Author Topic: Mosquito Killing PSA  (Read 1037 times)

Ben

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Mosquito Killing PSA
« on: June 18, 2022, 06:21:20 PM »
Perhaps this will aid others.

The mosquitoes get really bad here from June through early September. The county actually comes out with ATVs and does all my pastures as part of their West Nile Virus control, but they don't do the couple of acres around the house. I have tried the propane fogger with whatever Tractor Supply sells, and at best it helps for a few days, then they are back to full strength.

Last year I couldn't wear shorts around the house all Summer because the skeeters would cover my legs when I stepped on the lawn. They were unusually bad. This year started out looking like last year. At the end of May, I started to see them swarming on the lawn again. I decided to do something. I got turned on to Excite-R and Bifen. I put two ounces of each in my 25 gallon sprayer and sprayed the lawns and all around the house and drives.

I've been checking morning and evening, and three weeks later I haven't seen ANY mosquitoes. It's like a miracle. The county sprayed the pastures last week, and while they knocked 90% of the population down, I still see some when I'm walking out there. The house area is completely clear.

I plan on spraying once a month through the first of September. It's literally an hour of work to keep the place mosquito free.

Anyway, these chemicals are highly recommended. Kind of expensive, but honestly, I'd pay three times as much for these results and to not have to go through last Summer again, where I couldn't step off the concrete patio without getting swarmed.
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Bogie

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Re: Mosquito Killing PSA
« Reply #1 on: June 18, 2022, 06:37:35 PM »
Tell me more - if I do anything in my drafty workshop, I burn a citronella torch INSIDE...
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charby

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Re: Mosquito Killing PSA
« Reply #2 on: June 18, 2022, 07:15:35 PM »
The mix your using kills beneficial insects too, such as bees and butterflies. Excite-R is a contact insecticide where Bifren is a residual. Excite-R would be better mosquito killer if you fog it after sunset.

After sunset application with permethrin in a ULV fogger would be a better choice just to target mosquitoes.
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Ben

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Re: Mosquito Killing PSA
« Reply #3 on: June 18, 2022, 07:23:25 PM »
The mix your using kills beneficial insects too, such as bees and butterflies. Excite-R is a contact insecticide where Bifren is a residual. Excite-R would be better mosquito killer if you fog it after sunset.

After sunset application with permethrin in a ULV fogger would be a better choice just to target mosquitoes.

Permethrin did nothing for me last year. This combination is exactly why I used them. The lawns and backyard were already infested and I needed to kill them off, then keep a residual so I wouldn't have to spray every other day.
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charby

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Re: Mosquito Killing PSA
« Reply #4 on: June 18, 2022, 08:16:36 PM »
What time of day were applying permethrin?
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Ben

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Re: Mosquito Killing PSA
« Reply #5 on: June 18, 2022, 08:47:33 PM »
What time of day were applying permethrin?

I tried both dawn and after sunset on windless days.

The added benefit of the Bifen for me has been no flies, ants, or ticks in the vicinity of the house.
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K Frame

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Re: Mosquito Killing PSA
« Reply #6 on: June 19, 2022, 07:35:31 AM »
We use a bee friendly cedar oil insecticide for mosquito control in my community. It's done an excellent job over the past several years we've used it.
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HankB

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Re: Mosquito Killing PSA
« Reply #7 on: June 19, 2022, 09:11:55 AM »
Good to know.

I live in a suburban area so I don't have fields around my home, but every now and then mosquitos become a problem. (I do the usual stuff about making sure there's no standing water around to serve as a breeding ground.) So far the best stuff I've found from the usual sources (Lowe's and Home Depot) for killing and knocking back mosquitos is malathion. It's pretty smelly, but it works on other bugs too, so I've been including it on other bug control efforts since they took diazinon and dursban off the market - my horde of those has long since been used up. The effectiveness and residual effects of some of the more ecologically friendly bug killers I've tried is fairly low. I generally try to spray in the evening since bugs become more active then.

Once in a while I see a lot of dragon flies hovering above my front lawn - I hold off on spraying then, since it's my understanding that dragonflies are beneficial predatory insects, and I figure they're attacking a swarm of gnats or something of the sort.

Is there any special source for purchasing the Excite-R and Bifen in modest amounts? I don't have acres to cover or a 25 gallon sprayer.
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Ben

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Re: Mosquito Killing PSA
« Reply #8 on: June 19, 2022, 09:32:41 AM »
Is there any special source for purchasing the Excite-R and Bifen in modest amounts? I don't have acres to cover or a 25 gallon sprayer.

