Slug traps - The Yeast Mix
If you recall from earlier posts, I have been hunting and trapping slugs in a few areas of our garden for two weeks using beer as bait in the traps. This was working well, but in the interest of reducing waste, I have investigated the use of an alternative bait substance. A week ago I filled up two of my three traps - the ones with a simple 'pot with a hat' design, located by my sunflowers and runner beans - with a sweet yeast mix: 600ml warm water, 1.5 tbsp dry bakers yeast and 1.5 tbsp sugar.
I have stopped checking one of my traps regularly as it was not very effective, and as it got fusty it was hard to count numbers. It is still there though and it does look as if there is the odd slug in the sludge. Conclusions therefore are based on data from two consecutive weeks (the first week beer, the second week yeast) from two traps. I should also say I have stopped going out at night to hunt slugs on the sunflowers as I only caught one all the previous week so this might slightly affect an exact comparison, as will the fact weather conditions were different for each week. With these issues in mind, which was better for trapping slugs - beer or my home-made sweet yeast mix?
This week's data with a sweet yeast bait:
Trap 1: single pot (sunflowers) - 12 slugs
Trap 2: single pot (runner beans) - 8 slugs.
Last week's data with beer bait:
Trap 1: single pot (sunflowers) - 9 slugs (plus 1 found on the sunflowers)
Trap 2: single pot (runner beans) - 8 slugs.
Total trapped slug numbers are comparable: 20 with a sweet yeast bait vs 17 for the beer bait. The sweet yeast mix seems effective enough and far more sustainable and scaleable. I will leave the same bait in the tubs for a further week to see if it continues to work. Watch this space!