Hey, I have heard people swear that Windex is the bomb. They spray some on their patio and no biters for the evening. If it starts to wear off, they just spritz a little more. I’ve seen them spritz their screens and door thresholds.
I know it’s not scientific evidence. But these people live in a hellhole of mosquitoes, no one even wants to visit. They tried everything out there with no measurable improvement. They were extremely suspect when they heard of the Windex thing, but had nothing to lose and had Windex in the house.
It does seem to work. I’ve sat on the deck late into the night without seeing a one. Previously we would huddle in the house, or swat away, on the deck amid candles, coils and fogs of bug bombs, covered in repellent and still getting bitten.
Maybe it’s only good on one kind of mosquitoes, who knows? But it seems worth trying, you probably have the product in your home already. They are so happy to have finally found something that works for them. They were considering selling their house and moving, it was so bad. Now they are happy campers.
Mosquitoes love me, too. A couple things you could do:
Do you have a fan that’s somewhat powerful? If you do, that’s a good deterrent for the bugs at night while you are sleeping or anywhere you might be sitting or laying still for awhile. If you direct its wind directly on any of your exposed skin areas it should keep them off of you as the can’t fly properly through strong winds.
Another thing is sunshine. Mosquitoes don’t really like direct sun and are most active in the evenings around dusk. Let as much sunshine into your apartment as possible.
But you really need to get someone to kill them where they are breeding above all else.
Permethrin impregnated mosquito nets are supposed to work really well around beds–the permethrin has what is called a “knock down” effect. I wonder how effective it would be to hang permethrin impregnated nets or the home-made equivalents at the doors and windows like curtains. Since cats are a concern, perhaps the nets could be above normal cat level and still have some effect.
Hey, whatever works for you. If you believe in magic, what is that to me?
Maybe they do work. it would be very easy to test them - a Y-shape olfactometer, measuring mosquito landing rates on a wrist wearing either one of these tags or a dummy tag, with randomized blinded replicates. Any first-year grad student could design a proper experiment to measure this.
In fact, I would posit that the company has no interest in conducting this simple experiment because they know its a scam.
But maybe they do work. Maybe the plastic outgasses volatiles that repel mosquitoes. But their stated explanation of earth energy and magnets is total bunk.
Magic vs. science. whatever works for you. How many advances have we seen in the last century due to science vs. magic? You be the judge.
Insecticide-treated curtains are a first-rate idea. Its currently being investigated in Africa by multiple groups!
There is a group who just got Gates money to test insecticide-treated scarfs in a malaria-endemic region where these scarfs are a part of the typical cultural daily wardrobe.
Above normal cat level? I don’t believe there is such a thing. If you’ve ever had a cat go sailing over your head as you yell at him to get the hell off the refrigerator you will understand what I mean.
Does anyone know whether permethrin-treated fabrics are actually hazardous to kitties? Obviously you wouldn’t want to put permethrin itself *on *the kitty, or spray it near the kitty, but with the wash-in treatment I wonder whether it might be at safe levels, especially since you shouldn’t put permethrin directly on people, or spray it near people, but the treated fabrics are considered safe to wear. Unless you have a fabric-gnawing cat (and I have met a few of those).
You have got to be kidding. Magnet magic is now marketed as an insect repellant? Here I thought they were only good for curing deadly diseases such as cancer and increasing your milage when strapped to your fuel line. And after all that they can still hold your kids pictures on the fridge! Wonderfully broad spectrum items those magnets.
GEEZ you guys - all I was sayin’ was that the tags work.
I know they work because I use them.
Other mosquito repellents I’ve used don’t work for me in the same way the tags do. I no longer have to use monthly flea treatments on the dog since using the tags on her.
What can I tell ya?
Why would I suggest to the OP to try something that obviously *doesn’t *work?
If I had had no experience with them, but had maybe heard of them, I’d have said, “Don’t know if these work but might be worth a try” and THEN you could shoot me down in flames with all the sarcastic and aggro reasoning I’m gettin’.
FFS guys there’s plenty of products out there that work for some, and don’t work for others and someone will read the ingredients label and say, “Well that’s bullshit…and that’s bullshit…and wtf is THAT stuff in there for…?..”
I accept your insistence that “on evidence” there’s no way they can work. “On evidence” is what made Salem such a fun place in 1692.
Whatever the chasm between what you (mozchron, yoyodyne and Kenyth) believe, and what I experience is fair enough; I just don’t think there’s reason to be so rude about it.
Until they stop workin’ for me, I’ll keep using 'em and pbbth can try 'em or not.
As I come from England we do not get mosquitoes but I do suffer when we go to Spain (Europe) they are really bad there, 2 years ago I had 58 bites and had to go to the hospital with a bad reaction.
I have since found this wonderful sonic mosquito repelant that is battery operated and I don’t go any where without it and have never been bitten since in-fact my husbands friend is using it at the moment as he is on a golfing holiday and suffers the same fate.
