Yearly Archives: 2020

Every year over 33 million Christmas trees are brought into our homes and decorated for the season. There is nothing like the smell of pine, the twinkling of lights and the cozy feeling we experience at this time of year.

While we may all casually check that our tree is squirrel free, we often forget about the other critters that we may be bringing in. Alternatively, some of us may go above and beyond what is needed and take things a step too far. Up to 25,000 insects can live in one tree so let’s talk about Christmas trees, insects and what you really should be doing when you bring that tree home.

Firstly, and most importantly, please do not spray your tree with an insecticide when you get it home! While this may seem like the simplest solution to prevent any issues, most sprays are flammable, and you can be setting yourself up for trouble. Here are some steps to take to minimize bringing critters home with your festive décor:

1. Shake, shake, shake. Not only does this dislodge all the loose pine needles you don’t want to bring inside, but it dislodges the majority of the guests taking a ride in the tree. Most tree farms will do this for you before wrapping the tree, but it never hurts to do it again after the trip home.
2. Use a flashlight and check through the tree for a nest or anything else you may want to remove from it before you take it inside.
3. Set your tree up in its base and let it sit in your garage for a day or two before moving it inside. Some of the insects in the tree may wake up with the warmth (although let’s be honest, it’s Texas and its already pretty warm!) and wander away.
4. Vacuum under the tree regularly once it is inside. You will probably do this anyway to keep the needles picked up, but in doing so you will vacuum up any stowaways that may be heading off on an adventure.
5. Keep the water under your tree fresh. Stagnant and dirty water makes a lot of insects happy, especially mosquitoes!

If you are thinking, “this doesn’t apply to me, we have a fake tree,” you may be right. But consider where and how you store your tree. It’s still a good idea to give it a good shake, especially if you store it unwrapped in an attic space. The bugs may not be able to feed from it, but it can do a good job of creating a home for your attic dwellers (especially spiders).

You can expect the following bugs in a Christmas tree: spiders, mites, aphids, adelgids, bark beetles, praying mantises and sawflies. All of these will die along with the tree, so there is no need to worry unnecessarily. Every insect requires food and water to live, just like us. Survival, on what is essentially a dead tree, is not possible and these insects will not take over your home.

So, while the tree you bring home may have a lot of unwanted visitors, there are easy steps you can take to get those removed. Once you have followed our steps above you can relax and enjoy your beautiful decorations and the Christmas season!

Nine times out of ten, when we get a call from a potential client, the person on the other end of the line gets bitten far more than their spouse. Occasionally we have a customer call to hold service for the winter, just to have their other half call back and start service back again. In fact, we have a few customers who have asked us to ignore their spouse if they call to hold service because “he/she doesn’t get bitten like I do.” So why is this the case?

Female mosquitoes bite us because they need the blood meal in order to lay their eggs. But why do they have a preference, or do they really have one? As we’ve talked about in previous blogs, mosquitoes find us based on several factors. Initially, they seek our CO2 plumes through their olfactory receptors. As they get closer to us, they rely on scent and vision and seek out colors and odors. When they are really close, they use body heat to find the right spot to bite.
 

CO2:

One of the drivers to getting bitten more is being easier to find and that has a lot to do with your CO2 output. The higher your metabolic rate, the higher your CO2 output is. Pregnant women, folks who are fit or work out a lot, and conversely people who have been drinking alcohol or who are overweight and expending more energy to move, all breathe out more CO2 making them easier to find.
 

Scent:

Mosquitoes have a specialized receptor that enables then to smell lactic acid. While some folks tend to have more lactic acid than others, the more you sweat the more lactic acid you release. Mosquitoes are also drawn to other scents and body odors that result from what you eat or what you have been doing. 99% of us start sweating the moment we step outside in Texas. The smell of sweat is attractive to a mosquito – so don’t forget the deodorant! Perfumes and colognes are also a draw, so if you plan on spending time outdoors the focus should be on minimizing odors. If you are super sweaty and you opt to add a hefty dose of perfume or cologne to cover it up, you have just created quite the olfactory soup for the mosquito. Stick with as little odor as possible.
 

