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We often receive phone calls from people who are searching for mosquito service but have serious concerns about environmental health and safety. Many believe that the pesticides used can be harmful to beneficial insects and our environment. This can be true if used irresponsibly. Here at Mosquito Joe of of NW Houston we want to assure our customers that this is not how we treat them – we work hard to put our environment first and proudly claim the title of a member of the Pesticide Environmental Stewardship Program (PESP)!

What is PESP? The Pesticide Environmental Stewardship Program (PESP) is a partnership with the EPA (Environmental Protection Agency) to promote and emphasize environmentally conscious pest control services. This includes an emphasis on ‘Integrated Pest Management,’ or IPM, which involves knowledge of pests and their environment, coupled with choosing the lowest risk products or methods to provide a treatment solution! Mosquito Joe’s participation in the PESP focuses on implementing this new, structured IPM program to explore low-risk and environmentally conscious processes and products in our field operations.

For our customers, this means that Mosquito Joe cares about the health and welfare of our customers and the environment. Our partnership with PESP demonstrates our commitment to providing low-risk outdoor pest control. We make continued efforts to focus on environmental health and safety, are big advocates for bees and other pollinators, and work to be mindful of all different types of flora in your yard! In fact, Mosquito Joe officially holds a ‘silver’ tiered membership status with PESP and is the only backyard mosquito control company that has acquired Silver Tiered accreditation at this time. Our goal is to protect you, your family, pets, and your community from vector-borne diseases while making your outside fun again.

For local residents that have shied away from mosquito services out of concern for the environment, we hear and share those concerns! Mosquito Joe goes the extra mile to ensure that we do everything we can to provide you with the most environmentally conscious pest control service on the market. While we always utilize the IPM program and its measures during all of our services, customers interested in natural pest management options can opt for our ‘Botanical’ and ‘all-natural’ services. Our Botanical service uses a natural compound of essential oils and soap to kill the mosquitoes in your yard, while our all-natural uses strictly concentrated garlic to repel (but not kill) them. No matter which service you choose, our technicians will always treat your flowering plants only with our organic product in an effort to reduce our impact on bees, butterflies, and other pollinators.

For environmentally-conscious residents looking to balance good health with environmental protection, Mosquito Joe is the way to go! Pest control has developed a bad reputation over the years for using harsh chemicals and negatively impacting the environment. While we can’t speak for our competitors, environmental responsibility is at the forefront of our minds, developing an individual plan for each yard to maximize results while minimizing impact. As the only backyard mosquito control company that has acquired Silver Tiered accreditation of the Pesticide Environmental Stewardship Program, you can rest knowing we go above and beyond to provide the most effective, environmentally responsible service available. For more information on these services, you can check out our FAQs below, or give us a call at 281-815-0228!

We will not be the only ones celebrating on July 4th. In fact, if mosquitoes could write their ideal situation, they couldn’t do it any better. We have large groups of people – all emitting CO2 plumes to attract them, likely many of those people sweating to attract them further. We also tend to gather on grasses, near woods where mosquitoes are lying in wait. Finally, we all gather at dusk, just the right time for mosquitoes to come out from their shade shelter and the females head out to look for a blood meal.

Houston has been ranked as the most extreme city in the nation for mosquitoes on July 4th, and many of us can attest that this is true. It’s a familiar story – we head out for an evening of fireworks and get there early so we can relax and enjoy a picnic while we wait. We soon find ourselves sweating and uncomfortable and, no doubt, very thirsty. We immediately run out of water and must go find more and use the restroom. Dusk begins to fall, and we start getting bitten. Eventually, it’s dark and the fireworks start, and in no time at all, it ends. We head home, exhausted, hot, and ready for a shower. As we get undressed, we notice the multitude of bites all over our bodies and remind ourselves we never want to do that again.

So how can we make the evening more bearable if we are headed out to watch the fireworks? There are some things we can do to make ourselves less palatable and attractive to the mosquito. First, though, let’s understand how mosquitoes find us in the first place.

