Mosquito Bucket Challenge

Summer is here and the world is flush with lush green growth.  Nature is fully alive and bursting with growth.  Unfortunately, this is also the prime season for mosquitoes.  Besides being a nuisance they can also be carriers of serious health problems like the West Nile Virus.  At this time of year you will see lots of advertisements by companies that sell various types of mosquito fogs.  Unfortunately there is no scientific evidence that fogging reduces the mosquito populations.  However these broad spectrum pesticides do kill a lot of our pollinating insects including some like dragonflies that help to reduce mosquito populations.

The main reason that fogging doesn’t work lies in the life cycle of the mosquito.  Once the female gets a blood meal from us or other animals she lays her eggs in stagnant water.  There they hatch into larva which then molt several times and finally pupate.  From the pupa the mosquito then emerges, waits for its wings to dry, and then starts flying around to mate and find a new blood meal.  This entire cycle can take anywhere from four days in the warmest part of summer to as long as a month in cooler weather.

Any method that relies on just killing adult mosquitoes is thus bound to fail as there are many more mosquitoes in the pipeline so to speak.  Unfortunately there is no silver bullet that can eliminate mosquitoes.  The best way to reduce the number of mosquitoes relies on a number of steps meant to reduce the number of larvae.

Homegrown National Park has introduced the mosquito bucket challenge which is a nature friendly way of reducing the mosquito population.  It involves building mosquito buckets which provide an enticing habitat for the female to lay her eggs.  It then uses mosquito dunks which contain a biological larvicide called Bti which prevents the larvae from developing into adults.

There are six steps in this responsible way of mosquito management.

Step 1 - Support a healthy habitat by planting native plants and avoid sprays to help encourage our native dragonflies, birds, and bats that eat mosquitoes.

Step 2 - Make a mosquito bucket to target larvae in a controlled spot before they become biting adults.

Step 3 - Dump standing water.  Female mosquitoes will only lay their eggs in still water.  It can be a very small amount of water so search your property for containers, gutters, or saucers that might be a tempting breeding ground.

Step 4 - Treat standing water that you cannot dump.  Use mosquito dunks in bird baths, rain barrels (if they have openings - close barrels will not be a problem), and ponds.

Step 5 - Protect yourself by using screens, fans, repellents, and protective clothing to help reduce bites.

Step 6 - Spread  the news and get your neighbors involved.  Mosquitoes don’t respect property lines and even if you remove or remediate all the breeding sites on your property, they will be happy to use your neighbor’s yard instead.

Building the bucket is pretty simple and you can find the complete instructions and much more information on the Homegrown National Park website.