effectiveness of vinegar jug trap

Does anyone use the bug trap of a milk jug hanging from a tree filled with some combination of vinegar/ rotten fruit/ soap? Is this effective? How can it selectively trap bad bugs and not attract beneficials? If this does work, what recipe works well?

Darin Enderton
Owner/manager
Apples on the Avenue Orchard
Zone 5a (technically)



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 06/20/2015 10:35AM by Michael Phillips.

First we should ask What's the target? Open-air jug traps draw whatever is attracted to a vinegar/ molasses mix, and that can include beneficial species. I'm not familiar with using rotten fruit ... but that sounds kind of after the fact if codling moth (for instance) is the goal. Soap breaks surface tension so more insects drown.

Spotted wing drosophila, the newest fruit fly on the block, is drawn to the smell of vinegar, which makes sense, since raspberries and other soft fruits subject to SWD larvae are going to ferment. See the February 2014 newsletter for details on SWD traps. The cup trap "entrance" insures that only small insects like SWD will get into the trap.

It would be great if anyone who has ever tried an open-air jug trap reports what's to be found. Stink bugs? Moths? Mitch McConnell?

Lost Nation Orchard
Zone 4b in New Hampshire

I thought I had replied to this before but I don't see it. We tried vinegar and a banana peel in a gallon milk jug a couple of years ago and ended up with lots of yellow jackets and some bees so we quit doing it.

Turkey Creek Orchard
Solon, Iowa (zone 5A)