I'm being harassed by mosquitoes, how do i kill them all?
To my knowledge there's no stagnant water on my property, I've run water through all my ptraps, and I'm careful to not leave doors open. Yet at any given time there's at least 3 in my house. I can't sleep, i can't sit on the couch, i can't exist in the fear of being sucked dry.
The breaking point is when i watched my dog get bit on her head. I'm ready to do whatever it takes and then some. I will kill a man if it saves me from these demons. Any ideas?
There are traps which are called mosquito magnets and they hook up to a propane tank to burn a small pilot light which produces CO2 to attract mosquitos and pull them into a bag via a fan.
You want to place them at the edge of your property though not close to your deck because they attract mosquitos in order to kill them.
If you get creative you can put maybe a candle floating in the middle of a large bowl of water, then a bit of detergent will break the surface tension to make them fall in. The detergent will also kill them.
I kinda like the idea of the last one, especially for indoors in the summer. It seems very simple and makes a lot of sense to me:
secure some window screen mesh to the output side of a box fan. Let the fan run. The mosquitos get sucked in and trapped against the mesh until they dry out and die. Spray them with a mixture of rubbing alcohol and water if you want to speed up their demise.
I am allied with spiders against mosquitoes and bedbugs. I don't take down their webs (unless they're in the way) and they eat hundreds of the fuckers. They're also fun to watch sometimes.
I wish we could talk to spiders. I'd write an agreement with one that says, as long as it doesn't crawl on me, it can live in the house. I'll even build it a little shelf to protect from fan wind.
I would also include a clause that says I never have to see it ever. It can basically be a roommate that lives in the basement and has their own entrance in the garage.
I can count on one hand the amount of times I've had spiders crawl on me even while living with them, and yeah it still makes me squirm. They usually mind their own business.
We had a "pet" spider that lived in the kitchen. There was this spot the ants kept getting in, and he (? I assume) moved there and just started eating the ants. I hate ants. And so a pact was formed. Then one year my mom hired a cleaning lady and she didn't bother to ask about Gerald.
I have so many spiders on my property. My fave is the bold jumper that lives in my living room. He started off by moving in and residing in a box of captain crunch. I let him live there and he left eventually and moved to the living room. Idk what he ate when he lived the cereal box, but he got significantly bigger.
Fly screens (Unrealistic solution but I wanted to mention it)
Get a Pet Frog that eats them
Get lots of Spiders making Webs. Be aware that the Pet frog might eat the spiders
Flood one of your rooms and make a little swamp where you can plant canivourus plants. The issue is that the swamp will breed more mosquito than it kills but the frog will feel right at home
Make a small campfire in your bedroom before you go to sleep. It is known that smoke scares them away. Make sure to keep the windows and door closed so no new mosquito get inside. This is probably
the most effective as you won't get stung for the rest of you life
Catch some mosquitos and suck the blood out of them. The other mosquitos will see their wrongdoings and change their ways
Fly screens (Unrealistic solution but I wanted to mention it)
Can I ask why you consider that an unrealistic solution? In my experience the plant based products are ineffective but I haven't tried fly screens yet.
It more of a joke because its the only real solution in my list. They are limited to your house but from my experience there's no way normal mosquitos can go through them. I think mosquitos don't really give a fuck about smells (at least not enough) and the problem is that they dont spread that well.
Get a couple of buckets of water and place them around your yard. Drop a “Misquote Dunks” tablet in each bucket. Follow the package instructions for refreshing the dunks every so often.
Mosquito dunks work by “poisoning” what looks to the mosquito like an ideal spot to lay eggs; a pale of still water. But the mosquito dunk bacteria kills the mosquito larvae before they hatch.
It’s a more “long term” solution as it doesn’t actively take care of the current mosquito population but it prevents them from breeding.
There is also a type of fish called the misquitofish that you can put in a small pond, such as a wash basin or feeding trough. They feed on the mosquito larvae and are fairly self sufficient. I know people who use them to control mosquito populations in their gardens and they rarely have to do any kind of maintenance.
agree on the nets for doors and windows. For doors there’s also some nets with magnets that can be crossed though and they will self-close perfectly every single time thanks to the magnets.
Badminton is great too, including against flies, wasps and whatever manages to get in.
