I have had similar experiences with spotted cucumber beetles. They will chew on my beans, chard, etc. While their total numbers are likely large, they are spread out, and are no more than a nuisance. I have had only modest numbers on my cucurbits at any given time.

Striped cucumber beetles are a different matter. They pretty much stick to cucurbits... but they often swarm in large numbers, and will kill entire rows of seedlings unless I take preventive measures. They reproduce at an astonishing rate. They infest gherkins, cukes, and watermelon, and can cause some stunting, though they seldom kill them.

But when I tried to grow an Asian snake gourd, they gnawed the seedlings relentlessly until only nubs were left. It might make a good trap crop. They will also attack & kill some of my squash... but for the most part, they seem to only attack plants under stress.

They will kill C. maxima (such as hubbards) by spreading wilt from plant to plant; so I need to protect them with floating row cover until they bloom (I just removed the covers yesterday). At that point, the plants are strong enough to usually survive the onslaught.

They attack C. pepo (such as pumpkins & acorns) and will swarm on one plant, while leaving neighboring plants untouched. There seems to be no rhyme or reason that I can determine; perhaps the plants in question are already under attack by borers, which tend to hit my acorns pretty hard.

When they attack my C. moschatas (such as tromboncino), however, I can usually pinpoint the cause. In nearly every case, the plant the beetles swarm on is already under attack by one or more squash bugs. If I find & kill the squash bugs, the beetles will not swarm; the plants seem capable of defending themselves, unless weakened by other causes.

i have found the occasional cucumber beetle on my cantaloupe and watermelon, one on my yard longs, but the one i could not get rid of was eating my peppers. i've never had any pest even touch my pepper plants until this year, the cuke beetle seems to really enjoy it (he has taken bites out of numerous peppers, why couldn't he just stick to one???), everytime i would try to squash him he would dive into the grass clippings and hide, not to worry though, his ordeal ended yesterday. sarah

I have striped cucmber beetles, and I've seen them on my squashes, cucumbers and tomatoes, but not on my beans, peppers or eggplants. I squish them when I find them, but haven't noticed large numbers of them and haven't seen much damage all season, so I assume something is keeping them in check.

It isn't so much which plant cucumber beetles prefer -- they'll eat any of the host plants. What happens is that when a cuke beetle or two find something tasty, they send forth an "aggregation pheromone" that calls other beetles to the plant. See the link below. A quote:

"Beetles prefer to feed on cotyledons of seedlings, wilting plants and certain cucurbit types/varieties due to higher concentrations of cucurbitacins (feeding stimulants produced by cucurbit plants). Once feeding begins, beetles use an aggregation pheromone to call others to an acceptable food source. Spotted cucumber beetles have a much wider host range than SCB, which restrict their feeding to cucurbit species."

Here is a link that might be useful: Cucumber Beetle Control

We find them on our cukes and watermelon leaves. We go out at night after work and flick the striped beetles into a cup of rubbing alcohol.

I haven't had cucumbers for 4 or 5 years and even then they didn't grow well. My neighbor though grows cucumbers every year. This year I've had 5 or 6 cucumber beetles on my beans that I hand-picked and killed. Certainly they haven't been a problem or an "infestation". I have squash and other veggies, but they are only on the beans. And come to think of it, I found one once on the potatoes.

Charentais Melon!!! The things have ravaged my only melon. They don't do a thing to my Sugar Baby watermelons. Next year i'm changing locations and methods for growing the french melon.

I find that the striped beetles prefer about the same things as the corn root worm beetles do. Their is a corn field across the fence...140 acres and hordes of them [corn root worm beetles] apparently hatched out from the field and decended on my corn. They love sweet corn leaves on plants 1 to 3 feet tall [tender] and corn silks. Things have settled down now...whew!

Yeah, I don't grow corn at all. Tried in one year and the corn root worm beetle (cuke beetles more or less) turned 3/4th of the ears into corn smut.

Today I was out tending to the garden and the beetles were mostly on the beans. Some on the cukes too, but more on the beans.

I just don't understand these things. My cukes well away from the veggie garden haven't had a single cuke beetle that I have seen, nor has the pumpkin nearby, but in the veggy garden where the beans are the cuke beetles are present in significant numbers.