Tired of being scared witless by spiders?
Don’t like walking into a web in the basement?
Hate Roaches racing across your feet?
Now the reason that pushed you to use an insect / spider trap is less important than how to compare the variety of spider traps.
There are MANY factors that influence what might be considered the best spider trap including: trap design, appearance, glue surface, trap surface margins and the Entrance to the Active Trap Field. Today we explore why the entrance is so important.
Entry required
Any insect trap requires the insect to be in the trap.
Common sense right?
To get caught a spider has to walk into the trap, cross the entry margin and wander into active trap field. The width of the trap entrance determines the effectiveness of a spider trap But the shape of the adhesive surface matters when comparing traps.
In the two examples above, both spider traps have 9 sq inches of sticky glue trap surface. You may have noticed that the rectangle has an Active Trap Field Entrance of 12 inches but the square only has a 6 inch zone an insect could enter. Did you? If so then you already understand the logic behind an ATFE rating.
ATFE = sum of entrance widths
To determine a trap’s ATFE, simply sum the width of all trap entrances. In most cases this means laying the trap flat (prior to assembly) and measuring the sides that are not lost when the trap is assembled (this area is called the assembly margin).
The key to an accurate ATFE is knowing which sides of the trap are entrances and which are lost in the assembly of the trap.
In the picture above the YELLOW lines indicate the entrances to the trap. What becomes very apparent is the that the RED rectangle orientation would result in only a 3 ATFE because only the two 1.5″ sides of trap surface are serving as an entrance. Where the exact same sized GREEN rectangle has a 12 ATFE.
So of the 3 spider traps in the example, all with the same 9 square inches of trap surface, the Active Trap Field Entry varies almost 4x.
- 3 AFTE RED Rectangle
- 6 ATFE Square
- 12 ATFE GREEN Rectangle (BEST TRAP)
ATFE of consumer products
As spider traps become more common, and consumerism grows, we are seeing more brand display the ATFE rating of their traps.
For example the catchmaster 288i has a 6 ATFE, and Traps Direct Advantage Spider Trap has a 14 ATFE.
( update: Bell Labs, Trapper has a 6 ATFe )
We will be going through older posts and reviews to determine if enough information exists to provide an Active Trap Field Entrance rating. If the information is there, we’ll add a comment, and the ATFE score as well..
Feel free to post comments when you see ATFE ratings ‘in the wild’
I am frustrated by pictures of traps that are not telling the whole story. I recently bought an insect trap that looked huge until I turned it over and found a little patch of glue.
This atfe looks like it would be quite helpful but I don’t see atfe scores for most products. If a product does not show an atfe is there somewhere to go to get it?
Anyone compiling a list? Any way I can help?
I just noticed that Advantage Spider Traps on Amazon are 14 ATFE
I just purchased some trapper monitors made by bell labs and the width of the glue is 3″ on each side of the monitor.
So it should have a 3″ + 3″ = 6 ATFE rating.
Catctmaster 288i spider and insect monitors are also 3″ glue with windows.
They are shipped as 3 monitors per sheet with a single glue field across all 3.
So include them as a Catchmaster 288i – 6 ATFE.
I am curious how the Trap Active Catch Field rating would be work out. I understand that the calculation boosts 50% of the zero edge entrance length, but the outside traps have 3″ zero edge (the outer most edge) but all 6″ of the inside trap are zero edge.
So is it outside traps = 6″ (ATFE) + 3″x50% = 7.5 TACF
or inside traps = 6″ (ATFE) + 6″x50% = 9 TACF
I don’t want to make statements that are wrong.