I think it was Andiron who turned me onto these guys:

https://www.domyown.com/
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zxcvbob

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Re: Mosquito Killing PSA
« Reply #9 on: June 19, 2022, 09:44:06 AM »
You can buy gallon jugs of bifenthrin on Amazon.  It's what I use for the ants that invade the house every year in late winter.  I don't spray pesticides outside much at all anymore because we raise monarch butterflies and have habitat for other butterflies (swallowtails and admirals, mostly)  Also bees are having a tough time and I don't want to make life harder for them.  With the several year drought here (might be over now, not sure) there haven't been many skeeters.
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sumpnz

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Re: Mosquito Killing PSA
« Reply #10 on: June 19, 2022, 12:38:33 PM »
With already having PD I’d be very hesitant to mass spray an insecticide.  Something that irritated them and made them go to a neighbors would be another matter.  Especially if i could specify which neighbor.

bedlamite

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Re: Mosquito Killing PSA
« Reply #11 on: June 19, 2022, 05:46:36 PM »
I've wondered if these work, drop a tablet in a bucket with a couple inches of water and it's supposed to kill the larvae, leave several buckets around.

https://www.amazon.com/Summit-responsible-solutions-110-12-Mosquito/dp/B0000AH849
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charby

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Re: Mosquito Killing PSA
« Reply #12 on: June 19, 2022, 07:39:11 PM »
I've wondered if these work, drop a tablet in a bucket with a couple inches of water and it's supposed to kill the larvae, leave several buckets around.

https://www.amazon.com/Summit-responsible-solutions-110-12-Mosquito/dp/B0000AH849

They do. The active is Bt, which typically doesn't harm dragonfly larvae.
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230RN

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Re: Mosquito Killing PSA
« Reply #13 on: June 19, 2022, 11:00:10 PM »
I hope this advice will save millions of lives in the long run. =D

A long time ago I learned that mosquitoes are among the deadliest creatures on earth, as pointed out above, and that they can lay eggs in surprisingly tiny pools of standing water which hatch and become mosquitoes in a very short time.

These pools are "all over the place" if you look for them, including rain gutters, plastic sheets covering equipment, planter pots, knotholes in trees, tires, etc. etc, and other items.

I found dozens of places like this around the place.

Tires are the worst to try to drain.
 
I found a quick, cheap, automatic way of draining water from places like these was by hanging an absorbent cloth or paper draining material in the item and allowing the other end to be outside and below the bottom of the item to be drained.  Sometimes the end lying in the item has to be weighted.

This allows water to be absorbed up the absorbent, go over the edge of the item, and "fall down" through the absorbant onto the ground below until the item is emptied automatically.

Simple, easy, US$ Zero.
And no chemicals !

Attachments show how this works with a container of red water being drained into a clear plastic cup after about two hours, and more dramatically, from two kitty litter container tops after a rain. I tried a rope as the absorber in the left one and it worked, but not as well as the one on the right, which was a triple-folded piece of ordinary cloth.  The right one was emptied in less than fifteen minutes. (Depth of water in the container tops after the rain was about 3/8 inch.)
 
Note this is not due merely to capillary action, but also to gravity allowing the absorbent material to drain down once it gets over the hump.

 I assume this method has been used by others; it's pretty obvious, but it only becomes "obvious" after you happen to think of it.

And just think:  US$ Zero, no chemicals.

Feel free to copy this in toto for distribution as my gift to humanity. =D

Terry, 230RN
« Last Edit: June 19, 2022, 11:40:58 PM by 230RN »

fifth_column

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Re: Mosquito Killing PSA
« Reply #14 on: June 21, 2022, 10:30:47 AM »
Mosquitoes are a major part of the ecosystem. Significantly reducing their numbers will have a negative impact on the overall system. I suggest using DEET.
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230RN

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Re: Mosquito Killing PSA
« Reply #15 on: June 21, 2022, 08:45:27 PM »
Mosquitoes are a major part of the ecosystem. Significantly reducing their numbers will have a negative impact on the overall system. I suggest using DEET.

^ =D

Thus depriving them of you as a food source?  Now, that would be environmentally unsound. :rofl:

I have heard of animals resorting to immersion in lakes and rivers to escape the torture of clouds of mosquitoes biting them.  Don't know if that's true, but that's the way I heard it.

I suspect the only impact would be on bats, but bats have enough to do holding down the moth population.  =)

Oh, and maybe fish, who do eat the rafts of mosquito eggs.

Terry, 230RN
« Last Edit: June 21, 2022, 09:00:02 PM by 230RN »

MechAg94

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Re: Mosquito Killing PSA
« Reply #16 on: June 21, 2022, 09:06:35 PM »
Have you tried a bug zapper? 

