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  • From: Steven Champeon <schampeo AT hesketh.com>
  • To: "//www.ibiblio.org/internetworkers/" <internetworkers AT lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: Re: [internetworkers] mosquito treatment
  • Date: Thu, 1 Jul 2004 12:39:57 -0400

on Wed, Jun 30, 2004 at 06:33:36PM -0400, matusiak wrote:
> Can anyone recommend an effective mosquito treatment for ~1/4 acre near
> a creek?
>
> So far, those I've received include:
>
> 1. Always have citronella burning.
> 2. Put goldfish in nearby creek (to eat larva).
> 3. Napalm the region.
>
> I'm looking for something that doesn't always have to be burning and
> that, hopefully, will have minor impact on the local ecology. Someone
> else mentioned a device that burns gas to create heat, which attracts
> the mosquitos and then they are sucked in and, I guess, cremated.

We got one of those Mosquito Magnets last year, and we're still not sure
whether it is really working or not. After we got it home and unpacked,
we found a slip of paper that thoughtfully told us that if the mosquitos
we were being bothered by were "Asian Tigers" (black body, white stripes)
that we were basically screwed. Or, at worst, that we couldn't use the
octenol cartridges as they'd attract the other mosquitos but repel the
Asian Tigers. Sigh.

The thing works by producing a plume of CO^2 from LP gas, which attracts
the mosquitos, which are sucked (via a fan) into a net. The idea is that
eventually the breeding cycle will be disrupted, so you sort of need to
do it for several months to see if it's really working. I think it's
doing a number on the regular mosquitos, but it's hard to say - I don't
get bit nearly as much after dark (the Asian Tigers are day-biters) as
in past years, and the problem seems slightly less bad than before
during the day. But daytime is still pretty bad.

If the creek isn't still, you shouldn't have as much trouble with bugs -
they like standing water for laying eggs. Moving water apparently does
not provide a stable nesting (?) area.

The next thing I'm going to try is replacing our lone gutter with a
scatter dispersion system like this one:

http://www.rainhandler.com/

But I'd have to say that if you've got Asian Tigers, and you can't do
anything about standing water, and you don't want to blow $20/month on
LP, the frogs-in-a-bathtub might be the best bet. I know that the light
on my porch has killed more bugs than anything the Mosquito Magnet has
done; if only more of them were mosquitos...

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