the beer from running out? I need to be spoonfed here. The slugs slime in through the neck then plop in to the beer? Amazing, now I am actually looking forward to slug season. jc
"Joseph Chong" wrote in news:Up_Tb.396744$X%5.110583@pd7tw2no:
personally I just put out a shallow container (1") deep when the population gets too high. Some other people have mentioned using something as deep as a yogurt container. If you are going that deep, you might want to dig a hole so that the slugs don't have so far to climb. This works okay if it doesn't rain alot.
Here's my version if it rains alot:
"Super Slug Tent-party"
empty paper milk or juice carton beer ______ _/i.....i \______|
lay the carton on its side make a horizontal cut in the middle on both sides of the carton (at the '.') cut two vertical slits near the ends (at the 'i') fold the resultant 'flaps' up pour beer inside
for extra ambiance, you can tape toothpicks together and make little support pillars for the flaps.
I don't know how effective it is and don't blame me if you are cited for having trash in your yard
Actually, you do not need to be elaborate. A pan of beer sunk a little into the dirt to allow slugs to crawl in will do. They crawl in and drown. I guess if you used poster's idea, you could use less beer. I used to put in my garden. I suggested it to a coworker one time but he was afraid he might catch a beer guzzling neighbor. Any beer will do but after the Super Bowl commercials, I can't think of a better use for Bud Light ;) Frank
Actually, they crawl in, & crawl right back out. It has to be too deep for them to reach back over the top to continue on through. A yoplay yogurt cup works very nicely, even big ones can't quite climb back out of that.
[repost below]
Field studies show the majority of slugs crawl into a pan of beer, then right out, unharmed -- IF it's shallow like in a pie tin. A few will be killed by the alcohol content per se if the beer is less than an hour old, but alcohol evaporates off in about an hour, & the only reason they would die thereafter would be to drown. Slugs can only drown in water that is deeper than their "foot" can reach them back out & over the edge. If a Yoplay yogurt cup (with inward-reaching walls) is sunk partly in the ground (not all the way or beneficial insects will fall in) slugs will crawl into it after the scent of the beer malt, & can't crawl back out.
The beer has to be changed DAILY; slugs can't smell old stale beer & won't find it. Slugs have favorites, too. A study at the University of Colorado discovered slugs dislike some beers & just won't pay attention to them. They did rather like Michelob & Budweiser. They were MOST enamored of Kingsbury Malt, which is not alcoholic & never kills slugs toxically, but the Colorado study used DEEP "professional" slug traps that drowned them. A University of Ohio study used shallow beer traps with "lids" for the sake of population & species studies. These were not supposed to kill the slugs, & didn't kill them. The "hide box" beer traps attracted a lot of slugs, which liked the beer enough to hang out in the trap (clinging to the roof) for easy count & species assessment. Essentially beer in a hide-habitat made them happy rather than dead.
The Entymology Society of America did a study to see how metaldehyde snail bait worked compared to beer. In greenhouses, with beer traps, they caught about 300 snails, to every 28 snails caught by metaldehyde bait. This study was a while back & they didn't compare Sluggo & EscarGo, made from the first muluscide that honestly WORKS, even when wet, & which is totally non-toxic to anything but muluscs. It is pure iron phosphate, which snails like the taste of, but which causes them to slime themselves to death, unable to eat a thing more in the meantime. Imagine having your mouth full of jello which you can neither swallow nor spit out, & you slowly starve to death. How sad for the slugs! The little bastards. By comparison metaldehyde baits first of all don't attract many slugs, and attract ZERO slugs when it is matted down with rainfall or garden-waterings. So that stuff has to be DRY for snails to eat it, but snails aren't so active when days are dry. If they do eat any of it in the rain, because the toxins cause the slug to dehydrate to death, this often doesn't happen if it is raining. It works a bit better inside a box where slugs can find it dry on a wet day, but essentially metaldehyde bait isn't very appealing to slugs either way, as the Entymology Society comparisons proved.
But back to the fun Colorado study. Slugs DON'T LIKE Rainier Beer, Strohs, Pabst Blue Ribbon, Coors, or Millers. Anyone who likes these beers lacks even the good sense of a slug. Anheiser-Busch beers were across the board better liked, inducing one soul to suggest a new brand, Slugweiser; but nothing equalled non-alcoholic Kingsbury Malt in slug appeal, so alchies who don't dare have anything around the house but near-beer are in like flint. Slugs didn't like flat beer at all, they wanted it fresh or none of it. Slugs also don't like wine. Gallo Wine was slightly more appealing than plain water, but not by much.
[end repost]
Here's a more complete slugpost:
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here's my article on the falsehoods & realities surrounding the popular idea of coffee grounds as slugbait:
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presently use Sluggo, an organic product which so far as the garden is concerned is merely a fertilizer (pure iron phosphate) but which kills slugs better than ANYthing ever before concocted. I use it only twice a year, early in spring, then once more when autumn rains start. It's the first thing I ever tried (other than hand-picking with flashlight on rainy nights) that turned out to be pretty much a sure thing.
I think we're on to something here! the "latest thing in garden decor"....slug ponds. with you in construction and me as decorator, we'll make a fortune. We can even change the decor colors monthly to coordinate with whatever holiday is in that month. Coast to coast- Virginia to California !!!!
Yes, Spring has been peeking in the crack in the door, but yesterday and today she has the door wide open: Mid fifties yesterday and 60s today. Wow! I got so much done yesteday. But the biggest sign of spring is that the beekeepers are putting the bee hives out into the almond orchards this weekend. Soon the valley will be filled with blossoms!
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