It is getting warmer and the Hostas are growing. It is time for the slugs and snails to come out and do their damage. There is a lot of advice on the net on how to get rid of slugs and snails including; beer traps, diatomaceous earth, egg shells, salt and copper tape. I’ve examined copper tape in How to Get Rid of Slugs with Copper. In this post I will look at killing slugs with beer.
What is a Slug Beer Trap?
Slugs and snails are apparently attracted to beer. If you take a small container like a tuna tin, fill it with beer, and set it on the ground. The slugs will be attracted to the beer, go for a sip, fall in and drown. Don’t submerge the top of the tin even with the soil level or you might also kill ground beetles which eat slugs. Keep rims at least 1″ above soil level.
Slug beer traps only attract slugs in the surrounding few feet, so you need lots of them to be effective. According to Slugoff, a company that makes a more sophisticated beer trap, you need a trap every meter (3 feet).
Do Beer Slug Traps work?
A video is worth a thousand words:
Source: A Time Lapse of Slugs and Beer
There are several important points to notice. Slugs do seem to be attracted to the beer. You can see several going past the slug trap, and then changing direction toward the trap. Near the beginning of the video you can also see a slug about a foot away from the trap, who turns around and leaves–they need to get close for the trap for it to work well. Most slugs take a drink and leave. They have no trouble climbing up the side of the container. A few do drop in and die, but most don’t.
The slug beer traps do seem to work but there are some limitations:
- they work over a very short distance
- most slugs will just enjoy the beer and leave. Maybe, they will have a hangover the next day and leave your Hostas alone?
Do you Need to Use Beer?
Reference 1 compares the effectiveness of various beers and other fermentation products like yeast solutions to see which works best. Here are some of their conclusions:
- slugs are not attracted to the alcohol, it’s the yeast or yeast by products that attracts them
- different beers do work quite differently
- sugar + baking yeast was as effective as some beers, but not as effective as Budweiser
The Latest Science
The latest testing found that bread dough and bread dough slurry were the best attractant for various species of slugs and snails. It was more effective than beer.
Getting Rid of Slugs and Snails
There are all kinds of methods for getting rid of snails and I have reviewed several of these including:
- Eggshells Control Slugs – Do They Really Work?
- Getting Rid of Slugs With Coffee Grounds
- How To Get Rid of Slugs With Beer
- How to Get Rid of Slugs With Copper
- How to Get Rid of Slugs with Diatomaceous Earth
Oh yes. The Alkaline Diet. I had forgotten about that one.
I prefer the acid diet. Fresh Tomato, Pineapple, Mango, Orange, and Lime juice. Always diluted with almost PH neutral Ethyl alcohol. An excellent balance.
Pardon the digression
Nematodes work well but are expensive and do require moist soil continuously otherwise they pop off too.
The slug problem here in my UK location is huge. Living on the edge of forest area combined with English weather makes ideal conditions. Put new bedding in the wormery today which has almost as many slugs as worms.
Will try the ‘todes’ again now the weather is cooler, first lot dried out.
I was going to reply that ‘nematodes don’t kill slugs” but that is not true, except in North America!
The slug nematodes available in Europe are not available in North America since they don’t exist here naturally.
WOW! you have big slugs.
When I used traps I used yeast water and pie tins. They definitely got in but didn’t get out. As you point out, only effective for a small area and you of course have to mess with them often.
For entertainment, a sprayer with weak ammonia solution is fun. It doesn’t harm the plants or soil like salt does. Go hunting after sundown, or you can just spray the hostas and the soil to get ones you can’t see.
My biggest find though, was a local farmer. It turns out that the Slug Bait you buy at the box stores is a total rip-off. In Agricultural quantities, they buy the same stuff you can get at Lowe’s etc. for about $25 to treat an acre. He gave me a lifetime supply of the pellets.
What is weak ammonia solution?? I would not spray it on my plants unless I know for sure the concentration is low enough not to bother them.
You’re right, I should have been more specific. I’ve never given nitrogen burn to plants using about 1 oz in a quart spray bottle. And I haven’t systematically tested it. Slugs aren’t a big issue here , except for the hostas.
I have four of them in My garden ( beer traps). I use a homemade beer or a craft beer. I don’t sink the container. I fill it 1/2 way. I get 10-15 slugs per trap every evening. It’s really the only thing that works!!!
Unless you also know how many slugs got away – you can’t really say how well it works! but I agree it does work to some extent.