I got it off the net and believe me they really do work don’t ask me how and I don’t really care it is just wonderful they just go in your pocket.:););)
As I come from England we do not get mosquitoes but I do suffer when we go to Spain (Europe) they are really bad there, 2 years ago I had 58 bites and had to go to the hospital with a bad reaction.
I have since found this wonderful sonic mosquito repelant that is battery operated and I don’t go any where without it and have never been bitten since in-fact my husbands friend is using it at the moment as he is on a golfing holiday and suffers the same fate.
I got it off the net and believe me they really do work don’t ask me how and I don’t really care it is just wonderful they just go in your pocket.:););)
These don’t work either. Any positive results are in your head. I’ve tested them in the past for a news show where I put both hands in cages of mosquitoes, one hand wearing one of these things. Like other similar types of products, MORE mosquitoes landed on the hand with the sonic device because the dark band attracted them.
When seeking a host. female mosquitoes are motivated by smell, not by sound. Sound can be important for mating (the male can hear the specific frequency of the females wingbeat, then they match frequencies for mating), but disrupting this won’t do anything to reduce biting.
Here is a peer-reviewed study where they evaluated sonic repellent devices, among other things. They only talk about the significant effects in the abstract, but I have the article and the sonic repellent was not significantly better than the untreated controls. I know Bob Novak - he’s an excellent mosquito biologist and experimentalist.
But here is the relevant portion:
*The inability of the sonic device to protect the
user from biting mosquitoes likely stems from the
absence of repellency. The manufacturer’s claim
that female mosquitoes are repelled by the sounds
produced by male mosquitoes is implausible con-
sidering that insemination and fertilization are re-
quired for mosquito reproduction. Male mosquitoes
are attracted to the sounds produced by female
mosquitoes (Clements 1992), but no evidence of
male repellency to females has been reported. Our
results are consistent with the results of previous
studies that also found that sonic mosquito repelling
devices are ineffective (Kutz 1974, Schreck et al.
1977, Snow 1977, Soltavatta and Singleton 1977,
Belton 1981, Lewis et al. 1982, Foster and Lukes
1985, Schreiber et al. 1991).
*
In terms of area cleanup, how far do mosquitoes roam? We’re in the middle of acres and acres of woods, so while we may be able to avoid standing water in the gardens or immediate vicinity, that’s about it.
I didn’t see much above on them, but what about the efficacy of those propane tank units? The premise is that the propane is slowly burned to give off CO2, which combined with a bait draws the mosquitoes away and to their doom. Effective? Useless if you’re surrounded by woods?
What about a flame thrower? During breeding and biting season, the woods are fairly wet so I’m reasonably certain they won’t ignite (much). Which would be more effective: a John Carpenter’s Thing-like flame thrower (gas powered, I believe) or a homemade napalm-like device? I know I’ll have to open the windows because of carbon monoxide issues, but which would be safer for use indoors?
I want to repeat this excellent advice. I have battled mosquioes in my back yard for years until my neighbor (who works construction) told me he kept a fan blowing on him when he was working. It’s not perfect but is very effective at keeping bugs away in general. Just like an ocean breeze keeps the bugs down.
You know, normally I would assume something like this was a joke. That is until I moved into the apartment of bitey-itchy-death. Now I completely understand the thought process of, “If I made my own version of napalm would that kill those fuckers?”
Wait, there are no mosquitoes in England? Can anyone else verify that? If this is true I will start applying for jobs internationally tomorrow but I can’t imagine any non-desert place without a mosquito population.
I understand that you cannot remove a lot of the materials that are creating habitat, but is it possible to simply go in and clean it up or reorganize it? If you stack the blocks so they can’t hold water, you’ll remove a lot of breeding habitat. Turn over the wheelbarrows, buckets etc…
Mosquito flight range depends on the species. Some can fly several kilometers a night (we just published a paper showing that long-range mosquito movement was a likely cause of west nile virus invasion across the continental USA). Other mosquitoes hardly move at all (*Aedes aegypti *in southeast asia, for example - 50 meters would be typical for that species).
The propane-burning traps (MosquitoMagnet and similar) will trap lots of mosquitoes, as well as flies and any other flying insects that are attracted to CO2. Some studies have been done to assess whether they will actually “trap out” an area and reduce the mosquito population size, the general consensus is that they probably don’t (i’ll try to dig up the papers). People have no idea how large some standing mosquito population sizes can be. When I was a student trapping Culex out in the Sacramento delta, we used CO2-baited CDC traps. We had one trap that caught 30,000 mosquitoes in one night (that’s 30,000 in a single pint-sized cup! You couldn’t see through it - it was BLACK). We had 50 traps out there, and every one had many thousands.
I wouldn’t recommend a a flamethrower for mosquito control they tend to have unpleasant side-effects…
England does have mosquitoes. They can be very bad in some places where the climate is ideal. But many parts of england are gloomy and colder than many mosquitoes like, so many parts don’t have serious issues.