I thought there were insects that eat mosquitos, but I don't know which or how to get enough of the right ones to make a difference. 
“It is much more important to kill bad bills than to pass good ones.”  ― Calvin Coolidge

zxcvbob

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Re: Mosquito Killing PSA
« Reply #17 on: June 21, 2022, 09:15:10 PM »
I think Purple Martins (birds) eat mosquitoes.  Also hummingbirds probably eat them, but not enough to be significant.
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HankB

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Re: Mosquito Killing PSA
« Reply #18 on: June 21, 2022, 09:18:01 PM »
Mosquitoes are a major part of the ecosystem. Significantly reducing their numbers will have a negative impact on the overall system. I suggest using DEET.
Has anyone - epidemiologist, entomologist, ecologist, some actual expert - ever published a credible scientific paper or study citing mosquitos as having a critical beneficial role in our ecosystem?
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charby

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Re: Mosquito Killing PSA
« Reply #19 on: June 21, 2022, 10:33:28 PM »
Has anyone - epidemiologist, entomologist, ecologist, some actual expert - ever published a credible scientific paper or study citing mosquitos as having a critical beneficial role in our ecosystem?

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7494451/#__ffn_sectitle
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230RN

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Re: Mosquito Killing PSA
« Reply #20 on: June 22, 2022, 02:27:57 AM »
After recapping all the causes of deaths related to mosquito behavior, the basic premise of that article seemed to be that it wasn't the mosquito's fault.  It was the germs they carried.  I quit reading after that point.

Maybe if I had read more, I'd change my mind, but to me, it said mosquitoes are great killers by virtue of the guns they carried, not because they're mosquitoes.

Oops!  Did I say that?

I gotta watch my analogies.

Terry, 230RN
« Last Edit: June 22, 2022, 06:26:27 AM by 230RN »

HankB

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Re: Mosquito Killing PSA
« Reply #21 on: June 22, 2022, 07:13:56 AM »
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7494451/#__ffn_sectitle
Good link - favorite line " . . . it has been convincingly argued that the benefits of their extinction would vastly outweigh the ecological scars they would leave behind."

Some of the references include papers with titles like

"Mosquitoes: more likely nectar thieves than pollinators. "
"Mosquitoes: just how much biodiversity does humanity need?"

So not every bugologist is a mosquito cheerleader.  ;)
Trump won in 2016. Democrats haven't been so offended since Republicans came along and freed their slaves.
Sometimes I wonder if the world is being run by smart people who are putting us on, or by imbeciles who really mean it. - Mark Twain
Government is a broker in pillage, and every election is a sort of advance auction in stolen goods. - H.L. Mencken
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Ben

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Re: Mosquito Killing PSA
« Reply #22 on: June 22, 2022, 07:36:19 AM »
I suggest using DEET.

I think you must have meant DDT.  =D
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fifth_column

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Re: Mosquito Killing PSA
« Reply #23 on: June 22, 2022, 09:44:22 AM »
I grew up in Wisconsin where the mosquito should be the state bird. When I was a kid camping in northern Wisconsin, a couple of mosquitoes dragged me into the woods but one of them said, "Nah, he's too small, throw him back." And they tossed me back onto the trail.

I dislike them as much as the next guy. I just figure my slight discomfort isn't reason enough to poison my yard. There are a lot of articles about the mosquitoes role in the ecosystem, do a search for "mosquitoes role in ecosystem."

I've been in places in Wisconsin where there are thriving bat communities and there are virtually no mosquitoes. And it's not just bats but dragonflies, damselflies, spiders, salamanders, and a whole host of other critters eat mosquitoes. Would I prefer a world with no mosquitoes? Yes, yes I would. I'd also prefer a world with nothing else I find unpleasant, but it just ain't gonna happen. Guess I'll just have to suck it up and get on with it.
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230RN

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Re: Mosquito Killing PSA
« Reply #24 on: June 22, 2022, 10:02:55 AM »
Mosquitoes are a major part of the ecosystem. Significantly reducing their numbers will have a negative impact on the overall system. I suggest using DEET.

I think you must have meant DDT.  =D

Good one.

Quote
https://wwf.panda.org › discover › our_focus › biodiversity › biodiversity
How many species are we losing? | WWF - Panda
These experts calculate that between 0.01 and 0.1% of all species will become extinct each year. If the low estimate of the number of species out there is true - i.e. that there are around 2 million different species on our planet** - then that means between 200 and 2,000 extinctions occur every year.

I suspect a large proportion of these "extinctions" are actually due to new sub-species being formed.

We seem to decry "loss" of species, yet it's an ongoing natural process.  So is the creation of new species.

That "negative impact" if mosquito numbers were significantly reduced is hard to imagine.  fifth column, what negative impacts were evident in the areas of the large bat colonies which you referenced?

Whatever neggies there are, I'll take them over the transmission of diseases and the minor annoyance of death by viruses such as Zika virus, yellow fever virus, chikungunya virus, dengue virus, and West Nile virus, filariasis-causing nematodes, and Plasmodium parasites...

Minor annoyances !

Terry, 230RN



« Last Edit: June 22, 2022, 10:27:05 AM by 230RN »