Okay, any ideas for keeping the damn mosquitos out of the yard?

[Matsubara]

One of the things I love about our neighborhood is that is abuts a big pine forest, but that's also one of the drawbacks. Every evening, tons of mosquitos seem to emerge from the forest and they all come to MY yard.

Right now, we use DEET repellents to keep the bastards off us. I planted some pelargonium (geranium) in hopes they might help, but no such luck...


I wish there were a way to keep them away from the yard without repellents or spraying the whole place with pesticide...

[momophile]

1. have you thought about putting up a bat house?

I guess one can eat like a hundred mosquitoes a night. I'm considering it for my yard. There are good books on bats and bat-houses.

[lizziegrace]

2. This might be worth a try

keep the air moving. Sometime I bring box fans outdoors and it seems to help.

[Wcross]

3. Plenty of things you can do naturally.

1) Remove/treat any standing water in the area. This could be anything from fish ponds to old tires. Anywhere there is standing water will breed skeeters.

2) Encourage bats to live in the area. Build some bat boxes.

3) There are birds that eat skeeters. I don't know what species are native to Japan but you could encourage them to live there by building them the proper habitat.

4) You could install a bug zapper.

[Matsubara]

5. I've seen swarms of bats in the city.

Strangely, I haven't seen them out in this more suburban area. But the bat idea is interesting.

I wonder if those zappers are really effective? Seems like they must mostly kill moths...

[Wcross]

7. I've had no personal experience with the zappers.

You might try them though, skeeters are drawn to light.

[pitohui]

11. bug zappers are a TERRIBLE fraud -- don't buy them

don't buy bug zappers, they don't harm mosquitoes, they instead kill helpful insects including the dragonflies and damselflies that feed on mosquitoes as well as declining species of moths

in louisiana there is a native fish, called mosquito fish, that you can collect if you have a fishing license (for a few dollars) or maybe you can buy them if you find someone who sells them -- in japan i would ask around maybe the garden centers, maybe the fish hatcheries and see if you can buy a few -- these mosquito fish can be placed in the ditches or puddles in your forested area and they will feed on the baby mosquitoes

you don't want to totally remove all soggy/boggy places because they do support beneficial species such as dragonflies as well as mosquitoes but do remove all such water traps near to the house

citronella candles are popular around here, also i have for going on 30 years always had a screened porch or tent in my backyard so that i can enjoy sitting outside at night, without having to "swat"

if you have a mosquito control board in your area, then you can contact the board when mosquitoes are out of control, but i don't know how it works in japan, in louisiana, if there is an outbreak of mosquitoes and/or mosquito borne disease then the board authorizes a spray which seems to work very well to keep down the dangerous mosquitoes, we have not had malaria or yellow fever since the 1920s, encephalitis apparently can't be entirely removed but during outbreaks of course there is additional spraying/monitoring for public health -- in japan you are fortunate there is a vaccine for japanese encephalitis, we don't have a vaccine for west nile or st. louis encephalitis that we have here so we just have to know the symptoms because early treatment prevents most problems

hope some of these suggestions spark ideas, you can never get rid of all mosquitoes but you can prevent them from making your life a misery

[Frank Cannon]

35. My problem with bug zapper is they ATTRACT insects...

to your yard. TONS of them. They don't really address the issue of ridding your yard of the pests you already have.

I used mine about three days and then threw it away. It wasn't helping.

[Nickster]

14. I went the zapper route last year. I've been amazed at how many of them little

monsters get fried every night that I have it on. My wife is super sensitive to skeeters, so she was a pretty good barometer of how well it worked. She was able to sit outside without being uncomfortable, so I'm a big fan. Just make sure that you get one that's big enough, they had ratings on the box to tell you how much of an area could be effectively handled by the zapper.

