PEST PROSpectives

Buzz Off: Why Your Neighbor's Yard Matters in Mosquito Control

• Pest Pros of Michigan

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Backyard fun is a huge part of summertime enjoyment. But, mosquitos can definitely interfere and cause an itch you would rather not have to stratch.

In this episode of PEST PROSpectives, Pest Pro Amber Byars tells us what the pros do to reduce mosquitos - but also what you can do in your own yard. And, Amber tells us how your neighbors fit in the picture, too.

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Pest Pros of Michigan

PEST PROSpectives is a Livemic Communications production.

PEST PROSpectives is a Livemic Communications production.

Richard Piet:

Richard Piet here. We are back with another episode of PEST PROSpectives, with the PEST PROS of Michigan, talking about those pests that well, you know. Some of them have some health risks. Some of them are just darn annoying. Some of them are both, and maybe mosquitoes fall under that category. We're talking now about how to reduce the incidence of mosquitoes in your zone, in your yard. Amber Byers is back with us. Associate Certified Entomologist. Overseas Field Operations at the Pest Pros of Michigan. Hello, Amber.

Amber Byars:

Hey Richard.

Richard Piet:

Well, this is one of those. I think that falls under both categories. They're annoying and they carry some ailments, do they not, mosquitoes?

Amber Byars:

Absolutely. They're like the nuisance and annoyance pests, but they also spread diseases. So it's something that clients are always worried about contracting something West Nile virus, triple E. And then the annoying part is if you're a person that likes to enjoy the outdoors, you don't want to be getting attacked by mosquitoes the whole time, especially in your area of your yard. It's kind of your serene place to be. The quality of life should be great out there. It won't be if you're getting attacked by mosquitoes all night.

Richard Piet:

Yeah, and so we're going to talk about how you, as a professional, handle that. But first we want to understand why they hang around and what kind of an environment makes them comfortable and some of the things that folks can do on their own to mitigate that. But let's talk about this why are mosquitoes comfortable? What is it about our yards that we might be doing that makes it inviting?

Amber Byars:

Yeah, absolutely so. The thing to know about mosquitoes first of all is a little bit about their biology and their life cycle. Mosquitoes have to have a water source in order for them to breed. Their eggs are going to have a water source. In order for them to breed, their eggs are going to develop in water. Their life cycle starts in water and then ends in the environment that we're in. So they lay their eggs on top of water, either in rafts or singularly, and that's where their development happens. So the first thing that we think about on a property is where's the water source? Sometimes that's nowhere near the property. That's something to be considerate of. The water source is three houses down, an acre away, in the swampy areas of the woods. It's very hard to say.

Richard Piet:

We might not have control over that.

Amber Byars:

Yes, exactly. So the water source is one thing, and then vegetation, right, adult mosquitoes rest upside down, typically in shaded areas. So they're going to be resting on the leaves of trees, under the deck, in leaf piles, under the play set, you know, in areas away from the sun. So typically in the trees, in the shade, you know, bushes, shrubs we don't really pay attention to too much higher than our head level for treatment. But yeah, and some of our clients don't have any of that on their property, which is interesting. But mosquitoes need to feed on blood in order to reproduce, so if there's humans around, there could be mosquitoes around.

Richard Piet:

So the notion of eliminating some of where they might breed or feel comfortable might be out of our control. But let's just talk about that for a second. If we have a pond in our yard, that could be a nice comfortable spot for them, right?

Amber Byars:

Yeah, absolutely, especially if that pond sits kind of stagnant, not a lot of movement to the water. We're not really worried about, you know, fast moving streams, bigger lakes that have a lot of waves. We're talking water that stays somewhat still so that that life cycle can move and not be affected.

Richard Piet:

What about a pool? Do they like pools?

Amber Byars:

Pools are a valid place again. If it's standing water for a while, you know it's not being used a lot, if it's not being chemically treated or yeah. So again, stagnant water is more so, especially with certain species of mosquitoes.

Richard Piet:

Yeah Well, let's stick with that a second. So if we have a stagnant pond on our property, how do we make it less attractive for them? Obviously, we might want to keep the pond around, or at least getting rid of the pond is not an option. So what do we do?

Amber Byars:

Yeah, the first thing that we want to focus on is, or that we think about professionally, is what stage of life is in that pond and how can we control it before it becomes an issue? Right, so we're talking larviciding that area. We want to get as much larvicide in the pertaining areas that we can to not allow them to become adult mosquitoes. If we can control the larva, then we're in fact controlling the adults.