From a distance, mosquitoes look for CO2 plumes to locate their prey. Simply breathing is the first step to drawing one to you and there is little you can do about that. Once they get closer the mosquito will then start picking up olfactory cues – sweat, perfumes, etc. They also start seeing colors. A recent study has shown that mosquitoes do have a preference for some colors over others and you can read more about it here. Wearing brighter colors like orange, black, and red will attract them, while greens and blues may actually deter some species. As mosquitoes get really close they begin to look for a heat source to locate a meal.

In a large crowd, the CO2 plumes are like a flashing siren, and you can’t do much about that. You can, however, control to some extent the scent you produce. Limiting perfumes and “post alcohol” sweat can help. Obviously, bug spray is a good idea. What’s important is that everyone around you also does this because once a mosquito is close it is looking for a heat source and they will no longer distinguish between you and your neighbors. A good, reliable source, for bug spray options, can be found here It’s also a good idea to all wear the colors mentioned in the research, particularly white since it will help keep you cool as well and hence reduce odors that attract them.

If you plan on having your own fireworks at home, then you can do far more to make the evening pleasant. Mosquito Joe of NW Houston offers event services that will get rid of the mosquitoes in your yard for the evening. Give us a call at 281-815-0228 to get a free quote. And to learn more about mosquitoes and what you can do, without hiring us, to reduce them in your yard explore all our other blogs on the topic.

It is said that the younger generations often inspire the older and for Mosquito Joe that is very true. For several years now, Molly has been helping in the office over the summers. She started working for us in her sophomore year of high school and has been a great asset to us ever since, taking on more responsibilities each year. Molly is now in her second year at Corpus Christi A&M where she studies marketing. She has also developed a growing interest in conservation and the environment and is interning at The Harte Research Institute.

Molly’s passion for conservation and the environment is palpable and her excitement for doing our part and changing our way of thinking has caught on.

The Texas Department of Agriculture has very specific rules regarding the disposal of pest control bottles. They must be triple rinsed, the top and labels removed, and then sliced open before being thrown out. We’ve been doing that at Mosquito Joe since we opened. But pushed on by Molly’s passion we researched and discovered that we are lucky enough to have a location of US Ag Recycling near us in Waller County. This free service allows us to prepare our empty bottles and then drop them off to be recycled. We go through a lot of bottles annually, so this simple change makes a huge difference in the long run.

Encouraged by this change we then learned some surprising news about our recycling. Most sources suggest that 85% of the products we sort and put out for recycling do not actually get recycled, but instead end up in a landfill. That was a shocking discovery for us. You can learn more about that here. We decided that we didn’t want to play a role in leaving more waste behind so Mosquito Joe started recycling the boxes our bottles arrive in, all the paper in the office, water bottles that the technicians drink during the day, and more. We sort them in our warehouse and make regular trips to the Montgomery Country Precinct 2 recycling center. There are several recycling centers around if you want to get involved. They do take things seriously there, so we make sure that everything is clean, flattened, and organized as we go.

We take our impact on the environment seriously and are always talking about the lengths we go to protect our bees and butterflies by using garlic around flowering plants. We monitor wind at every home we treat to make sure we don’t have any potential for drift. We treat every yard individually so that we get rid of your mosquitoes but don’t impact your beneficial insects. It suddenly occurred to us that we are only doing half a job if we support the environment during our services but don’t after the fact.

We encourage all of you to jump in where you can so we can reduce our footprint on the Earth. It feels good to take these steps and our efforts have spilled out into our homes and among our employees. The passion of one individual has led to a lot of changes for our company, and we are proud to be a part of a solution rather than a problem. If you are interested in learning more about the steps students at A&M are taking you can visit the Blue Value website, where students like Molly blog about their ideas and conservation work.

It’s February and it won’t be long until the weather really heats up. Depending on the winter we have had – wet/dry, hot/cold, mosquitoes may be a huge issue already, so we really encourage our customers to make sure that they are on top of the standing water in their yard and let us know if they start seeing issues.

