Best insecticide for adult mosquitos????

We live in a semi-rural area - houses 100 yards or so apart - and have a serious problems with mosquitos bedding down around the house in shrubs, etc. There's a row of holly next to the garage, for example, if you agitate it with a stick, HUNDREDS of mosquitos come pouring out. They're also collecting under our deck, and a couple of other places.

I tried spraying the holly very thoroughly, inside and out, with a general purpose insecticide from Home Depot - triazine, something like that, it was in a red plastic bottle. It had NO effect on the mosquitos. What can we spray these places with to kill them? How about malathion? And please, bunny-huggers and anti-pesticide loonies, don't bother..

Thanks Ron M. in central Texas

Reply to
bstevens
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We live in a semi-rural area - houses 100 yards or so apart - and have a serious problems with mosquitos bedding down around the house in shrubs, etc. There's a row of holly next to the garage, for example, if you agitate it with a stick, HUNDREDS of mosquitos come pouring out. They're also collecting under our deck, and a couple of other places.

I tried spraying the holly very thoroughly, inside and out, with a general purpose insecticide from Home Depot - Sevin. It had NO effect on the mosquitos. What can we spray these places with to kill them? How about malathion? And please, bunny-huggers and anti-pesticide loonies, don't bother..

Thanks Ron M. in central Texas

Reply to
bstevens

I am not sure where you live, but most of the good stuff isnt available to consumers for good reason. Contact your county's health dept and see if they will spray them for free. It is a public health risk.

Reply to
Mike Robinson

I'm beginning to get that impression. You would think there's SOMETHING I could just spray some bushes with that would kill them. I'm not talking about large-scale eradication, just spraying a row of bushes and under the deck. I know about county agents, but I seriously doubt that I could pursuade one to come 30 miles out of town just to spray under somebody's porch.

Thanks anyway, though, Ron

Reply to
bstevens

The problem is most of insecticides that are really effective against mosquitos are highly toxic and require a full exteriminators license. I hold a half licence and can do everything except what you are asking. I was just looking and apparently Pyrethrum is a good low toxic insecticide against flying insects.

Reply to
Mike Robinson

DDT... Effective and safe. Unfortunately, you'll have to find someone with pre-ban stock.

Reply to
Dave Balderstone

"half license" LOL that's pretty funny.

Reply to
Jim Ledford

Ask for some ester of sivex for htc weed control too.

Reply to
Steveo

^silvex^

Reply to
Steveo

Have you considered sneaking some of those bats from under that bridge in Austin? All kidding aside. After we successfully evicted the bat colony from our attic, we began to notice the mosquitoes as an annoyance. In the succeeding 2 years, the external bat house acquired tenants, there is evidence that they're present in some of the outbuildings, (but nothing like what it was like when the breeding colony was in the house) and the mosquito population has fallen back below the annoyance threshold.

Or you could try attracting Purple Martins

And if all else fails, see if you can locate one of those "Yard Fogger" type aerosol cans and fog the living daylights out of the holly bushes.

Reply to
Elmo

snipped-for-privacy@rock.com wrote in news: snipped-for-privacy@c74g2000cwc.googlegroups.com:

mosquitoes don't travel more than 100yards from point of origin, so the first thing you need to do is get rid of any standing water. if water puddles under your deck (or in your gutters) for 4 days or longer, you're breeding mosquitoes. those mosquito magnet things that run on propane do work for small yards. put it as far from the deck as you can so you don't bring the mosquitoes to you. i have over 20 acres of marsh & wetlands, but since i'm a fanatic about standing water & we got the chickens, we have no mosquitoes near the house. the mosquitoes in the swamp don't fly up to the house. go down there & you get eaten alive though ;)

lee

Reply to
enigma

Its not funny its how it works where I live. I work under a person with a full exterminators licence, and I only have to pay for a "half" licence which costs $400 less than a full one.

Reply to
Mike Robinson

There are an awful lot of mosquito varieties in Texas, and they all behave differently. The texas cooperative extension has this to say about controlling them:

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Reply to
Goedjn

[....]

GOOD JOB Lee! treat the source origin of the problem by removing the mosquitoes ability to breed in an area where we really don't want to have mosquitoes.

my 4 acres of marsh & wetlands is recently redefined by the county tax office as waste land. I asked, is that because the mosquitoes are in charge down there? county tax agent LOL and gave me a nice tax break on this Farm as a result of being made aware of what the county soil and water agent already knew. looks like the county tax agent and the county soil and water agent would have talked this over during one of their governmental guy-type trips to europe or hawaii before I got my new tax bill and began the protest... sure was nice of the county soil and water agent to help me out at that point by explaining to the county tax agent how he'd never be able to put a yankee house down there in that swamp. it was then 4 acres of marsh & wetlands got redefined as waste land. I'm guessing if the tax agent can't see a future revenue from a relocated yankee then it's waste land and with that idea, next I'm going to attempt to have my entire Farm redefined as waste land. can't hurt to try..

my advice to the original poster would be to inspect their entire

1/4 acre estate for inconspicuously placed cat food cans filled with water, like LOOK under the deck or all through the hedge. turn over a little mulch in that hedge :)

Reply to
Jim Ledford

now this gets even funnier. if I remember correctly my state testing cost me 25 dollars. after passing the state test my actual license cost 50 dollars a year. certification is good for a certain number of years. one can earn class credits during those years or retake the state test after the certification expires. my license is valid anywhere in the state of NC for any pesticide application.

in NC, people who work under my direct supervision don't pay. they work, earn and get paid.

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Reply to
Jim Ledford

plus $90 per catagory for a 5 year peroid. A half licence which enables one to work under indirect supervision costs about $65 but you have to be under a full licencee. How is it funny?

Reply to
Mike Robinson

goes to show how each state has employed the concept of 'states rights' whereby they each test the waters to see exactly just how much they can extract from each 'tax paying module'.

Reply to
Jim Ledford

I just read in another group the way to limit skeeters in living areas.

Take a white plate and fill with water. Add a couple drops of Lemon Fresh Joy dishwashing detergent. Set it away from where people sit.

The skeeters will be attracted to the white dish or the lemon smell or whatever, drink the soapy solution, and die within 10 feet of the plate.

Pretty easy and cheap to try. Let us know how it works on them Texas skeeters. ;>

Deb

Reply to
Deb

Well, I'm going to try a product called Mosquito-B-Gone. It's in a plastic bottle you screw onto the end of a water hose, then spray it. Should work.

Ron

Reply to
bstevens

I'm not american and the course is only offered through a university and is an actual course.

Reply to
Mike Robinson

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