Amber Byars:

Interesting and now something else to think about is if that pond is not on your property, how are we going to control it Right? One really cool product that just came out recently is a. It's a 25 B product because it's eco-friendly, it's not a lot of pesticides being broadcast treated, it's called into care and it's a bucket that houses water, has an adult aside and a larva side. So if your property doesn't have the water source, create one and then the mosquitoes that breed in that water source will take that product into every other water source they go to and effectively pass larvicide not just in your property but to the pond down the street.

Richard Piet:

Wow so if you can get your neighbor to go along down the street, Wow so if you can get your neighbor to go along, you might be helping the whole neighborhood Absolutely.

Amber Byars:

Neighbors are really important to get on if we're doing liquid applications. So if we're going to be doing broadcast treatments to one yard, we know that mosquitoes do not discriminate and they will cross that property line to go over to the neighbors Right. So if that neighbor is also getting treated it's more effective.

Richard Piet:

Yeah, Makes sense. For some reason they don't pay any attention to the borders of our property.

Amber Byars:

Yeah, I wish we had a treatment that was effectively like a bubble around the home.

Richard Piet:

Yeah.

Amber Byars:

But we don't. You know these, these treatments aren't magic. They can only do so much, you know.

Richard Piet:

Well, let's elaborate on that. You talked about a broadcast treatment, so what does that really mean? You can apply this treatment in a yard, let's say mine, but does that really keep out those that are breeding in my neighbor's yard from coming over?

Amber Byars:

Yeah, that's a really good question. The answer is it absolutely does not do that.

Amber Byars:

Now what the broadcast treatments do is gives our clients a reduction in population, a reduction in activity One of the things that we talk about when we're signing somebody up, just so that their expectations are clear. You know, we don't want to disappoint anybody. We want them to know exactly what they're getting into, and broadcast treatments are only going to reduce the population a certain amount. 60 to 70% is an appropriate amount to be reduced. However, you're still going to see and have mosquitoes. That's why we look at things in a holistic way. What else can we focus on? What else can we do to make this treatment more effective? We can talk about larvaciding. We can talk about adding into care buckets to the property. We can talk about getting the neighbors on a neighborhood discount to treat multiple properties on one street. All of those things combined is what's going to be really effective. The broadcast treatments alone are great. I use it on my house but it's not a complete elimination, unfortunately.

Richard Piet:

Well, I have to say 60 to 70 percent is pretty good.

Amber Byars:

Yeah, it is pretty good. Yeah, and the trade-off is if I don't do this, the population's at 100%, right, yeah right. So I know that it is a little disappointing when people are getting bit still, but it would be so much worse without it is the truth, you know.

Richard Piet:

So it's an interesting point and something to file away. Folks, If you have a neighborhood that might like to band together and try to have a broadcast treatment across several yards, Pest Pros is mindful of that and you'll offer sort of a volume discount of sorts.

Amber Byars:

Yeah, absolutely. We love doing neighborhood discounts because it's so much easier on our routes. It's so much easier for efficiency and then it's more effective for our clients. It's just a win-win win all around.

Richard Piet:

Yeah, in the meantime, there are things that we can do in our own yards to further mitigate mosquitoes. Right, for example, talk about what we can do around the yard ourselves. That will be helpful.

Amber Byars:

Absolutely Just maintaining your yard is going to be one way that you can do this on your own making sure your grass and your shrubs are trimmed up. Adult mosquitoes are resting there, remember. So if you eliminate the places kids, toys, pools, dump trucks that can hold sand, just containers right that will fill with water when it rains and that will become a breeding site all of a sudden. So we spend a lot of time before we start service. We spend a lot of time going around dumping out water, letting clients know hey, you might want to, you might want to keep these put away during the day and nights, unless you're using them, or else you're creating breeding grounds here. So just making sure that there's minimal clutter. Leaf piles are a big one. Getting rid of leaf piles because mosquitoes will hide and harbor there in overwinter.

Richard Piet:

Oh really.

Amber Byars:

Yeah, I made the mistake last year of not getting my leaves taken care of, because I heard that they're really great for mulch for the next season for the lawn yeah. Well, I go to get rid of some leaves this spring before I mowed and mosquitoes just blew up out of that pile of leaves. Just overwintered mosquitoes. It was wild.

Richard Piet:

What do they think? This is Florida. I know it's not that warm, you know.

Amber Byars:

They don't care yeah.

