10 Thrifty Ways to Deal with Mosquitoes
June 24, 2007 by Karen Weideman
Filed under Top 10 lists, health
I am a mosquito magnet. If there is one around, it will find me. This past week while I was at camp, many mosquitos found me. I’ve done a little research and found some inexpensive ways that you can fight off mosquitoes.
1. Keep your lawn mowed and bushes trimmed. This eliminates having a nice place for mosquitoes to rest.
2. Keep spare tires and other items that collect water stored in a sheltered area. This cuts down on the amount of rain these items can collect. Empty standing water from buckets, boats, planters, wheelbarrows, etc.
3. Make sure roof gutters drain properly to prevent standing water.
4. Change the water in bird baths at least once a week or install a fountain or dripper to keep the water moving.
5. Wear light colored clothing. Mosquitoes are attracted to dark clothes.
6. Keep your body covered as much as possible. Yes, mosquitoes can find their way through the fabric, but it helps to cut down on the number of bites.
7. Spray garlic powder and water all over the yard.
8. Plant mosquito deterring plants around your yard such as citronella, marigolds, basil, lavender, and catnip.
9. Try hiding your scent. Some people are sold on the effects of using Bounce dryer sheets, Vicks VapoRub and Avon’s Skin So Soft. Some prefer eating garlic or lemons or taking B1 Vitamins.
10. When all else fails, use the bug spray. I had to resort to this at camp last week. I also found that the lotion worked better than the spray, although the smell was worse.
Well, does this have you itching? It does me! Do you have any tips for fighting off mosquitoes?
Picture from sciencedaily.com.
LRN
Mosquitoes don’t smell you. they are attrached to your body heat. lotions and sprays mask your body heat from mosquitoes. Think of it as the Mud Arnold wears in Predator to keep from being seen. Stay cool, thats the way to avoid mosquitoes. Oh, also anti-histimines will keep the itchy bites to a minimum b/c the bite is a histimine reaction, so, Allegra D, Zyrtec D, even OTC Anti-H will keep your from getting itchy.
Go buy a bat house and hang it up near your home. Bats are ravenous mosquito eaters: each bat will eat several thousand per night and they’re all natural too!
My buddy has a theory that each type of mosquito can only give you a bad bite once. When you get to a new area, expose a lot of skin, and sit there for a couple hours, letting them all bite you. You’ll build up an immunity to their bites. If you go to a different region, you have to do it again.
I think it works because I’ve seen mosquitoes land right on the end of his nose and he doesn’t even think to swat them away.
skeeter bag
It would be really simple to make your own.
But I doubt that would help on a long bike ride
I know this sounds absolutely insane, but vanilla body spray works amazingly. I went down to Mississippi a couple of summers ago to help with Katrina clean-up, and that is what our hosts suggested. I doubt I would have tried it if I hadn’t seen it work for them first, but when I did, it worked perfectly. I didn’t get a single bite. I have absolutely no idea why it works, I just know it does.
I worked leading expeditions into mosquito infested forests for a couple of years and learned some valueable lessons. Sprays and lotions are not effective. They keep bugs away for a short time until all of the POISON is absorbed into your skin or clothes. What’s then left behind is fragrance- which brings ‘em on stronger. For a short term solution, garlic is the only thing I have found to work well. Break open a clove and rub it directly on your skin. The more “juice” you can get on ya the better (I prefer to stink than itch)…. For a long term solution, try eating a few buds of the Mullen plant every day for a couple of weeks. Once it builds up in your system, the chemicals you perspire are an effective deterrent.
purple martins ARE NOT THE most amazing birds ever.
http://www.ffdp.ca/hww2p.asp?id=65&cid=7
Despite a widely held popular belief that Purple Martins control mosquito populations, it seems unlikely that they do so to any extent. Most food studies of martins have failed to find much evidence of mosquitos or other small insects in their diet
I travel alot, and the one thing that I’ve noticed is that county’s with lots of mosquitoes are also the places that smoke or consume lots of canabis (Moroco, Jamaica,Thailand).
Having been plagued with mossi bites, I bit the bullet and tried some cannabis tea, lo and behold not a single bite for over a week. I know it might be illegal but it really does work.
