Very interesting we’ve had infestations here (France) while I was living in the south, adding biogents moquitaire traps is also successful as a complement, April onwards to October.
But I love the name bucket of death. Tiger mosquitoes are such an annoyance
I hate cutting my grass and don't spray because I don't want to decimate the ecosystem in my yard (also, I'm lazy and it's hot out, so mowing sucks) but mosquitoes are a real problem.
Love the idea - I wonder what I can use in New Zealand though - these things can't be shipped to NZ (Note I'm not surprised by this fact, I didn't expect NZ to let in random loads of mosquito killing bacteria)
This is the same idea as the propane mosquito traps, that when run for a few weeks can eliminate a local population.
But the only places where they're useful is exurban, edge of the city kinds of places. Places where we've already disturbed the local ecosystem so much that the populations aren't kept in balance. Otherwise your other environments don't need them:
- a place where they're spraying so many pesticides that nothing survives, ie most cities
- a place where the bats, barn swallows and larval predators are so plentiful mosquitos are kept in check.
- a place where there are seasonal swarms of small bugs you simply cant put a dent in. people tend to visit these in-between seasons.
> The dunks contain an unhealthy—for the mosquito larvae—dose of the bacterium, Bacillus thuringiensis, or BT. Don’t worry about your dog, Moonpie, or your cat, French Fry. They can drink straight from the bucket and be perfectly fine. Hey, it’s probably better than when they drink from your toilet, right?
Here I was under the impression that the water in the toilet is the same water as go into the taps, potable water, at least that's common here in Spain. Is it not the same in the US? Then both of them may have stagnant water or even "polluted" water in one way or another, but seems more or less the same.
You can also try a simple fan blowing over the sitting areas, mosquitos (and other bugs) have difficulty flying in the breeze. I sometimes bring a small fan camping since the breeze is nice and I hate applying deet.
I don't entirely get this. If you have more spots with water, doesn't that just mean mosquitoes will lay more eggs? Which will then die, but +/- 0. How effective is this, actually.
No, it means they'll lay the same amount of eggs (which is the max they can produce), but a significant portion of them will be in your trap rather than somewhere they can survive. Of those that aren't in the trap, they're still subject to the same death rate they would normally be subject to
Every time I have read science guys about things that you can do to kill mosquitos there is an analogy to putting a drain in the ocean. You can kill mosquitos at a fantastic rate but, unless you are also killing them in all your neighbor's yards for a mile around, they are just going to keep coming as fast as they die.
The key to this working is ensuring that the buckets are the only standing water around. If even 10% of the females decide to use your clogged gutter, broken water fountain, or forgotten livestock waterer instead of your buckets, you will still have a mosquito problem.
Cool. I had an idea recently of creating breeding buckets that automatically flush the water onto the ground and refill every day or two. Mosquito breeding decoys without chemicals.
Currently I've been using these to deal with fungus gnats in my indoor plants; they are quite effective, just put one in my watering can, keep the watering can full so it can steep, and water as normal. It kills the larvae in the same way and after about a month I had no more fungus gnat problem (after trying many other things with no success)
I do wonder about the eventual mosquito adaption to this if it is employed on a large scale though.
How quickly would the local population of mosquitos adapt to the MosquitoDunks, such that within a few generations, the only surviving ones would be the ones that are unaffected by the dunks? Or is that not a real concern?
I don't know if it's some anomaly of climate change but in recent years in this part of Central Europe there are less mosquitos and more common horse flies.
With modern electronics, wouldn't it be possible to build a device that detects bugs using some type scanner (radar or whatever) and zaps them with a microwave laser? That seems like it could be 100x more efficient than this solution.
Note that instead of the mosquito dunks you can also buy "mosquito bits" which are the same thing in granular form. Last time I bought one they were cheaper per unit cost and they easier to use because you don't have to break them up.
I ended up building this entirely by accident. Last summer I wanted to have aquatic plants in my garden, so I made a small container pond.
As you can imagine it quickly got invaded by mosquito larvae. By the time I realized I was getting raided by mosquitos each night, much more than previous years.
After getting hold of the bacteria (not sure if it's completely allowed here, only Amazon would sell it to me) mosquitos are completely gone, in the pond and around.
Many people with mosquito issues around here (Sweden) uses something like https://www.clasohlson.com/se/Mosquito-Magnet/p/31-7190 which burns propane to produce Co2 to lure in mosquitoes and then sucks them in with a fan towards a metal grid to zap them with electricity.
Non-poisonous and from what I've heard fairly effective. Not sure if these exists in the US?
I'd love to find a way to encourage more dragonfly's to come hang out in my yard (middle of forest). I think of them as little organic mosquito-eating drones.
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[ 2.9 ms ] story [ 89.8 ms ] threadI hate cutting my grass and don't spray because I don't want to decimate the ecosystem in my yard (also, I'm lazy and it's hot out, so mowing sucks) but mosquitoes are a real problem.
But the only places where they're useful is exurban, edge of the city kinds of places. Places where we've already disturbed the local ecosystem so much that the populations aren't kept in balance. Otherwise your other environments don't need them:
- a place where they're spraying so many pesticides that nothing survives, ie most cities
- a place where the bats, barn swallows and larval predators are so plentiful mosquitos are kept in check.
- a place where there are seasonal swarms of small bugs you simply cant put a dent in. people tend to visit these in-between seasons.
Here I was under the impression that the water in the toilet is the same water as go into the taps, potable water, at least that's common here in Spain. Is it not the same in the US? Then both of them may have stagnant water or even "polluted" water in one way or another, but seems more or less the same.
Has anyone found success in this approach? This could be a game changer for my backyard this fall.
As you can imagine it quickly got invaded by mosquito larvae. By the time I realized I was getting raided by mosquitos each night, much more than previous years.
After getting hold of the bacteria (not sure if it's completely allowed here, only Amazon would sell it to me) mosquitos are completely gone, in the pond and around.
Non-poisonous and from what I've heard fairly effective. Not sure if these exists in the US?