PNR, do please report if it doesn't work as well.
I'm sure scent plays a very important role, but I also think the lily beetles mostly are content with whatever lily they first encounter when they fly to a new location, unless perhaps they smell an even more desirable cultivar further away.
I try to keep a pretty good squish program here. Still I always miss a few, but today I think most of the lily beetles, especially in early spring, are visitors from other gardens.
For a few years I have observed significantly more Lily Beetles in the front yard(east) and almost none in the back yard(west).
The reason I think this happens is that there are many more lily growers in the direction of the front yard, and almost none in the direction of the back yard. The prevalent wind is also from the west, which would also play a role as scent wouldn't be as likely to be carried in that direction attracting lily beetles to my garden.
I have lilies spread out in many places in the front yard and what I notice is that while I have sporadic outbreaks in the more central parts of the front yard, most problems occur on the perimeters. When I started to grow Martagons in the more shaded, further away parts of the garden they immediately got infested and thus I moved the perimeter of defense as well.
The Martagons early appearance and perhaps their scent played a role in this, but also I think their location was important. These were the first lilies any visiting lily beetle would encounter when arriving from gardens south and east of me. I also have a large patch of Crown Imperials filling the same early "capture crop" function along the sunny north side of the garden. They seem to get less attacked since I started growing Martagons.
I however have hundreds of lilies in the back yard, more than in the front yard, yet rarely have a lily beetle there. There are no Martagons or Crown Imperials here though, so not as attractive early in the season.
Generally speaking Asiatics and LA hybrids seems more prone to damage here than OT lilies and Orientals, when I grow them in the front yard, but yet they have very little problems when growing in the back yard. I have moved most of these Asiatics and LA hybrids away from the front yard, but the lily beetle problem hasn't moved with them.
One would think that as the Crown Imperials go dormant and the Martagons leaves are less nutritious further into the summer that they would come in hordes to infest the back yard, but it isn't so. They mostly find other hosts in the front yard.
I have a little less than an acre here, so I think in a smaller garden this pattern wouldn't be so visible as the lilies then would be growing more closely together, but still I find these observations interesting. I use these patterns, accidental or not as to spend my time more efficient when scouting for lily beetles.
