For Release June 12, 2005

Time to Get Serious About Mosquito Control

AGRI-VIEWS
by Chuck Otte, Geary County Extension Agent

Now that the monsoon season has started, it's time to dispense with the philosophical discussions of mosquito control and get serious about the practice of mosquito control. With the start of the really wet weather being about ten days ago now, and expected mosquito reproduction rates to currently be about 7 to 10 days, we can expect a notable increase in mosquitoes soon. But there will be a whole lot more IF we don't start some control measures.

Forget all your preconceived notions about controlling adult mosquitoes. Throw the foggers and space sprays away and don't put a lot of faith in the various adult mosquito attracting and destruction devices. Serious mosquito control comes from serious work at eliminating breeding areas. Anything that will hold water, even a very shallow amount of water, for a week or more, will raise mosquitoes.

If you think about it, there are a lot of places around any home or farm yard that can hold water for a week, especially when it keeps raining. Bird baths and pet watering dishes are two places to start. It's a very easy thing to dump these, rinse them and refill them every few days. Any mosquitoes that had started to develop will then be dumped and will soon die. Saucers under outdoor potted plants are often overlooked as are small ponds, clogged or sagging gutters and downspouts, old tires, just anything that will hold water. Make sure any of these potential nurseries are emptied regularly to prevent a new generation of mosquitoes.

One mosquito breeding location that is often overlooked is that soggy corner of the yard. Now come on people! We've had almost 9 inches of rain in Junction City since the first of the month. Turn off your automatic sprinkler systems until things dry out a little bit. If you don't know how, contact the people that take care of it. It's usually one simple little switch. Just turn it off for a week or two or more! The ground is absolutely saturated. It can not take in any more water right now. I was stunned at the number of sprinkler systems I saw running this past week, in some cases as the downpours were occurring. If the soil can't take up any more water it will drain off the yard into the street or it will drain into the lowest part of the yard and will often provide more than an adequate place to raise a few broods of mosquitoes!

While the mosquito larva does develop in water, feeding on bits of decaying vegetation, they still need air. My dad used to send me around to the mud puddles on the farm with an oil can. By squirting some oil in each mud puddle you essentially smothered the developing larvae. Effective, but not very environmentally friendly. There are some biodegradable oils available today that will do the same thing, but there are more effective methods. There are also insecticides that you can use to treat standing water, but they often require special licenses. Therefore I recommend the following instead.

A far easier way to deal with potential mosquito breeding water sites (shallow water without wave action and preferably with emerged vegetation) is with one of the biological control compounds. Often sold as mosquito dunks or donuts, these items are easy to toss into larger areas of ponding water, they are specifically for controlling mosquito larvae and have no unfortunate impacts on non-target species. The directions will indicate how much you need for how big a pool of water. We will have an increase of mosquitoes because of the rain. But if we all work to control those mosquito breeding areas, we can reduce the number of adults around to bother us!

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