[pitohui]

15. sigh--this is not true -- now with link

the plural of anecdote is not data, and bug zappers do not kill mosquitoes no matter what you think your wife's personal experience is, the insects killed are frequently harmless and sometimes endangered ones -- and when zapping house flies, which are actually a real pest, the zappers can help spread the virus and bacteria carried by flies!

from a kansas state university study--

Insect electrocutor traps, or "bug zappers", are popular devices which are frequently used by homeowners and food handlers attempting localized control of flying insects including the house fly. The traps contain a visual attractant and a high voltage wire grid. Upon contact with the grids, the insects are disintegrated by the high voltage. Recent studies show traps to be inefficient in protecting humans from the attack of blood-feeding insects (e.g., mosquitoes). In addition, it is now also known that only an extremely small proportion of the insects killed are pests of crops, humans or animals. As part of a systematic reevaluation of electrocution traps and their role in infectious disease spread, we previously reported that during electrocution of house flies (Musca domestica L.), Serratia marcescens bacteria on insect surfaces are readily disseminated for distances up to about 2 meters. House flies which were internally contaminated with S. marcescens liberated three logs fewer bacteria than surface contaminated flies. Our studies have now been expanded to include assay of the liberation of the Escherichia coli virus FX174, a model virus similar in size to human polio virus. House flies were surface contaminated with an aerosol spray of virus or were internally contaminated by feeding a sucrose solution containing virus. Contaminated flies were placed into a chamber containing an electrocution device. While flies were being electrocuted, liberated virus particles were trapped on the surface of agar plates or via air filtration samplers. Virus presence was indicated by overlaying plates or filters with soft agar solution containing a suitable virus host followed by plaque enumeration. As was observed with bacterial loads, sprayed flies released more virus than fed flies, but proportionally more virus particles than bacteria are released from fed flies. The results of this expanded study provides even more evidence that bug zappers could play a role in infectious disease spread by house flies.

The link is here:

http://www.oznet.ksu.edu/dp_entm/extension/Efficacy%20Trials/zapabs99.html.html

bug zappers are a bad idea, don't buy them, if you already have one return it to the store or throw it away, next question?

[Nickster]

17. Funny, everytime I clean it out, it sure looks like a ton of mosquitoes. Must be my bad eyesight or

something.:-) Shockingly, I can still tell the difference between houseflys and mosquitoes. Don't use a zapper if you don't want to, it's not like I'm selling them or something. Just passing on the story of how mine worked out fairly well.

[pitohui]

18. yeah, it's bad eyesight plus poor entomology

insects large enough to be ID'd after being fried are not the mosquitoes that feed on human blood, rather they are the large mosquitoes introduced into the environment at some expense in order to chase, hunt, and eat the much smaller mosquitoes that carry human diseases

for years the state of louisiana tried to educate people to not kill the large mosquitoes so that they could do their work, i guess they finally had to give up on the project, since people are determined to kill anything they see that's easy to kill and the big guys are easy to kill

somehow people never notice that the mosquitoes actually on their arm drinking their blood are the little guys

*sigh*


everybody knows better than the scientists, i suppose this is why we're in the mess we're in to begin with

[Nickster]

23. Ok doctor. There are ways to introduce differing opinions without being condescending to others.

Just an FYI.

[mike_c]

20. more likely you're finding crane flies, midges, and other nematoceran flies...

...that look like mosquitoes. Real mosquitoes are NOT attracted to lights.

[Nickster]

22. Nope, they're mosquitos, little thing called ocetenal, it mimicks breathing mammals. That brings

them running for a meal, and the zapper takes em out.

[mike_c]

24. oh, that's different-- you're using a trap designed to attract mosquitoes...

...rather than a regular UV bug zapper. Those are the ones that have no effect on mosquitoes. Octenol is "cow breath in a can." Yep, if you're using an attractant like octenol, you're getting mosquitoes. But if your bug zapper is also running a UV lamp then it's attracting mostly beneficial or neutral insects, too.

[pokerfan]

30. Swallows eat skeeters!

Swallow house:


http://www.duncraft.com/Swallow-Bird-House-P672C217.aspx

More ideas for mosquito abatement:
http://www.gvrd.bc.ca/WNV/do.htm

[Inchworm]

4. Make sure there is no standing water anywhere

you know.. if that is practical.

I'm not suggesting you drain a pond or anything hehe. If they can't breed they can't bite.

Just an idea that works here. Sometimes the boat drain will stop up and collect water. We are thinking of naming the boat "Skeeter Breeder."

:hi:

[Matsubara]

6. None in our yard, but there are plenty of places for it to collect in the pine forest.

Seems like that's where they hang in the daytime.

