Mosquito Control - redux

We had a thread on this, but I wanted some fresh opinions. 

After pulling weeds in the garden for a few minutes this evening, I think I've reached a critical tipping point with mosquitoes- they must go! I have half an acre of yard with mature trees and a brushy back hedgerow. I've got a combination of multiple mosquito species: Forest Day,  Northern House, and absolutely ridiculously aggressive Gallinippers and others. The end result being any time of day or night, they're ready to be pests.

I do the basics, but I can't control the neighbors with standing water, the mature trees, hedges or worst of all, the drainage ditch at the end of the road that acts as ground zero. 

So, I'm wondering if I buy some Mosquito Traps or pay one of the mosquito control companies to come out and guarantee their results.
 

We pay Mosquito Squad and dont worry about them.

Well, I just treated my yard with this thing:

I'll let you know in a few days if it works.

We have used this with good success. I spray the deck, house siding, grass and area around the deck. I was turned on to it by my brother who swears by it and my parents after they tried it. I’m sure that there are better professional solutions, but this can be sourced at any local box store.

Oh, I should add:

No general pesticides. Mosquito larvae control is fine.

There are a few commercially available mosquito traps out there.  Depending on how wooded your lot is you may also invest in bat houses to facilitate more of your mosquito consuming buddies to live nearby.

Mosquito trap reviews

Bat houses

Oooooh, I could build a bat house with stuff I have laying around.

Switch to a two-stroke lawnmower.

Ok , don't laugh , but can you order bats off the internet ?

I understand they may not stay on your property , but hopefully your area .

I have never seen a bat here in LA ,  but it's all houses / apartments around here.

Update , well looking at Google it seems you can buy bats as pets , but really not for pest control , 

It says to build a bat house and attract them ,  nice idea if you have some in your area 

Maybe buy some geckos ?

Trying to control mosquitoes outside can be a real futile endeavor.  If you kill every single one, the next day there will be the same number back.  It's just kind of a law of nature.  Treating the air is about as effective as farting.  Within 2 minutes, the breeze has carried your pesticide 5 miles away and brought in six new populations of mosquitoes.

Repellent is the key IMO.  Google what plants they don't like and put that shiz everywhere.  Citronella doesn't work well, but it helps.  Tiki torches with citro oil help a bit... the bugs it doesn't repel will likely fly into the flame and die.  Bug zappers work pretty well, but put them about 20' away from where you are.  Otherwise they will just be attracted to your area and have a snack before they fry.

There is also  stuff you can put in standing water that doesn't have pesticides.  Mosquito larvae require surface tension.  They have little eustachia (tubes) that hang on the surface tension.  No surface tension, no sticky, dead larvae.

As Curtis said, treating your own property with an adulticide isnt super effective.  It needs to be a bigger effort to cover the whole neighborhood. Most modern adulticides will become inert within a few hours of spraying it, some even faster. The chemical is long gone and a new batch of mosquitos are biting you. 

As for just larva, a extremely popular, effective  and widely used product is BTI. Its a bacteria. Kills the larvae and is harmless to people. 

Eliminating the sources is key.  Gutters, birdbaths, crap piles, old tires and even plants like bromeliads will breed larva. Its always been said that a bottle cap of water can breed mosquitos. 

You can all check with your local municipalities. They may have a mosquito control program. If so they may either come do a treatment for you or give you some “bti dunks”, they are the little donuts that are available at hardware stores. 

RossD said:

We pay Mosquito Squad and dont worry about them.

This is what I have done this year.  So far so good.

I got tired of living in fear of my own yard.  I have no swamp nearby, no ponds, creeks, any standing water of any sort.  Last year if I was outside for more than about 2 mins I would get bitten, and when that happens it always swells to the size of a quarter or so and takes several hours to get back to normal.  berkeley that noise.

The real solution is to move, but until that can happen, I'll pay someone to keep my yard liveable.

Bats do seem like a reasonable course of action to help things.

I've been thinking of giving them an easy breeding location so I can just kill the young.

Brett_Murphy said:

I've been thinking of giving them an easy breeding location so I can just kill the young.

I've thought of this as well.  I wish there was a bit more detail on how to remove the fluid, kill them, and refill it (preserving the hormones) easily.

It scares me that they had to do the removal twice a week.  I'm not sure if that is for the purposes of the study, or if that is how often it would need to be done to really prevent them.  If its the latter, that trap would totally backfire anytime I'm out of town.

You need to drain the trap in time so the eggs do not turn into mosquitos , 

Not sure how long that is , or if you can keep the hormone water in a sealed bottle while you were away.

Or could you  add egg eating fish / guppies size to the trap and make it self cleaning?  I have seen that done in pottery with ivy growing in it......

Hmm, I've never given much thought to where the local bats live. I see them swooping around chasing bugs around dusk and just after when I am outside, so there are some close by. Maybe I'll make a house for them to encourage them to hang out and eat all the bugs they desire.

In reply to ProDarwin :

They added a drain pipe. I'm guessing they strained the larvae out of the water and put it back in?



 

californiamilleghia said:

You need to drain the trap in time so the eggs do not turn into mosquitos , Not sure how long that is ,

It's as little as 5 days for some breeds, which explains the twice a week cycle of draining.

Just as an update to my original thread.  This past year I stumbled across https://spartanmosquito.com/ .  I got them up last year for the end of the year, and they seemed to do an okay job slowly dropping the population.

This year, I got them up in early May, and we've just now seen two mosquitos, total.   So they seem to work.

The downside is that they don't seem to do squat about the midge/blackfly/whatever-you-call-em, those things are nasty as ever.  My kids look like they've got the plague due to them :(

WonkoTheSane said:

Just as an update to my original thread.  This past year I stumbled across https://spartanmosquito.com/ .  I got them up last year for the end of the year, and they seemed to do an okay job slowly dropping the population.

I just looked at these, but don't understand how they work... any idea?  Yeast/CO2 generation?  Are they reuseable?

Damn them. They are a PITA this year already. Anything good to use right now?

ProDarwin said:

WonkoTheSane said:

Just as an update to my original thread.  This past year I stumbled across https://spartanmosquito.com/ .  I got them up last year for the end of the year, and they seemed to do an okay job slowly dropping the population.

I just looked at these, but don't understand how they work... any idea?  Yeast/CO2 generation?  Are they reuseable?

I have tested Spartans and they're garbage. They attract some larger bugs, which become trapped, at first but actually preventing mosquitos they fell flat on their face.  

My buddy tried a dynatrap and they get big bugs but my buddy actually dumped the collector which was full of bugs into a plastic bag and then let everything die and counted... absolutely no mosquitos in the device... 

Any anecdotal evidence of these products working is probably because they sprayed in your local area. 

These products don't actually work in the real world.. They're borderline snake oil... 

Most municipalities throughout the Delta region of Arkansas, drive these around every evening spring to fall.

Rice and fish production, in addition to the millions of acres of other irrigated crops means, A LOT of mosquitoes.

Mosquito control is a sisyphean task.  I know from a lot of anecdotal reports that those Spartan mosquito traps don't work well enough to have any kind of appreciable impact around here.

The best we can do, is put enough repellants out, to make someone else's property more appealing to the skeeters than ours.

I was pretty sure there was another bug/mosquito thread on here but I couldn’t find it. Someone made their own fog or spray formula that seems to work IIRC.