It’s also the time of year when we offer our pre-pay special to all our customers, new and old. It’s a great way of making sure that your yard is bite-free for the rest of the year so you can sit back and relax. You can pick the length of time you want to be treated and kick it back and relax knowing we have it handled. The customers we treat all year particularly like to take advantage of the program and are always welcome to start another when they finish, even if it’s mid-fall or January.

The concept is a simple one. A full year of services is performed once every 3 weeks, which comes to 17 treatments in a calendar year. If you opt for 13 to 17 services, you save 15% on your price. For customers who want less time covered, they can pick between 10 and 12 services and save 10%.

Mosquito Joe will manage the pre-pay account and monitor progress throughout the year. We draw from the account each time we come and treat and monitor your balance. Once you have two services remaining, we will reach out to let you know. Once you have run out of pre-paying funds we will call and see if you want to pause service for the year or do another pre-pay. You are free to hold your service anytime you want as we don’t have any contacts here, and the money in your pre-pay account will be here waiting for you when you are ready to start back up.

If you are looking for service and want a simple way to save money this is for you! Or if you are struggling for a great gift for family or a loved one a swat-free yard is THE BEST GIFT!

Please don’t hesitate to ask us about our pre-pay offer. You can give us a call and we can get you a quote and a price at no charge in just a few minutes. While we reach out to our customers this month about pre-pay, we offer it all year and will always be happy to run some numbers for you, so you can pick the option you like best. Just give us a call at 281-815-0228 and we will help you from there. Happy Spring!!!

It’s the question we often hear and the answer we hate giving, but the fact of the matter is mosquitoes don’t go away in Texas. The activity level, which is driven by temperatures and weather (read water), will dimmish but they won’t go away.

After the snowpocalypse of 2021, we had a LOT of people calling us complaining that the mosquitoes were back and asking why the freezing temperatures didn’t kill them. It’s logical to think that the little suckers were wiped out with such extreme (for Texas) weather, but sadly, that’s not how it works. You only have to think about Alaska and its intense mosquito issues every summer to realize that mosquitoes are incredibly resilient and unaffected by a freeze. They simply go to sleep and wake up when the temperature hits about 50-55 degrees and life goes on as normal.

So, if they don’t go away what happens? It varies year by year with our weather of course, but there are some general rules of thumb we can expect. Some species of mosquitoes that we have in Texas have become less active. The adults die and their eggs lay in wait until the temperatures climb a bit. Those eggs are often laid in areas that are prone to holding water, and often under and around fallen leaves. Therefore, keeping your yard tidy will help so much come spring. Other species of mosquitoes actually prefer cooler temperatures and will become more active, like the Culiseta inomata. Known as the “winter” mosquito, it prefers cooler temperatures and is active across Texas. It is also a vector for West Nile, which is another reason that managing the water and leaf litter/pine needles/gutters in your yard should be a year-round focus and not something you only consider in the summer.

We say this a lot in our blogs, but it’s always worth repeating. Mosquitoes are active unless one of the following 2 things occurs.
1. The temperatures fall under 55 degrees and stay under for a week.
2. We have 3 deep freezes in a row.

What is also important to remember, and often overlooked, is that as soon as the temperatures rise over 55 degrees, they all wake back up and proceed as if nothing had happened. Mosquito eggs can live 10 years in the ground and then a single drop of water can hit it and it will hatch. Mosquitoes have been around for over 200 MILLION YEARS! They are the worlds’ deadliest creatures and have evolved to manage weather and, frankly, laugh in the face of it.

Knowing that they never go away is important. It brings a new understanding to our fall chores of raking and gutter management. It’s not just about making things look managed and tidy, but it goes a long way to reducing your issues not only in the here and now, but in the spring when things really start kicking up a notch.

If you have any questions don’t ever hesitate to give us a call. We believe that educating folks about mosquitoes is so important and advice is always free!