Category Archives: Mosquito Control

 
Over the last 9 years, we have written monthly about mosquitoes and other biting insects that can cause you issues in your yard, offering insight and suggestions on how to make things better for yourself. After approximately 108 blog posts you wouldn’t think that there was anything left to say. But that’s what is so fascinating about the battle between humans and mosquitoes/fleas/biting midges/ticks and more. It is ever-evolving.

We recognize the importance of insects in our world. Their contributions are immense, and without them, the pollination of our plants and flowers would not occur. But as humans, we also want to reclaim our spaces to enjoy and keep our crops safe from destruction. Maintaining homeostasis while controlling our insect populations is not easy, but thankfully gone are the days of killing everything in sight in a bid to reclaim our land. We also recognize the need to protect your loved one’s health from the diseases carried by mosquitoes (EEE, West Nile and many more).

Mosquito Joe is focused on making your outside fun again while leaving as small a footprint as possible. This is why we rely on a lot of all-natural products, such as garlic and natural oils, to control insects in your yard. Our job is to remove as many mosquitoes from your yard as possible while minimizing our impact on the beneficial insects.

To that end, Mosquito Joe joined the EPA’s Pesticide Environmental Stewardship program several years ago and is currently a silver member. The PESP was established in 1994 to promote Integrated Pest Management (IPM) practices. IPM involves treating in an informed way, to reduce your insects but also pesticide usage. It involves adjusting the landscape (removing water and containers to take away a mosquito’s laying place), being conscious of product placement (we always use garlic around flowering shrubs to chase mosquitoes out and keep the pollinators in those plants happy) and minimizing usage (we want the product to dry on the leaf, not drip off due to overuse or cause run-off).

Our yards are living ecosystems, and our job is to make them more comfortable for you while having as little impact on the balance of nature within. In short, the PESP is guided by the principle that we will do the right thing for the big picture, using all the tools in our tool belt to manage mosquitoes and other insects, not just pesticides alone. In other words, that we will be stewards of the environment, adopting the use of natural compounds, methodology, and more to reduce your pest issue by the most economical means and with the least possible hazard to people, property, and the environment.

As science evolves and new methods of mosquito control are discovered, Mosquito Joe is always listening and implementing all the tools available to us. We want our customers to enjoy their outside spaces, but to also protect those outside spaces from poorly thought-out applications that can do more harm than good. We offer our customers the choice of an all-natural service, a botanical service, or a combination service. We will continue to strive to do the right thing in all things – for our customers, for their yards, and for the environment. If you want to learn more about this program you can visit https://www.epa.gov/pesp and if you have questions about our approach to mosquito control don’t hesitate to give us a call at 281-815-0228.

Back in May we saw some crazy weather with high winds and intense rains, which created several flooding events for us. With forecasters suggesting that this hurricane season will be a big one, we thought it was an opportune time to talk about the effects of flooding on mosquitoes.

The most obvious impact of flooding is standing water, which you know by now is our major source of mosquitoes. Compounding this issue for our customers is the movement of water from one yard to the next. This water carries mosquito eggs along and deposits a whole new population in your yard.

This water causes a population explosion that can be up to ten-fold of our typical population. Mosquito eggs are incredible. They can sit dormant in the soil for 10 years and hatch when added to water. They can stay frozen in ice for years and hatch when the ice thaws. Everywhere we walk, underfoot and in the soil, millions of mosquito eggs are lying in wait. When flooding hits, drenching the soil and causing puddles, and sometimes small ponds, all those eggs start hatching. It impacts the shorelines of creeks, hatching the eggs laid along its banks. It pulls water down off building sites into yards, it sends water (and eggs) downstream as the creeks fill and water floods south to the ocean.

Aedes albopictus, or the Asian tiger mosquitoes, pictured here, are a very aggressive mosquito and the only one you will see out during daylight hours. They tend to feed (bite) in the afternoons. Asian Tigers are container breeders, loving old tires, pots and backyard junk as a place to make their home. After flooding all these items fill with water and suddenly their population explodes. These mosquitoes are much harder to control as they are good fliers and might be coming from something in your neighbor’s yard. Talk with your neighbors too! The less standing water in your neighborhood, the better!

Aedes vexans, more commonly known as the inland floodwater mosquito, also make an appearance after flooding. They hatch in masses almost simultaneously and can travel up to 15 miles to find food, making them one of the best fliers of all the mosquitoes. Estimates suggest that per acre there are between 0.7 and 1.3 MILLION eggs lying in wait for a flood.

Adding to this nightmare, are the biting midges in our grass. Their population will also explode after flooding. Biting midges look like a mosquito, but they are out all day and live in the ground and grass.

