I bought some Sevin last week in desperation to deal with the cucumber beetles that I find on my cantaloupe plants but decided I just couldn't spray it on the plants because it kills bees and other pollinating insects.

I also discovered ads for a cucumber beetle insecticide "Adios" that works as a bait/insecticide. The bait is a cucurbitacin attractant that works ONLY on the beetles -- the pollinators are attracted only to the blossoms of the plants, not their "fragrance", and Sevin is added to the bait to kill the beetles. (It's half-organic and half-chemical.) Well, Adios has been discontinued because of a "small market".

Cucurbitans are the bitter element that exists in various gourds, melons, and cukes. I did a lot more reading about cucurbitacin attractants for beetles, and they exist in varying amounts in various plants. They're a siren song for (apparently only) Diabroticite beetles (to which the cucumber beetle belongs). The wild African Cucumis has loads of the cucurbitacin. So do the "Hawkesbury bitter melon" and the "buffalo-gourd root".

Well, I don't have any of these plants so decided to see what I could do with what I have. If there's any bitterness in cucumbers, it's in the skin, seeds, and stem-end.

To make "bait", yesterday I saved the peelings of two cukes and tossed them in the blender with enough water to liquify them. Then I poured the mixture into a small white styrofoam cup and added some Sevin to it. Last night I placed the cup under the trellis where my cantaloupe plants are climbing (where the cucumber beetles seem to hang out -- my cukes are in containers on a high deck and I haven't seen one of them there). This morning there were about 9 dead cucumber beetles floating in the mixture. I also saw two of the beetles on the plants themselves, and who knows how many are still hiding. Maybe they just fell in there. But there were only those beetles in the mixture, nothing else, so apparently it works somewhat.

Do you suppose this means this experiment could be successful?

I think I'll scatter some more of those baited/insectide cups or the stuff in some other container (the cup is VERY small compared to the area) under the trellis and see what happens. If anyone's interested, I'll post the results here.