In article , "Snooze"
wrote:

"[snip].com" admin@[snip] .com wrote in message
oups.com...
Hello,

I am the webmaster of [snip]. I created this public
forum for people to discuss mosquito control issues, and hopefully
bridge some of the gaps between the vast technical knowledge of the
scientific community and the plain English that the public can easily
understand.

Leon Y.
Webmaster of [snip].com

Are you trying to plug a website? or actually tell us what products you've
tried.

Anyone who is able to use stand upright with out dragging their knuckles and
can use Google.com can find out what works well in controlling mosquitoes.
Heck just calling the local vector control or water district will work as
well.

For the lazy, here's a summary
1: reduce standing water

This is frequently the ONLY control required to keep mosquitos out of a
small area, depending on regional species & their flight range.
Unfortunately adult mosquitos may come from some little distance & stick
around inhabiting even dry meadowy areas by day & coming out of the grass
to bite at dusk. The only way to get rid of them would be to get rid of
the plant life, which gardeners are unwilling to do.

2: introduce mosquito fish to ponds

This is useless advice for most garden water features & birdbaths which
are too small to sustain fish. It will keep a pond large enough for fish
free of mosquito larvae but also free of many valuable insects including
several that control mosquitos or a broader range of garden pests. Making
it a dragonfly pond instead of a fish pond is worth considering.

3: use mosquito dunks or mosquito bits in ponds and ditches

Bacillus thuringiensis dunks do work & are apparently harmless to
beneficial insects & other animal life. So presumedly one could establish
a dragonfly pond & not harm it by including dunks, & they work especially
well in small water features.

4: use mosquito magnets, which use an attractant and carbon dioxide to lure
mosquito into the traps.

The carbondioxide mosquito traps are great if you are studying mosquitos
for any number of scientific reasons. In this context they are "very
effective." In terms of impacting the mosquito population around a
residence, they are as close to worthless as anything that could be tried,
with the effectiveness-to-cost ratio making traps even more absurd since
"cheap" ones can cost $300 merely to sample a very small area.

Mosquito traps don't really dent the population, which relies on such
factors as flight range, habitat, & feeding behaviors of the numerous
mosquito species, none of which factors are seriously impacted by
trapping.

I've seen carbondioxide vaccuum traps sold for the high-hundreds of
dollars to over a thousand dollars plus attachments. They come with the
wildest claims of efficiency. But independent studies such as those
conducted at the University of Florida show that thet raps work
spectacularly well only for sampling. Some species can't even be sampled
by CO2 as attractant; when for research purposes specific species need to
be sampled, attractants for that specific species are used. The garden
gizmos are, like most garden gizmos, complete frauds when represented as
effective mosquito controls, but it's another case of vendor propoganda
being easily encountered, with scientific data generally in specialized
peer-review publications & university experimental station newsletters not
seen by the common masses. Also the scientific data can be befuddling &
easily misrepresented, whereas the fraudulant claims will be declarative &
easily understood no matter the degree of falsehood.

In the face of independent research showing these devices merely sample
but do not control mosquito populations, the growing industry to sell the
devices for purposes they are not useful for is fighting back. Rather
large websites promote these costly devices in the glowingest terms. They
claim they are honing the excellence of their technology every day &
studies that showed the devices possess limited value as conducted in 2002
failed to test what they are selling in 2005, & other excuses. They can
also quote the studies out of context very effectively since some of the
most expensive baited vaccuum devices sample HUGE numbers of mosquitos --
these cost $300 to $1000+ each plus high maintainance cost to maintain CO2
tanks & propane tanks for operation (the two tanks sometimes needing to be
purchased & maintained separately from the trap). If you put three or four
of these on each side of your house investing perhaps $10,000 to get rid
of mosquitos, the impact on the overall population might actually be
measurable in that small area. So all the vendors need to quote from
independent studies is that a few of the baited vaccuum devices are "very
effective" & merely leave out the specifics that reveal them to be either
useless or impractical for what a home owner expects to achieve.

The industry has also fought back by establishing & funding a non-profit
organization to promote the traps (American Mosquito Control Association)
in an attempt to make it look like industry propoganda comes from someone
other than vendors. But the AMCA is the OPPOSITE of a reliable source of
information on home mosquito control & the only technology being "refined"
is the technology of sales.

Because the traps DO "sample" the mosquito population very handily, the
vendors will always be able to truthfully say the traps catch mosquitos.
They only need to avoid the greater fact that the impact on the biting
population is zippo.

-paghat the ratgirl
--
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"In every country and in every age, the priest has been hostile to
liberty. He is always in alliance with the despot." -Thomas Jefferson