Here’s a cheat sheet with suggestions you can do to help expedite the decline in mosquito numbers after flooding:

1. If you see mosquitoes during the day, and they are black and white striped, they are Asian Tigers. These are container breeders, so look around for anything holding water and remove it. Unfortunately, Asian Tigers fly far and are good at it, so the issue may be in a neighbor’s yard.
2. If you are bitten during the day and they look like “baby mosquitoes” or are smaller than the average mosquito, those are biting midges. Clear up leaf litter and pine needles, these guys love decomposing organic matter.
3. Keep an eye on your yard after rain. Remove anything that holds water; planters, buckets, outdoor kitchens, kid’s toys like playhouses or water fountains can hold a lot of water inside the plastic and be a big source of mosquito breeding.
4. Gutter checks are infrequent in the spring and summer but keep an eye on them. With storms and flooding, leaves will fall, and you may have water standing up there you didn’t notice.

Flooding brings huge mosquito issues, but if you stay on top of the water in your yard you can reduce your numbers dramatically. If you would rather, we do that for you just give us a call!

When it comes to dealing with mosquitoes, Mosquito Joe of NW Houston has you covered with a variety of options tailored to your yard. Barrier services work amazingly well for yards with privacy fencing or a strong wood line. Misting systems are great for those golf course lots or yards with no physical barrier between neighbors. But what if your needs are smaller? What if you are not worried as much about your yard but simply want to enjoy your patio or balcony? We have a solution for that too!

Mosquito Joe can install and monitor a Thermacell LIV system for you that you control via your smartphone or with a simple push of the button. It can cover your deck, patio, firepit, and play-space areas at the push of a button. These systems are people, pet, and planet friendly and repel mosquitoes through the use of an odorless, invisible vapor.

Our Thermacell LIV and Misting System specialist, Tanner, will come to your property and measure the area you are wanting to protect. He will then come back to the office and design a system to fit that area and provide the protection you need. This design will be emailed to you along with a quote. Mosquito Joe will monitor your system daily and reach out when you are in need of a refill, or to let you know we will be visiting because the system requires it.

The design of the system will cover the area much like the two examples below:

The design begins with your outdoor power source and installation of the Smart Hub. This Hub is small and unobtrusive as you can see.






The Repellers, each creating a 315 sq ft zone of mosquito protection, are installed to the Hub using low-voltage cables in the areas you want to protect. These Repellers are made of all-weather die-cast aluminum and are built to withstand all our weather conditions. The cables are buried under the ground or neatly mounted and the Repellers are inconspicuous, blending into the landscaping and lighting. One Smart Hub can link a maximum of 6 Repellers. You can always opt for two Smart Hubs’ if your needs are greater.

Once the LIV system is installed, we will get you connected on your smart phone so you can turn the system on and off at the click of a button. The system does have an “automatic-off” override after 6 hours, so if you forget after that party, we’ve got you covered! Of course, you can always turn the system on with a simple button-push at the Hub.

One fill provides about 180 hours of coverage, but Mosquito Joe of NW Houston will let you know when you are getting low and schedule a visit to refill the repellers. Check out this great video to see one in action! If you want to learn more, or obtain a free quote from us, just give us a call at 281-815-0228 and ask for Tanner.

At Mosquito Joe, we believe that the key to controlling a pest is understanding it. The more we understand their habits, behaviors, and needs, the better we can be at controlling the population and managing them. When it comes to mosquitoes, understanding mosquito eggs is vital. It’s the one thing that no laboratory has managed to kill. So, knowing what an egg needs to survive allows us to reduce the numbers in a yard, and hence the mosquito population as a whole.

A mosquito’s life cycle involves 4 stages, beginning with the egg and ending with the emergence of the adult mosquito. The first three stages occur in water so that is the preferred location for eggs to be laid. But a mosquito will lay eggs elsewhere if there is no water available. Where the female lays her eggs is driven by the species.

In general, mosquito eggs fall into 3 groups. The first are eggs that are laid as single units on water. The second are eggs laid in rafts which float on the water’s surface. The third are laid singly outside the water – on the side of rocks or holes or artificial containers. When the water rises in these areas, the eggs contact the water and hatch.

While managing water is the key to preventing the larvae from hatching, it’s not enough to control them. The fact is, if you have a female mosquito in your yard who wants to lay eggs, she will find a place. And if there is no water, then she will find a location where the soil is moist and opt for that. If you water regularly chances are that the soil is damp enough for her to lay eggs there.

If you have a culvert by the street, while it may not hold water when she visits, she will opt for it as a good spot. If you have plant pots, a wheelbarrow, or any number of containers in your yard, even if dry, she will lay eggs there knowing that the rain will come, and the container will fill.

So how long will that egg survive if we don’t get rain? The answer is the key to why mosquitoes are so hard to control. A mosquito egg can lay dormant for up to 15 years. They can be frozen in ice and hatch when the ice melts. You may read that Dawn dish soap can suffocate eggs, but this is not true. No one has worked out how to kill a mosquito egg and we are limited to killing the larvae and pupae (as well as the adults).