Yea after wasting a lot of money on repelents and creams , I realised just closing doors after 5 pm and netting the windows was the best solution. I also use net tent for my bed.
Permethrin treated clothes will kill just about anything that bites you through your clothes, including horse flies. Then you could wear a very thin layer of clothes and be fine. Their death happens before they even get through the fibers.
You can buy pretreated or get the solution to make your own. I think its using the same chemical that chrysanthemums produce to fight bug eating them.
If you are inside, set up an oscillating fan. They can't fly well in windy conditions.
Was watching a video where one place they rest is under the leaves of plants. Yiu can buy mosquitoe killer spray, but be sure to get underneath the leaves.
As others have mentioned, standing water is bad. They can survive and thus breed in a LOT smaller volume of water than people realize.
I do this when doing yard work. Can feel great to have a little cool down, and really keeps them off me when doing anything stationary. Hell, I've even rigged up a little one that clamps on to my lawn tractor to blow at me while driving.
A breeze is nice, but no mosquitoes is fuckin' gold!
Call an exterminator, preferably a small mom&pop shop and not a big Orkin or Terminex or whatever, and have them come and and do a mosquito treatment. They'll spray a chemical on the outside of your house, under the leaves of your trees/bushes, etc. Then they'll spray inside, but just the corners for other bugs. You'll need to keep your dog out of the chemical inside for about 10-20 minutes, and out of the chemical outside for probably an hour. After that it's dry and non-toxic to mammals but will get soaked up by insects. Be sure to double check that with the exterminator, times vary depending on the chemical used.
Good treatments should last a solid 2-3 months, which ought to be enough to get you through the worst of mosquito season, unless you're in Florida or something.
I’ve heard that those treatments are fairly indiscriminate and will kill most insects, not just mosquitoes. I worry about the effect on the local ecosystem such as birds that would eat them.
You're not wrong, it's kind of like nuking from orbit. But there are definitely things you can do to help, like only spraying the house and immediately surrounding areas. Focus on spraying thick, decorative shrubs and not flowers where bees are likely to congregate. Spray at times bees aren't out looking for food and mosquitoes are most likely hiding in shrubs during the heat of the day.
There are lots of other great suggestions in this thread, and I'd recommend the bait and zappers if OP only had the occasional mosquito in the house, or DEET if OP is temporarily outside, but bait doesn't work on a large scale and deet is really bad for synthetic clothing/fabrics and wearing it all day in the house is a terrible idea.
The biggest thing everyone can do is clear out any standing water (buckets, tools, etc... mosquitoes will even lay eggs in a teaspoon of water given a chance), but op has already done that.
Imo the easiest option: fly screens everywhere. Especially in bedroom and keep this door closed so they won't get in (in case they come through other doors)
I no longer have issues with them and if I ever see one, I just use my electric fly swatter. I also can't sleep when there's one in the room.
Fly screens are totally worth it. Self made might be cheaper, but I'm not cerrain since I didn't do them myself.
I made this simulation to show how effective attraction to a bug light can be an emergent property of a mosquito's navigation and confinement, even though they are not attracted to light innately.
Maybe it depends on the kind, because when we let mosquitos in and use the bug zapper, we dont get bit. It would have to be quite the luck if it was not attracting them one way or another. It certainly works on almost everything that flies and harasses you at night. It sounds like a controlled experiment is in order.
I’m missing a solution in the replies. Create a last line of defence by using a mosquito net over your bed. They are available in quite large sizes so it shouldn’t be cramped inside.
Mosquitoes get in you house anyway. Use screens and so you keep the numbers down as low as possible. The chemicals are a possibility but sometimes also toxic for pets or even humans. The mosquito net over the bed keeps the last ones away while you sleep. I have mayby one mosquito a year that gets in.
Capture 1000 mosquitoes, torture them and rip their heads.
Mount these heads on needles and display them near windows and entrances as a warning to the others.
I usually kill them with my phone with the screen turned on (the background needs to be blueish and the room needs to be completely dark). For some reason they don't see it, they just sit there until they get squashed.
I didn’t see it mentioned specifically — Mosquito Barrier is a black garlic-based spray that works super well. I’ve used it at high concentrations to handle a yard.
I also use Essentria IC3, another non-toxic-to-mammals spray. Works better than the Mosquito Barrier, I think.