Colors:

Some research though not definitive yet has shown that dark colors are more of a draw for a mosquito. Remember, mosquitoes don’t see well so for them contrast is important. If you wear a black shirt and sit on a white bench you have just made yourself really easy to find.
 

Blood type & genetics:

One thing we cannot control is our blood type, but it is worth mentioning although research has yet to determine why this is. Mosquitoes appear to be more attracted to O type blood than others. In fact, mosquitoes landed on type O people 83% of the time, compared with 46.5% of A-type (Journal of Medical Entomology) in one study. You may also find that a relative is more attractive to mosquitoes, and thus you are as well thanks to genetics. Skin bacteria and microbes are also thought to play a role, which may also fall into the category of genetics. The “busier” your skin is the more attractive.

There is a lot we don’t know yet about what mosquitoes perceive as attractive, or what scents help them find us. You can help yourself by wearing light clothing and minimizing odors when you are outside as well as choosing your tie of day wisely. Mosquitoes are sun phobic creatures, so avoiding dawn and dusk and heading outside when the sun is high may be ridiculous in Texas, but it will help you avoid those bites. Of course, you can also just call us, and then you can head out whenever you want.

Let’s face it, we all conjure up images of October that involve falling leaves, pumpkin spice and dark evenings with crisp fall air. In Texas, reality usually falls short and we find ourselves sweltering in the heat while trying to dispose of a molded pumpkin that deflated well in advance of the trick-or-treaters.

Mosquitoes appreciate our fall just as much as our summer. In fact, they rarely go away here in the south. Hibernation only occurs once temperatures drop beneath 55 degrees and stay there for at least a week, or we get 3 deep freezes in a row. Mosquito Joe will never treat when those parameters are met. It’s worth adding that we’ve met those parameters only once in 6 years, and it lasted but a week.

Fall in Texas does involve falling leaves, and those play a role in your mosquitoes. The more leaf litter (and pine needles) on the ground, the darker and damper the soil. There is nothing a mosquito appreciates more than shade and moisture. The leaves create the perfect spot for a female to lay her eggs. One rain shower and a good 300 hatch under the one leaf. The hatched adults immediately breed and the females, once they have bitten and acquired the blood protein required to lay eggs, go off to find another lovely home to lay their eggs. Before you know it, your mosquito population is very high and enjoying the cooler evenings is no longer fun.

Keeping your yard raked will play a huge role in reducing your mosquitoes. While we totally agree that raking is the worst, maintaining a tidy yard will have a huge impact.

Another important location to keep your eye on is your gutters. Leaves and pine needles can quickly block them, and the resulting standing water is another location mosquitoes will quickly take advantage of. It’s worth mentioning that even gutters that are covered cause issues. The leaves that sit atop those will turn into sludge with rain. That sludge falls into the gutter and causes blockages. We often have customers who have a huge mosquito population because the gutters are blocked, and they don’t realize it. So long story short, keep your gutters free of leaves. If you have covered gutters, hit them with water from a hose to push out all the debris inside them and keep them clear.

Finally, be aware that some of your fall décor can be causing issues. Check for standing water after a rain and be sure to dump any you can. And remember, it won’t be long until Christmas and snow (not).

We often get customers calling us to let us know that we don’t need to treat their yard because the county sprayed. We also have people ask us why they would need our barrier service if the county sprays the streets. We thought clearing up the differences would be helpful.

County Spraying:

Typically, you will see counties getting out and spraying the streets when West Nile or another disease has been found at mosquito testing sites. Understanding the purpose of street spraying and appreciating mosquito behavior will help explain the differences between what the county does and what we do.

Mosquitoes spend a good majority of their time feeding on plant nectar, typically on the underside of leaves so they can shelter from the sun. They don’t fly well and typically “shrub hop” as they move about. They are very sun phobic, and you will see them out typically at dawn and dusk. They require water to hatch their eggs, so will lay them in stagnant bodies or on damp soil.

The intent in street spraying is to reduce the population’s numbers which is why they typically spray in the early morning or later in the evening. Mosquitoes don’t tend to fly around over asphalt, but the females do take advantage of standing water in ditches to lay eggs. While no one yet knows how to kill the eggs, the best way to reduce the population as a street truck is to treat the streets with a focus on those ditches.

