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Avoid mosquitoes this summer with these helpful tips



Summer is just around the corner and although that means sunny days and warm weather, it also means mosquito season. Fortunately mosquitoes don’t always have to mean that you cannot spend time outdoors, because there are some very efficient ways how to avoid these pesky insects. So let me tell you a few tips and tricks that will allow you to forget about mosquitoes and just enjoy summer.

Know the mosquitoes

First things first. To really know how to efficiently deal with mosquitoes, you have to know a little more about them, because if you know what attracts mosquitoes and how they act, you will be able to more successfully wipe them out. Mosquitoes are interesting creatures, because they locate their target in multiple different ways. The main method of how mosquitoes find their targets is by sensing carbon dioxide or CO2. They have specially organs called maxillary palp that allows them to detect CO2 sources from up to 150 feet away, and since we breathe out about 4% CO2 every time we exhale when breathing normal, more when breathing heavily, this is how they find us. The second sense they use to find us is their vision, detecting heat and moisture of our bodies, as well as smell, detecting Lactic Acid, which our bodies release when we sweat. Speaking of how mosquitoes act, the main thing to know is that, even though there are a lot of different mosquito species with different habits, two things remains the same for all of them – all mosquitoes are the most active during dusk and dawn and they breed in stagnant water. So use this knowledge to combat the mosquitoes.

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Use mosquito repellents

There are many different ways you can go about controlling and eliminating mosquitoes, if you want a mosquito-free backyard or any other outdoors and indoors space. But there are a few methods that are tried and true ways of eradicating mosquitoes. Firstly you should always use a mosquito repellent, so that the mosquitoes don’t attack you. Everybody thinks, that mosquito repellents do repel mosquitoes, but the truth is that they actually hide you from mosquitoes so they don’t sense you and therefore they don’t attack you. Since we cannot stop giving out CO2, because we need to breath to stay alive, and we cannot stop giving out lactic acid and heat either especially in the summer, because that would mean that we would have to somehow stop sweating and lower our body temperature to 0, then by using a repellent we can hide ourselves from the mosquitoes. Just remember that mosquito repellent doesn’t last forever, therefore reapply it often enough, so it is able to keep protecting you from mosquitoes.

Use mosquito foggers

The second method of how you can keep the mosquitoes away more permanently, so you can enjoy a bit longer time without them harassing you our other people, is to use a mosquito fogger and fog your area with it. An insect fogger essentially is a device that turns insecticide into thick, insecticide laced fog, which is able to penetrate even the thickest of foliage and get into even the smallest of cracks, to rid them of mosquitoes. And once you have used the fogger for a while and have broken the mosquito breeding lifecycle, you will see that not only the mosquito count will be significantly decreased, there won’t be any new mosquitoes to attack you once the old ones are dead, so you will be able to have your space free of mosquitoes. For best results, use the fogger during dusk and dawn hours, because then the fog will be able to target the most mosquitoes and the effects of the fogging will be more significant.

Don’t forget the water

And lastly, if you truly want to make sure that mosquitoes don’t come back to your area once you stopped spraying it with the fogger, you should also make sure that there is no stagnant water around. Like I mentioned before, standing water is mosquito breeding grounds, so if there is no place for them to breed close by they will either move to an area where there is standing water or will just die. So dump and drain all buckets, pots and all other possible containers where there might be even a small layer of stagnant water. And place mosquito dunks in water bodies that you cannot drain, like ponds or even lakes, otherwise the mosquitoes will continue to breed in your close proximity and you won’t be able to get rid of them.


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Karen Thompson -- Bio and Archives

Karen Thompson received a Bachelor of Science in Environmental Science, spent a few years learning the inns and outs of mosquito control and now works towards educating others on various different mosquito related topic through her blog InsectCop.net.


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