Both are safe for people and pets, and I think both smell pretty decent to boot.
Serious answer: you have to kill the mosquito larvae. Mosquitos like breeding in standing water, so eliminate as much of it as you possibly can from around your home. Set up bucket traps as early into mosquito season as you can; with no nearby standing water mosquitos will lay larvae in there and the larvae will die. This will cause an exponential decrease in the local mosquito population over time. While bug traps, bat houses and pet frogs may help kill adult mosquitoes, setting up traps specifically to kill mosquito larvae early is the most effective thing you can do to reduce the population
A lot of good suggestions already here. Try to eliminate the mosquitoes in your house as much as possible. I installed mosquito nets on my windows a few years ago. This helped a lot. I am now asking myself why I haven't done this before.
But I do still get bites like one or two a day, because I also like to be outside in my garden and sometimes a mosquito still finds a way into the house.
So there is no way you can prevent all bites. But the good thing is, you can treat them really well really easy with heat! I do this when I have a cup of tea. I just press the hot tea cup on the bite for a short while. But there are also special pen like devices called electronic insect bite healer or something similar. They are about 10-20 euros. They work as well and are probably safer and easier to handle.
Heat does disintegrate the anticoagulant that mosquitos inject and that makes the bites so itchy.
The bites I get itch only ones. Then I treat them with heat and they are basically gone. Try to not scratch because you might spread the anticoagulant more. Just treat them right away!
Don't you want a dominant gene? Anyway, if you want to know more watch: Unnatural Selection, Episode 3. It's on Netflix and worth a watch, it discusses gene drive in detail.
We hung one of those uv light Bug zapper lamps outside for use on during the evening hours, as it's too hot during the day for them to really come out. We also got a few of the smaller ones that plug into your regular outlets inside, from Amazon. This has cut down on the ones in the house drastically.
Of course remove standing water, and keep tall grasses trimmed. They actually make thier homes and can reproduce in tall grass esp when you have daily sprinklers (like our aerobic septic system) we have deer that stop by and trim our grass for us.
Our community was built on an endangered toad habitat, which is sad but also helpful. (We really try to keep everything as natural as we can around the house so as not to harm them)
Can you buy a million sterilized mosquitos and release them into your environment? It's a long term solution but they can compete the fertile mosquitos to death.
For those of us that live in the West African tropics, we just settle on how many bites we can tolerate per night lol. Some people apply agricultural pesticides (active ingredient Bifenthrin) down their waste water pipes once a month to ameliorate.
Oh, i had a problem like this very recently. The house has an air-vent that i assumed had a screen, but it was just flat out exposed. Because of the house design it just massively funneled the wind and mosquitos inside. I opened the vent cover and put some tissue paper over the inside so that it'd get fixed in place somewhat to "filter" the mosquitos and just instantly went from 5 per night to 1 over the next month.
Love opening a thread all excited for some answers only to get 100 repeats of the same unfunny joke.
Here are some answers I’ve found by looking around:
basil, catnip, citronella, lavender, mint, etc. Most bugs don’t like fragrant plants because they can’t smell their prey or predators accurately anymore
If you can find where they’re breeding, establishing some frogs would make a buff difference. Tadpoles gobble the larva up from what I understand. I’ve also read that bats are way helpful, and you can apparently establish a small bar colony in a bat house.
So it sounds like you think your home is sealed already. I assume they're just coming in when you do? You could spray near the doors maybe. Insecticide probably isn't good for you but it's worth considering living in a cloud of DEET if you're that desperate.
Now seriously, you could burn one of those cardboards that come with chicken eggs, i think other cardboards work but the egg one seems to be the most usefull for reppeling mosquitoes.
i understand that whatever repels them one year, if its used by enough people, attracts them after they get the chance to evolve, a couple years. Could be wrong, but my family in Maine said this happened first with the standard deep woods bug spray, then with a natural oil blend everyone started using.
Could a blue light trap work? Idk how mosquitoes work compared to flies.
I read somewhere that smelly cheese attracts the flying leeches. Maybe placing some bait, and swat them when they've fallen into your trap.
I better yet, zap them. Swatting mid-air is hard. I've begun catching them with my hands. Better success rate, as they then don't get blown out the way by the fly swatter's air current.