Richard Piet:

Interesting, so let's talk about some of the DIY stuff that's out there that we hear about. What comes to mind immediately is citronella, right, yes, Light that citronella candle, there you go. Light that citronella candle, there you go. And the stuff we spray on ourselves with maybe deet in it or other stuff mosquito repellent are all those helpful?

Amber Byars:

Yeah, absolutely. I recommend that all the time, especially for clients that you know we cannot do the treatment for certain reasons, whether there's limitations on the budget or they're going to go spend time at a friend's property and they're worried about these things. Then we can talk about all of the repellent products that they can use personally. And the spray that you put on works well. Again, it's only as effective as it can be, so things break through that barrier still. But the citronella lavender just natural essential oil deterrents are great. Also, just having open airflow and having like an open area that you want to spend your time in is good as well. But, yeah, that citronella maintaining your lawn and the over-the-counter sprays that you can buy work great.

Richard Piet:

That's an interesting thought that you could be sitting outside on your patio and just put on a fan that oscillates.

Amber Byars:

Yep.

Richard Piet:

It's like a windstorm for them, right.

Amber Byars:

It is. They're very weak flyers, so any type of airflow that we can give to obstruct their pathway is going to be helpful.

Richard Piet:

Right, let's talk about the products that you use and what's available out there. Some things, of course, are pesticides and insecticides, and you know all about that stuff, and then some things are green, right.

Amber Byars:

Yeah. So we have a lot of clients call with well, is this good for the environment? Do you guys have any eco-friendly options? Absolutely we do.

Amber Byars:

There are some things to consider about eco-friendly products. Eco-friendly products work well in there, work well for certain environments, especially if there's a lot of flowering plants, vegetation, consumable items, fruit and vegetable trees and things like that is they don't last as long as your standard insecticide does. They break down quicker. They don't have the strength that the normal insecticides do. So it's like take your pick, whichever one works best for our clients.

Amber Byars:

We're going to do both, as long as they know the risks of the product breaking down quicker. That means we may have to treat more often. That means we might have to do instead of our typical mosquito service is monthly. We do monthly service with eco-friendly products. We recommend bi-weekly, which is twice a month, because we know from experience and just based off the product that it's not going to hold on as long, and so if clients are really worried about the environment, then that might not be the best choice, because if we're sending somebody out twice a month in a vehicle that's pumping out all this gas into the environment, that might not be so eco-friendly at that point.

Amber Byars:

Defeating the purpose, yeah, but if they're doing it for reasons of, you know, not wanting to harm the pollinators, or they have a lot of vegetation on their property that they don't want insecticides around, then great, that's a really good option. Or if they'd rather just feel better about using an eco-friendly product, we're all for it.

Richard Piet:

All right. Well, here's the point. There are options and of course, the pest pros of Michigan know about those options. So you can ask Amber and her colleagues about exactly what's happening with each of these and you can make an informed decision about how that works. You said monthly for pesticides and insecticides. When does that start in our Michigan climate and when is it over?

Amber Byars:

Yeah, so with Michigan. It's weird because sometimes the season stays longer, comes later or early, but typically April through October is a great plan for mosquito treatments. Last year we were treating into the early weeks of November because there was just weeks where it was still nice out and people still wanted to be getting treated. Sometimes we've started in March because the season broke early. So it all depends on when the weather starts getting nice and when the mosquitoes start moving around. But typically it's a seven month rotation, april through October.

Richard Piet:

All right, and you're monitoring that, of course. So if it's warm early or warm late, you're going to respond accordingly.

Amber Byars:

We absolutely do. We like to blast all of our clients with a get started early email, especially because we bundle our package is mosquito fleet and tick, so if the ticks are out early we will blast the clients with hey, we can get granular treatment started early. Let us know if you want to get going before April.

Richard Piet:

And let me just tell you, the ticks are out there.

Amber Byars:

Yeah.

Richard Piet:

I pulled one off myself a couple of weeks ago. If you're going to be out in the yard, I wasn't even out in the yard, I was just out walking on a trail.

Richard Piet:

Yeah, it's not like I ran off into the brush or anything. I was on the trail. He found me anyway. So, yeah, think about that. Anyway, if you're thinking about what kind of pests mosquitoes are going to be in your backyards, for example, or front yards this year and you want to deal with it, reach out to the Pest Pros of Michigan. Amber and the team are ready to answer your questions and talk about your specific situation. The link is in the show notes. The number is in there. They are ready to help. Amber Byers, pest Pros of Michigan. Thank you, thank you so much. Now make sure you subscribe to Pest Prospectives, where you get podcasts. We'll have more of these episodes coming soon.