Stickly Stake Traps for Monitoring Fly Populations in the Sugarbeet Root Maggot and Predicting Maggot Populations and Damage Ratings

Either orange or red sticky stake traps 1 x 10 in. stapled vertically with the bottoms 1 ft. above ground level on white 2 x 2 in. posts facing either east or north and located at the margins of sugarbeet fields were found to be superior colors, heights, and exposures in trapping adult sugarbeet root maggots. An additional advantage of orange-colored traps is that flies are more easily identified on this background than on darker colors. Advantages of placing stakes 1 ft. above ground rather than simply sticking pointed garden stakes in the ground is that the higher level collects less dirt and trash and birds are less likely to remove the flies. In the area of our tests, prevailing winds are from the west or southwest, and this may be the reason why we had larger fly catches on north and east exposures. The number of flies trapped with orange and black stakes mounted at the 1 ft. level and exposed to north or east directions were found in 1974 and 1975 to correlate well with both maggot populations and damage ratings. Such counts thus can be used to predict maggot populations and damage ratings