Boll weevil bait sticks were evaluated in an experiment involving 15 commercial cotton fields in West Texas. Stick densities tested were 0, 1 and 4 sticks per acre placed around the perimeter of the fields. Parameters evaluated included boll weevil pheromone trap captures in fields surrounded with bait sticks versus numbers caught in untreated fields and the percent boll weevil punctured squares at the one-third grown square stage in treated versus untreated fields.

Numbers of boll weevils captured in traps located in fields surrounded with bait sticks were not significantly different from fields without sticks. Boll weevil punctured square counts in fields surrounded by bait sticks were higher (alpha=0.1) than in untreated fields at the one-third grown square stage. This indicates that under the population levels encountered in test fields, bait sticks would not protect cotton from boll weevils.

A companion study comparing the number of boll weevils captured in 13 inch diameter polyethylene pans fitted to the boll weevil sticks with the number of weevils trapped by standard Hardee^® pheromone traps indicated that significantly more weevils were trapped by Hardee^® traps. The efficacy of bait sticks appeared to decrease rapidly after 3 weeks.