I had a particularly bad year with them. Nothing was killed off though. I did try the traps with sevin and root powder and it did attract and kill them, but the number was too high to make a dent.

In the end I sprayed pesticide on the cuke plants to keep the CB from killing them.

I had a total of 4 traps set out, but I could have done better at keeping it fresh.

I am thinking that next year I will just use one trap, but make it very large, like a 5 gallon bucket and move it under cover if rain threatens.

Corn root worm beetles and cucumber beetles look a lot alike......and act a lot alike. About the first of July, the beetles came in droves...perhaps from the adjacent corn field.

Wayne,

I think they're the same critter, aren't they? All I've read suggests that corn root worms become cucumber beetles. Wait, here's what I read, and it applies to only ONE of the corn rootworms: There are several species of corn rootworms, one of which, Diabrotica undecimpunctata howardi, is known as both the Southern corn rootworm and the spotted cucumber beetle. http://www.sare.org/sanet-mg/archives/html-home/36-html/0100.html

There is some inter-changeability of corn root worm beetles and cuke beetles...certainly the roundish spotted cuke beetle. I didn't have trouble with the spotted ones this year...they have to blow up here from the south.
The regular corn root worm beetles don't show as early as the regular cuke beetles.

In my location, I have few problems with the spotted cucumber beetle. They are present each year; but while they attack a wide range of plants, their numbers are usually too small to cause significant damage.

The striped cucumber beetle is another matter. They tend to attack vine crops in swarms, often just as the seedlings are getting established - especially if the plants are weakened. Squash plants already under attack by squash bugs seem especially attractive... it has proven to be a fairly reliable way to detect their presence early. Every dark cloud has a silver lining, I guess.

For C. pepo & C. maxima squashes, and some hard-shelled gourds, the losses without protection can be total. I use floating row covers over the plants until they either blossom, or outgrow the cover... by this time the Spring swarms have mostly passed, and the plants can fend for themselves. The covers have the added benefit of reducing SVB losses.

For cucumbers, some varieties seem more resistant to attack than others... or perhaps less attractive? Watermelons are attacked mostly at the vine tips, but for the most part, they tend to survive on their own. For both, I might spray concentrated swarms with soap spray during the early stages of growth, but as the plants grow stronger, they too need little help. The wilt they transmit kills a few of the larger vines, but since I always over-plant, the losses are generally bearable.

2007 was not unusual; the populations of both beetles were comparable to those of past years. 2006 was a bad year for me, striped cucumber beetles completely destroyed 10 gourd plants & 10 squash plants left exposed (10 squash plants grown under cover survived). I attribute this to the fact that a neighbor nearby had grown a large pumpkin patch in 2005, which increased the local population the following year.

zeedman

I attribute my bad infestation of spotted and striped cuke beetles in 2006 to my neighbor's corn planting right next to my garden area. He injured his back over the winter so didn't plant anything there this past summer. We also had very little rain over this past summer, and I think that also affected their numbers somehow.

justaguy

If you had a spread-out patch of cucurbits, four traps probably weren't enough. This past summer I put out one trap between every other plant on the trellis but didn't get many because there just weren't that many around.

You'll probably need to test to see if one large trap works as well as several small ones. The small ones are a pain when it rains, or mine were, because I left the tops open. The liquid also evaporates quickly when it's hot. I think about how to improve the setup, too.

Whatever works, right?

This year I saw cucumber beetles for the first time, but it was only 2-3 near the end of the season, and I saw them around my potato plants and brassica. My squash and melons were on the other side of the yard, and I didn't see any around them.