The best way to control the mosquitoes in your yard is to limit the water, as well as areas where water can accumulate after rain. As soon as water touches an egg it can hatch, and ONE TEASPOON of water will provide enough for 300 eggs. A good checklist is as follows:

1. Keep your gutters flowing and free of debris.
2. Turn all containers upside down and store them out of the elements (plant pots, wheelbarrows, saucers under plant pots, gutter drains, etc.).
3. Even your yard if you have low spots can accumulate water. Customers with the worst mosquito issues are usually those who have dogs that dig holes in their yard.
4. Minimize the use of tarps – one tarp can create multiple pockets of standing water.
5. If you have poor drainage in your yard, fixing it can resolve a lot of issues. Direct water away from your property and be careful not to lay a French drain without a steep angle – poorly designed drains are hidden under the ground, but not from mosquitoes.
6. Keep your yard tidy and your ground clear of as much leaf and pine needle debris as possible. The more ground cover you have, the wetter the soil beneath.
7. Bring kids’ toys inside before rains. One small plastic toy can fill with water and breed a lot of mosquitoes. The same goes for plastic kid playhouses.
8. Refresh your birdbaths often, it is not enough to tip out the water – mosquito eggs can cling to the sides. Scrub the bath before refilling so you are not just refreshing the water for those eggs!
9. Finally, after a weather event spend a few minutes tipping and tossing the water. An egg cannot hatch without water, so don’t give them that option!

Our mosquito service involves more than laying down products. Our technicians will tip and toss as they treat, so if you want to have us manage these issues just give us a call to find out more at 281-815-0228.

We all know that, as the summer heats up, so do the mosquitoes. But we often get asked why this happens, and why we don’t see as many when the temperatures drop. We thought it would make an interesting blog post to break down the impact of temperatures on mosquitoes.

Mosquitoes are incapable of regulating their body temperature as they are cold blooded. This has an impact on when we see them and where, since their body temperature will essentially be the same as the environment, they are in. It’s the reason why we see them in the shade but not the sun – a mosquito venturing out into the Texas sun during the day will get a nasty surprise and not live to talk about it.

Essentially, there are some temperature parameters for the mosquito that we can follow. Temperatures under 50 degrees F force the mosquito into hibernation. Some mosquitoes will die, but others, already lethargic when the temperature drops into the mid 50’s, will shelter under leaves and may live to see the temperatures rise again. In Texas that may only be a few days, as we like to ping pong from cold to hot in the cooler months. Some species of mosquito are much better at dealing with the weather changes, while others will perish once the temperatures reach a low level. Female mosquitoes preparing to lay eggs will often hibernate and lay them when the temperatures warm.

On the other side of the scale, we have heat. Mosquitoes don’t enjoy incredibly high temperatures, but they have evolved over millions of years to develop coping strategies to deal with them. Mosquitoes will come out at night to feed, bite, and mate, and then shelter in the shade during the day waiting for the temperatures to drop down again.

As we continue to see weather changes worldwide, so too do we see changes in mosquito presence. Over the decade between 1980 and 1990, mosquito season in New York City was about 141 days long. In 2006, it was 153 days long. As our temperatures increase, so too do the number of days when mosquitoes coexist with us. In 2021, the increase in storms and rain that summer, along with the warmer than expected temperatures, resulted in a 300 fold increase in mosquitoes in Tammany Parish, LA, while Luzerne County, PA, reported more mosquitoes in 2021 than the combined total from the previous 10 years.

As is typical in Texas, we had a “practice summer” in April this year, followed by a long, endless deluge of rain in May, which resulted in a rather epic mosquito population as we entered June.

But the real key to the population are the mosquito eggs. We tell everyone who will listen just how amazing mosquito eggs are. You can freeze one in a block of ice and melt it a few years later, and it will hatch. You can shelve a mosquito egg for 10 years, and then apply a drop of water to it and it will hatch.

The fact of the matter is, while mosquitoes are impacted by temperatures, mosquito eggs are not. After a ton of rain, mosquitoes will lay eggs, in groups of 300 at a time, everywhere there is standing water. Those eggs will lie in wait, if the temperatures are too cool, until the right time and then they hatch. Once the temperature hits 50 degrees they are off to the races. Sometimes, the area where they are laid dried up, but that’s ok. They will just wait for some new rain and then hatch.

What is crazy to think about is the rapidity with which a mosquito populates its space. Let’s say a female (Aedes) mosquito flies out of the woods into your yard and finds a hole in a tree trunk with water inside, or a pool deck drain holding water under the ground. She pauses and lays her 300 eggs and moves on. And let’s say that 50% of those 300 eggs become females, which will occur about 4-6 days later. You now have 150 females, who will hatch, immediately breed, find a blood meal, and lay their 300 eggs. Eight to twelve days after the female first arrived, you now 150 females producing 150 females a piece, or 22,500 females. Twelve to eighteen days after the first arrived those 22,500 females produce 150 females a piece, and you have 3.3 million females in your yard. In two weeks! Granted some of the original females will no longer be with you, but at this point we don’t think it would matter.

In summary, it’s more than the temperature that impacts the population – it’s the weather and the rain and the locations in your yard that provide the perfect place for egg laying. The perfect storm is Texas weather. Rarely under 50 degrees, often hot and usually humid with rain.

If you want to know how to control your population check out some of our earlier blog posts that provide some great advice. Or you can just call us, and we can take care of your yard for you with one of our treatment options!