Aerial Spraying:

Aerial spraying is less common in our area, but several years ago it was done when West Nile levels rose beyond what we typically see. Since a plane can cover large areas and is not limited to the streets, it allows the county to make more of an impact on the population. As the mist falls it settles on the leaves and grass, killing mosquitoes it touches along the way. Again, the purpose is to reduce the overall population. Since mosquitoes are typically on the underside of leaves a substantial portion of the population will be unaffected, but the overall population will be reduced.

Mosquito Joe Barrier Service:

The intention of our service is not to reduce the population, but to get our customers to a 95% reduction. We do this in several ways: We remove all the standing water in your yard that we can, and we treat any that we can’t prevent mosquito larvae from hatching into adult mosquitoes. This includes saucers under plant pots, checking your gutters, treating French drains, and more. We use garlic around flowering plants, fruit trees, and vegetable gardens. The garlic pushes mosquitoes elsewhere in the yard, so we can kill them while avoiding the beneficial insects in your yard, such as bees and butterflies. Finally, we treat all the green leaf in your yard by coating both the top and the underside of the leaves. The products we use adhere to the leaf and once dry will not wash off or rub away. As a mosquito hops into your yard and onto a leaf, it will die. Our products continue working for 3 weeks, at which point they will have completely broken down. The majority of our customers are on a three-week cycle to maintain their 95% reduction.

As you can see, Mosquito Joe tailors a mosquito service to your yard and hits all the potential areas where they live, breed, and multiply. Our focus is on making your outside fun again rather than reducing an overall population.

It’s hard to believe that we are halfway through 2020 although some might say it’s the longest year on record. As we approach the hottest month of the year the yard is filling with toys to keep our kids cool. Slip n’ slides and water balloon fun can help make for an exciting afternoon outside while keeping the family cool, but they are also a potential attractant for mosquitoes. As always, we want to help you keep that mosquito population down and are here to point out some ways to do just that.

Water games are popular in Texas, and with good reason. In the mid-afternoon sun, you and your kids can overheat quickly. It’s what you do after the games are finished that will have a big impact on the number of mosquitoes in your yard. After all, mosquitoes need water to lay their eggs. The more water the merrier as far as they are concerned, but they don’t need much. Just one teaspoon of water provides enough surface area for 300 eggs!  So, the key to managing the population is in how you put the toys away.

Slip n’ slides and kiddie pools are often emptied of water and left to dry. If they are put away when they are still wet, pockets of water can attract mosquitoes.  Compound that with how we store them – often in a dark place – and we just made the mosquitoes a most excellent home. Ideally you want to hang these toys up to drip dry and then fold them and store them in a sealed location.

Buckets and water balloon toys often have the same fate. We hide them away in a tub or in a garage, but we don’t remove all the water before we do. Since these places are cool and shaded, mosquitoes will welcome the opportunity to lay their eggs in these locations and before you know it you have quite the population boom.

A simple and fun afternoon can be spent running around with a sprinkler in the yard. Where things can often go wrong is when other toys, inevitably in the yard as well, are hit with the sprinkler and fill up with water. We recently had a customer who was having continual issues under his car port. We made multiple visits to try and determine the issue with no luck. Finally, one day we arrived early, to find an outdoor play kitchen out in the yard. We realized that it was full of mosquito larvae (on the face of it looked very clean, but inside the walls of the kitchen was stagnant water). Turns out, the customer was putting the toy in his garage before we came to treat and then returning it outside for the grandkids. We estimated about 1.5 gallons of water in when we emptied it.

The key takeaway here is to just to be conscious of mosquitoes and their behavior when you clean up the yard after a day of play. Make sure everything is dry and that your storage location is completely sealed. Damp, shady places with pockets of water will breed millions of mosquitoes. Check slides and playhouses for water and get rid of as much as you can by rotating it or moving it into a sunny area.

We hope you create some great memories with your kids and none of them involve bug bites and if they do, give us a call and we will be happy to make your outside a fun place to be.