[Wcross]

9. Could you go into the forest and treat the water? n/t

[pitohui]

12. you could put mosquito fish in the ditches

here in louisiana they might be found in a ditch to begin with so it would not be a stretch to move them to other soggy locations where they could prove useful

i don't know how widely distributed the mosquito fish is or if they have it in japan however

[Wcross]

8. Another idea! Garlic!!!!!!

I am 100% serious, take a garlic supplement pill and see if they stop biting you. I have a heck of a tick problem having six dogs that run in the fields here in Tennessee. I have NEVER had a tick dig in on my skin. I have never been bitten by a skeeter since starting on the garlic pills.
Also, stay away from Bananas as they attract skeeters. (I think its the potassium)

[rubberducky]

10. My bat houses work like a charm!!

I live on a canal in a wooded area and I can sit on second story deck all night and not get bit!

[Connonym]

38. s'what I was going to say. Bats.

[flvegan]

13. Plant some citronella

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Citronella_plant

[pitohui]

16. i'm not sure this is the correct plant, try lemongrass instead

flvegan i believe this "citronella" plant you cite from the wiki is the "geranium" the OP has already tried w.out success

there is another plant, containing citronella oil, which i hear called lemongrass and which is used in asian cooking (altho i'm not aware of it being used in japan)-- this plant would be Cymbopogon nardus , it is easy to grow and can even be perennial if the winter is not too harsh--but it's probably in a four season japanese climate the OP would need to re-plant every year, i'm not sure -- it is a grasslike plant

i grew C. nardus myself for a number of years but haven't done much w. it since katrina, i won't comment on whether or not it offered any significant mosquito control, i have so many other forms of control going on in my area that it would be hard to pick out just one

[badgerpup]

29. Some of the 'scented geraniums' do seem to help...

The leaves have a very strong lemony odour when brushed...and they are supposed to help discourage skeeters.

[mike_c]

19. don't use a bug zapper....

Seriously. Mosquitoes are not attracted to UV light to any degree, so bug zappers simply do not work against them. Instead, they kill lots of mosquito predators. You can buy mosquito traps that actually work-- they emit warmth and CO₂-- but they're expensive to operate and they'd simply concentrate mosquitoes in your yard-- probably not the desired result!

Fans help a lot-- mosquitoes are weak flyers and they won't venture into areas of moving air. You don't need a wind tunnel-- just gently moving air will do the trick.

You should also try to eliminate breeding places neighborhood wide. Is that a possibility?

[Heidi]

34. Thank you for saying that.

We kind of don't believe in killing any animals, even mosquitoes, unless they pose a real health threat, and we find mosquitoes more annoying than threatening. The kois in our pond consume a lot of the mosquito larvae and the pump and filter help a lot, too.

Another reason we're reluctant to kill mosquitoes is that we live just a few hundred yards from a federal nature reserve, and we're reluctant to do anything that will interfere with the natural habitat around here. The local bats and birds depend on those mosquitoes for food; we're willing to tolerate being bitten occasionally by the mosquitoes that the kois, bats and birds don't eliminate. (Yep to the effectiveness of fans; we do that, too.) :hi:

[Midlodemocrat]

21. We bought an outdoor fan yesterday for our backyard.

We just installed an outdoor kitchen and the weather has been really nice, but I can't take the skeeters.


The fan works beautifully. It keeps the air moving just enough for a small breeze and keeps away the bugs. I wish I'd bought one sooner.

We have tiki torches with citronella, but they are mainly for atmosphere.

[Zoigal]

25. Mosquito fish

have always worked for us. Good luck in getting rid of those pesky critters.

[Breeze54]

26. Get rid of any standing water near your property!

Get a bug zapper.

[Matsubara]

28. Getting rid of the rice paddies will be a toughie...

I forgot about that - now that we're in the 'burbs, there are still quite a few rice paddies around...

Maybe I'll try the fan, as well as spraying when we go out. Mosquito coils seem to have a very small effective radius.

[struggle4progress]

27. Sit on yer back porch widda shotgun an blast away at them swarms

Word'll git around

[progressoid]

31. Bats eom

[TrogL]

32. Chainsaws and lots of them!!!!

[qdemn7]

33. How about a Mosquito Magnet?

http://www.mosquitomagnet.com/

[BOSSHOG]

36. Plant some marigolds

close to where you will be outside in the evenings or put them in pots on your patio. They are colorful and mosquitos aren't too fond of the smell. It won't do away with your problem but it will assist and they are a very colorful plant. If they get too bad light up a charcoal grill a couple of hours before sunset, chuck some mesquite chunks in and let it simmer for hours.

[laylah]

37. citronella

candles/oil