Ps. I've read about some people having invented an infrared light beam that will fry them mid air. Idk if it's safe, or even something to purchase - just throwing ideas out there.
Pps. If you wanna go totally bananas, you could paint your entire room white, and decorate like a minimalist. They'd have nowhere to hide.
I use one of those plug in repellents. Since they show up in the evening, I turn it on for an hour or two around that time, wait a bit to let the smell leave the room then close windows and doors. Before sleep I do a scoop around the room to find any fucker left.
In the region where I leave it would be impossible to not have mosquitoes around, the conditions are just good for them, but I have an electric zapper that is shaped like a tennis racquet and I can zap them as soon as I see them inside the house. I also do the chemical fumigation now and then, but for the most part I use the electric zapper. It is very common in countries and regions where mosquitoes are a pest.
As someone who lives in a mosquito-ridden area, I'd usually spray the target room with mosquito repellant. However, this method is toxic so I'd usually stay outside the sprayed room for a while.
If you want to avoid toxic fumes I'd say blue light traps are pretty effective, though they won't kill as many mosquitos as the repellant.
Normally, I would recommend citronella, either the grass or the candles, but I believe it is toxic to dogs.
I believe lavender, catnip and basil are safe, but they're all mints and may try to take over your garden or yard. They all grow very well in pots though.
You can also try setting a trap. Put out some soapy water. The females are the ones biting you and they need water to lay eggs. They'll fall in the water and the soap prevents them from escaping. I haven't actually tried this with mosquitos, just other pests, but I have friends who swear by it.
You haven't provided too much information about your location... but a common swift eats 20.000 insects a day and mosquitoes are one of their favourites. If they live in your area, look up online how to build a birdhouse that will suit their needs.
FWIW my yard would be full of mosquitos if we did not have a mosquito service treat it every 3-4 weeks. It's not a big yard, and my neighbors don't treat their yards. The mosquitos still stay out of our yard though.
Point is it can be done. Whatever the Mosquito businesses do - works. Hire one of you have the money to spend or try to figure out what the professionals do.
Half the battle is getting rid of water. Every few days walk around and pour out anything that collects rainwater.
Get a big outdoor box fan you see people rock in their garage gyms, cover the side that blows air out with a screen. Any mosquito flying near will get sucked in and stuck in the screen. At the end of the day/night spray the screen with rubbing alcohol.
Give them a perfect spot to breed, like a kiddie pool with standing water or a bucket or two. Then drop a mosquito dunk in each. The mosquitoes will be drawn to this perfect breeding ground but the dunks will kill the larvae. Once the adults die off, there will be no new ones to take their place.
Secondly, if you have a lawn, spray it thoroughly with insecticide. This will kill or repel the ones living in the grass.
Use a mosquito coil, manual way is to have huge pan put some oil then start swinging around the general area of the mosquitos you will eventually catch one. Put bleach on areas with possible mosquito larvae or where there is likely stagnant water in it. Introduce spiders and geckos in your home. Could also plant lavander/or any plant that is mosquito repellent lots online and introduce frogs in your garden.
Before you go on an omnicide on the entire species, consider planting Neem tree. These naturally repel mosquitoes. You can also get their oil to burn in oil dispenser etc but be warned it stinks like hell. I prefer to have a small pot of it next to the window and once it grows big enough, put it in a permanent place in the ground.
Mosquitoes are attracted by propane gas or so I remember reading. There's a propane-based mosquito trap that might work. That said, I must be filet mignon to them because they will bite me even through deet.
2016 was waiting for vaccines for each of their diseases, "Bug spray anti-larva BTI (Bacillus Thuringiensis Israelensis). Genetically modified CRISPR mosquitoes Oxitec 75% less in Malaysia.
Bioengineered bacteria Johns Hopkins Malaria Research Institute anti-malaria transgenic bacteria University of Maryland chemical fungus with scorpion venom.
build Ovillanta egg tire trap.
or Spring Star black bucket hay glue trap.
2x 20' cm tires
water release at bottom.
put tire on wall, tree
bug smell lactic acid CO2.
wood floats on water
2x times/week, paper strip removed.
bug eggs burned or poisoned with alcohol
youtu.be/s2gQ_Y30EaMyoutu.be/v1jgLuA_Rko