Beer works too well – I think Budweiser buses slugs in every night as a marketing strategy. I attach drip edge around the perimeter of my raised beds, They need to maintain surface contact to climb and can’t negotiate the edge and fall back to the ground.
This is interesting. I put a bandaid on my slug problem…….I chase them around with salt. That’s just gross and ineffective in the long term. I will try beer in tins. The slugs love to congregate on my concrete back patio and driveway. I’ve often wondered what they talk about at their meetings. Maybe with a little beer, their conversations will border on hilarious! Thanks!
Salt sprinkled on the slug does kill them, but too much in the garden can be toxic to plants.
We use big plastic pop bottles filled with a strong solution of warm salt water and a very tiny hole drilled in the cap. I’ve been thinking about trying cinnamon sprinkles around plants you don’t want destroyed as it is so caustic it might burn the slugs if they try to crawl over it.
How exactly do you use the salt solution? Do you dribble it on the slugs? Why not just pick them up and put them in a salt bath? seems like a lot less work.
Are you saying the cinnamon sprinkles are caustic? News to me – time for some Googling. It is amazing what one finds on the internet. I could not find the pH of cinnamon. Did you know that there are nuts out there that try to make their bodies more alkaline by eating weird food – one of them is cinnamon. It is listed as an alkaline food – but so is half of the stuff we eat. Being slightly alkaline does not make it caustic – a term usually used for substances with a very high pH.
Have you heard of the cinnamon challenge? Me neither. It is on the net, and people are challenged to eat a tablespoon of cinnamon powder. Not a smart idea. “It coats and dries the mouth and throat, resulting in coughing, gagging, vomiting and inhaling of cinnamon, leading to throat irritation, breathing difficulties, and risk of pneumonia or a collapsed lung”,
High pH does not seem to be a problem!
I doubt that cinnamon is caustic, and I doubt it will keep slugs away.
Thanks for all the myth busting! Last year I read that spreading corn meal would kill slugs following ingestion. Tried it, but found no definitive benefit. Have you heard/tested such a hypothesis?
I have heard of it, but have not researched it. I might test it this summer.
I’ve often used old bread yeast and sugar for slug traps; that produces alcohol. I used to go out just before bedtime to check my traps, and I’d usually find a group of slugs carousing. My Swiss Army knife made short work of them, or if they were little slugs, I’d just push them in. Now I dig the trap in enough that I can put a board over it, and I’ll find a good collection of slugs under the board in the morning. Even after the alcohol has evaporated, they like the yeasty sugar water.
I really appreciate your posts. I was just about to take the copper wire out of an old extension cord to use as a slug deterrent when I discovered your report that it doesn’t work!
One of the studies on testing different types of beer shows that alcohol is not the attractant for slugs. It is the yeasty sugar combo.
Have you looked at the Slug-X trap? Claimed to be effective by a reputable news paper catching 147 slugs in one night!
No. Looks like more plastic that people do not need!
“I was just about to take the copper wire out of an old extension cord to use as a slug deterrent when I discovered your report that it doesn’t work!”
It definitely does work if you have two copper wires and a 9v battery. Some species will turn away at the first copper strip (I believe this is more likely to be due to the toxicity of copper rather than any “induced current” nonsense) but the vast majority of those who aren’t bothered by the copper alone will turn back as soon as they get zapped by the electricity. The very few brave souls who repeatedly try to find a way to my plants will usually fall to the ground after three or four electric shocks. Each of my raised beds is protected by two electrified copper strips at the top and needs only one battery per year. In the spring, when changing batteries, I also dose the beds with predatory nematodes to catch any of the little bleeders that made it into the bed when the battery was low in the winter.
I am sure your system works – but it is the electricity, not the copper.
By the way – the slug nematodes are not available in North America, because they are not native here.
I agree, it is the electricity although I have observed a few species turning back at the first strip where the circuit isn’t complete so I’m convinced that some species are deterred by copper alone. “Some species” is not enough to save plants, it needs to deter them all. It’s a pity about the nematodes being unavailable, but certainly understandable considering the potential consequences of introducing new species to the wild. They are very effective, particularly when coupled with a barrier method.
This is amazing! I was disappointed in the lack of slugs caught in my test beer trap, but it never occurred to me that they were drinking and leaving.
the good news is that your slugs may be too drunk to eat your plants!
Test Comment