Mosquito..be gone...

[cheepo]

Well it is that season again...
love to be outside...
but good gosh...can't say those blood suckers are making it pleasant..
Has anyone managed to come up with anything reasonably effective

 

[wyoDreamer]

About a 3 weeks to a month I think. DH is in charge of keeping it going, but we take the tank in to fill about once a month. We found one at a rummage sale for $10 and snatched it up. It worked really well so when it stopped working a year later - we bought a new one on end-of-season sale. The next spring the old one started working again - turns out the mud wasps had filled in some hole and clogged it up.

If you get one just remember - it is a "Magnet" it works by attracting the mosquitoes to it and then a fan sucks them up into a small bag where they die. Place it away from where you are going to be.
One of our friends says " Oh, those don't work! My neighbors on both sides of our house have one and their yards are just filled with mosquitoes, but my yard is mosquito free!" So the best place to put it is in the neighbors yard, lol.

 

[wyoDreamer]

I was mowing our 3 acre front yard one day after a wet spell. the grass was longer than we usually let it get, but there was no way to get it mowed in the rain. As I was mowing, a dragonfly showed up. Then another and another until I had a swarm of dragon flies flying around me. The mosquitoes would fly up from the grass as I mowed and the dragonflies were zipping around catching lunch like porpoises around the bow of a ship. They would land on the hood of the mower - I assume to rest, and then take off and zip around again.

 

[SprigOfTheLivingDead]

we have mosquito control which comes around and poisons everything and everyone. i'd rather get bit. they even fly planes over the local woodland park that has some wet areas at times and drop granules from the planes to kill mosquito larvae.

mosquitoes are a part of the food chain.

for me i don't go out that often when the mosquitoes are out and i'm well covered up so i don't usually get bit that often. if i were out in the early morning or at dusk there are more mosquitoes out then.

in the heat of the summer i tend to work a few shifts in a day so i can siesta around noon for a few hours.

I have a wife and 5 kids and here the mosquitos don't care what time of day or night it is. If you go outaide they swarm. It's not uncommon for a lid to come inside crying and welted and yelling about how terrible the mosquitos are.

Yes, I want to be safe and support my local wildlife. I spend a lot of time annually leading volunteer crews and educating people on our ecosystem, but even I have a limit. I'm trying to plant good stuff and spread good prairie grass and wildflower seed, but we'll see if that's enough.

When the dragonflies swarm it's a beautiful thing

 

[tortoise]

My solution is to garden and be outdoors in the morning. No bugs then! Afternoon and evening are when the mosquitos and BITING FLIES are so bad! Get up at first light and go outside until the sun is too intense (about 10 a.m.) Get a good 4 hours of outdoor work in bug-free and repellent-free.

 

[Britesea]

If you Google, you can find a cheap DIY version of the Spartan Mosquito Eradicator. Some people swear by them, some swear AT them. The Spartan product uses sugar and yeast to produce CO2, which mosquitoes are attracted to. The salt in the trap is to kill any eggs the female may lay inside the trap. In the DIY models, the mosquitoes get trapped in the 2 liter bottle and eventually drown, but the Eradicator is too small to be very effective at that. Their literature claimed that the yeast continues to produce CO2 inside the mosquito's stomach causing it to rupture and kill the mosquito. I know that raw yeasty dough can be dangerous for pigs for the same reason, but not sure it would work that way on mosquitoes- I'd want to see some laboratory studies on that.

There is also a bacillus thuringiensis that you can get, similar to the one that kills cabbage loopers and such. You float the donut-shaped cakes in ponds and other places mosquitoes breed; it prevents the larvae from maturing.

 

[SprigOfTheLivingDead]

My solution is to garden and be outdoors in the morning. No bugs then! Afternoon and evening are when the mosquitos and BITING FLIES are so bad! Get up at first light and go outside until the sun is too intense (about 10 a.m.) Get a good 4 hours of outdoor work in bug-free and repellent-free.

If only it were that easy :/. 5 kids, lots of gardening and land tending for myself and then a tree farm + my daytime job means I don't get to be selective of my hours I can be working outside. Plus, kids want to play when the kids want to play, so I'd like for them not to come in looking like a pepperoni pizza and feeling all itchy

If you Google, you can find a cheap DIY version of the Spartan Mosquito Eradicator. Some people swear by them, some swear AT them. The Spartan product uses sugar and yeast to produce CO2, which mosquitoes are attracted to. The salt in the trap is to kill any eggs the female may lay inside the trap. In the DIY models, the mosquitoes get trapped in the 2 liter bottle and eventually drown, but the Eradicator is too small to be very effective at that. Their literature claimed that the yeast continues to produce CO2 inside the mosquito's stomach causing it to rupture and kill the mosquito. I know that raw yeasty dough can be dangerous for pigs for the same reason, but not sure it would work that way on mosquitoes- I'd want to see some laboratory studies on that.

There is also a bacillus thuringiensis that you can get, similar to the one that kills cabbage loopers and such. You float the donut-shaped cakes in ponds and other places mosquitoes breed; it prevents the larvae from maturing.

Thanks for the write-up. I had looked last summer on how their product works and didn't recall finding anything, so your information certainly useful. I'll look up some DIY stuff that mimics theirs. However, I'm living on 10 acres here. I'm not about to put in a ton of effort into 45 DIY traps around the property if I can just buy a dozen Spartans and throw them up in a tree. Whether they actually work is certainly a question though

We don't have any actual standing water on our property, so I wish it were as easy as a those skeeter discs

 

[Hinotori]

Put out bird feeders for the omnivore species like red-winged blackbirds or starlings. If enough hang around you don't have mosquito issues.

We have 60+ acres of shallow pond and marsh here next to us. I rarely see mosquitoes. There are large flocks of insect eaters that come out every evening.

 

[SprigOfTheLivingDead]

Put out bird feeders for the omnivore species like red-winged blackbirds or starlings. If enough hang around you don't have mosquito issues.

We have 60+ acres of shallow pond and marsh here next to us. I rarely see mosquitoes. There are large flocks of insect eaters that come out every evening.

I think the previous owners just sprayed permethrin and that's just not something I'm going to do. I've been planting and spreading more wildflower and prairie grass seeds in order to start attracting more species of birds. We get a ****load of dragonflies here that swarm really good, but it just doesn't seem to make a lick of difference. The amount of mosquitoes is just ridiculous.

I inquired about bat houses but from many other folks I've heard that you can put them up but it might take 5 years for some to show up or not at all, so I'm focusing energy elsewhere.

 

[SprigOfTheLivingDead]

Oranges, lemons, lavender, basil and catnip naturally contain oils that repel mosquitoes and are generally nice to the nose.

I'm not spreading orange peels around 10 acres of land. I get that people say this along with "plant lemongrass", but lemongrass doesn't grow here. I will spread seeds for mint in my prairie grass seeds that are native to the area.

Looking for solutions that I can implement while also raising 5 kids, raising and caring for a ton of poultry, keeping a tree farm up, working a fulltime job and staying married . Hence my asking about the biological solution