Striped Cucumber Beetle

I had some good luck last year with killing many mating pairs of cucumber beetles by looking inside the flowers of my various squash vines every morning early in the season, soon after the vines first started flowering. The beetles seemed to congregate inside the blooms, and pair up.

Sometimes I merely shook the flowers over a jar of hot soapy water and they fell in. Often I was able to close the flower to prevent them from escaping, and then smush the whole flower and dispatch the beetles within; sometimes there would be several mating pairs inside. Fortunately the majority of the flowers early in the season (when the bugs are actively mating) are male. I still had bugs later in the Summer, but undoubtedly I put a serious dent in the second generation by killing so many of ... read morethe initial pioneers.

I put positive to get your attention - radishes will deter them! Last year I planted beans, potatoes, and several varieties of squash - summer, winter and pumpkin. Stripy beetle heaven, right? Not with blooming radish everywhere! Not one bug. I used the young radishes as both spacing markers and guards. I may have overdone things a little with putting a radish every 2' along vining rows, and four around each bush, then scattered among the companion planted beans and 'taters, but it worked.
Let the radish flower and go to seed. There's next years pest control!
However, all that blooming will attract more butterflies, so if you grow brassicas, you may want to cloche them. I did get a Black Swallowtail though! And many Sulphurs. Bees worked hard too, and I'm not argung against... read more good pollination rates.

These beetles are voracious. The only way I was able to control them at all was to go out in the early morning when it was still cool and knock them into a can of soapy water or step on them when they fell on the ground. Another way was to come up under the leaf and squeeze it together, squashing the bugs. Messy but fairly effective.