Yellow boards: use glue boards & make them yourself

Everyone knows the yellow boards that catch insects. We show what you should pay attention to when using and how you can make yellow plates yourself.

Many of you have certainly seen these sticky yellow signs before and wondered what they are all about. Yellow boards are an effective means of recognizing a pest infestation at an early stage and thus being able to act quickly. The yellow glue traps can be used both in greenhouses and indoors to monitor pest infestation. They are even used outdoors, for example in orchards. There, however, there is a greater risk that, in addition to the pests, some useful animals will also fall into the trap. How exactly should you use yellow panels and which pests do they work against? We will address these questions below. But first we clarify how yellow tables actually work.

How do yellow boards work?

If you've ever been outdoors in the summer wearing a yellow t-shirt, you know that the color yellow is very attractive to insects. Yellow panels take advantage of this stimulus and thus attract the small animals. The insects then stick to the glue layer on the boards and are thus caught. Such exploitation of the insect's own stimuli is part of biotechnological plant protection.

But how do the yellow tablets work in particular and why are the insects drawn to them like it is magical? Ultimately, there is only an instinct of the insects behind this, because they need pollen and nectar for their nutrition. You can often find this in yellow flowers. This is why some insects are attracted to the color yellow - this is exactly the mechanism used by yellow tablets.

The available yellow boards are made of either plastic or cardboard and are coated with a layer of glue. However, neither pheromones nor insecticides are needed to attract and catch the insects. They are only attracted by the color yellow and stick to the glued layer. However, some yellow bars also add pheromones to increase effectiveness and specificity. Because in this way, especially those insects can be attracted in large numbers, which react to the respective sex hormones.

Use yellow tables correctly

You can either hang yellow boards near the plants or stick them in the ground on a stick. For example, choose our Plantura Yellow boards to buy, you have both options. Because our yellow boards come with ten reusable metal plugs as well as binding wire for hanging. Depending on the infestation situation, the yellow panels can be used as a whole or simply cut in half at a dividing line. Our yellow boards can be used all year round in the house. They can be distributed in the greenhouse or outdoors from the end of March, because the first pests are already on their way at this point. However, one must always bear in mind that beneficial insects can also stick to the traps outside.

Yellow boards for pest control

With yellow traps like ours Plantura yellow panels it is possible to monitor an infestation and partially also to decimate the number of insects. For example, you can catch the following insects:

• Winged Aphids (Aphidoidea)
• Whitefly or greenhouse whitefly (Trialeurodes vaporariorum)
• Sciarid gnats (Sciaridae)
• Thrips (Thysanoptera) - especially the vine thrips

Furthermore, yellow tablets have an attractive effect on fruit flies (Drosophila), Leaf miners (Agromyzidae) and the green leaf hoppers (Empoasca vitis).

Of course, you can also use the yellow boards indoors for house plants and not just in greenhouses and outdoors. Because fungus gnats in particular often cause problems in living spaces. More information about the Fighting fungus gnats You will find here.

Yellow panels help to identify an infestation very early. This allows them to start fighting right away and contain the infestation before it becomes a real problem. In addition, the sticky boards show the success of the control. However, the sticky tablets are not a means of combating insects. A few animals always escape the traps and can continue to reproduce, and the actual damage is often caused by the insect larvae that live underground.

Use yellow tables correctly:

• Basically, one yellow board per flower bank or one board per square meter is sufficient to monitor pest infestation.
• Make sure to distribute the yellow panels evenly over the infested area.
• The traps are usually effective for a very long period of time, so they rarely need to be replaced. Our Plantura yellow panels work, for example, over a period of at least six months.

Tip: If the pest pressure is very high and the yellow panel is full of insects after a very short time, then it is for a successful use it is advisable to put more boards between your crops and put them up earlier to replace.

Yellow signs as a danger for beneficial insects?

Bees, ladybugs and the like rarely get lost in the house or greenhouse, so the risk of accidentally catching beneficial insects is relatively low. In contrast, it looks different when it is applied outdoors. You should therefore carefully consider the use here. Because ultimately it cannot be avoided that some useful insects or even small birds are caught.

Tip: The use of yellow bars is one of the few methods that can be used to deter cherry vinegar flies from laying eggs in cherries. When using it, it is important to really only leave the boards in the tree for the short flight period of the flies between May and June and to remove them immediately afterwards. This prevents too many unwanted animals from sticking to the traps. We have more on this topic in a separate article on Cherry vinegar fly summarized for you.

Make yellow boards yourself

Yellow tablets are commercially available, but you can also make them yourself. Simply take yellow construction paper and laminate it. Use a punch to punch two holes in the boards through which you will pull a stick or wire for hanging. The surfaces of the yellow boards are coated with a sticky mass. There are several possibilities for that:

1. Insect glue: You can buy this ready-made in tubes and also use it for self-made glue rings. One tube is enough for about 200 commercial size yellow tablets if the glue is applied thinly.
2. Sugar glue: Dissolve about 3 parts of sugar in 2 parts of water and bring this mixture to a boil. After the liquid has started to boil, do not stir any more - otherwise the sugar will later crystallize and will not stick. Preserving takes a little practice: The sugar mass should be boiled until it has reached a temperature of 105 to a maximum of 115 ° C. Once this temperature has been reached, the cooking process must be stopped immediately by placing the pot in a bath of cold water. Even now the mass must not be stirred until it has cooled down completely.
3. Insect glue according to grandma's recipe: 200 g lard are heated with 200 g rosin in a water bath and stirred until they have mixed well. Then 200 g of brown soft soap are stirred in, everything is poured with 2500 g of rapeseed oil and stirred until the liquid has cooled down.

Tip: The glue according to Uroma's recipe does not always work because the materials differ in quality and the right temperatures during the mixture are very important. This recipe is more for hobby gardeners who enjoy such experiments.

With one of these three recipes you can easily make your own yellow bars - in the desired quantity and size. To reuse the yellow boards, scrape the trapped insects off the surface and apply a new layer of glue. Of course, you can also try other colors and color compositions. More on the different types of Glue boards find out here. The Blue board that attracts other types of insects than the yellow variant.