Dragon Flies… Has anyone heard of this? Supposedly (and I forget where I heard of this) they eat mosquitos just likes bats and aren’t as, ahem, unsavory guests… So you get a bunch of dragon fly larvae and put it in your yard - bam, no mosquitos. Plus, they’re pretty neat creatures.
Contrary to scientific studies, Avon Skin So Soft really does work. I do a lot of gardening, and with all the irrigation, mosquitoes do breed and I get bit a lot.
But when I rub SSS all over exposed arms, legs, neck, forehead etc. voila! no bites! Recently I got bit up my sleeve (clearly i had missed a spot), but the rest of me was untouched. And on occasion when I forget to rub some on… lots of bites.
They used to run trucks through the streets spraying insecticide every day in mosquito season; us kids would reek of poison for hours afterwards, until our mothers forced us to bathe.
Most of those kids I played with are dead now, of course - my generation dies of cancer pretty young. I’m not yet 50 and I’ve already had skin cancer, and now I seem to have something growing in my colon.
Vin (yes I get it) says to spray diesel on everything; this is simply a more flammable version of dormant oil. The problem with doing that (aside from the fire hazard, and the sponsoring of oil companies that pervert political and social mechanisms) is that it also kills mosquito predators such as dragonflies, and thousands of other beneficial species.
It will work temporarily, and the Saudi and Texan oil barons will be happy with you, but it’s just fundamentally a bad idea. The damage to agriculture due to killing off beneficial insects and the necessity of continual use due to the eradication of natural mosquito larva predators is not a worthwhile tradeoff - you are better off with DDT if malaria is rampant, and you are better off with any number of techniques everywhere else.
Use the Taiwanese trap, and wear DEET or some other lotion that works for you, and you’ll be fine.
My sweetie is one of those who always gets bit and has terrible welts from mosquito bites. She buys catnip oil and mixes it into a spray. Its really a very pleasant scent, sort of minty and creamy. Its also possible to get catnip herbal tea, which is every bit as palatable as mint tea or chamomile. I have no idea whether drinking it would help with mosquitoes but I don’t see it hurting.
The other most amazing thing I’ve heard about has already been mentioned above, Skeeter Bag, a net that you attach to a box fan and sit out where you want to be able to lounge outdoors without being disturbed. Said to cut down on the population in an area with a season or two of use.
These are all great tips, but if you just want a quick solution, you can just spray down your yard:
http://repellex.com/store/repellex-mosquito-repellent/prod_5.html
That stuff is even 100% organic so you don’t have to worry about all the crazy chemical harm everyone is worried about (and rightfully so).
Mosquitoes don’t see normal wavelengths of light. Rather, they see in the UV and infrared. Therefore, the color of shirt you wear has no effect in attracting mosquitoes. Most of the home remedies mentioned on this site do not work and are only anecdotal. Source reduction, OFF, long sleeves and spending less time outdoors are some of the things that work well when all performed simultaneously. There is no magic bullet.
http://skeeterbag.com/
Simple and, it seems, effective.
Those Daddy Long Leg spiders which are harmless hanging out in your bedroom. Dont kill it, they take care of all the Mosquitoes…
The small bird population in the USA is down 40%. Birds are big eaters of Mosquitoes. Cats are the biggest eaters of small birds. There should be a law making every domestic cat wear bells like that have now in the UK
MacGuyver it
One thing I learnt was that you can use a bit of incense or smoke to bait out mosquitoes and prevent them from entering a room. The mosquitoes hate smoke, and they’ll avoid it.
You should buy an electric swatter. Zaps the mosquitos on contact. Very fun and stress relieving.
http://www.swatterchina.com/fly_swatter.html
Coconut oil. They absolutely hate it. I’m a mosquito magnet too and I almost landed in hospital once when I visited by Polynesian grandmother due to infected mozzie bites. The areas that I could manage to get coconut oil onto the mozzies avoided. The rest was open slather.
On subsequent visits I went straight to the coconut oil and have not had any problems since.
Mosquitos are weak flyers. A strong fan positioned temporarily for an outdoor gathering will blow them off-track.
Skeeters don’t like peppermint, and I bet they wouldn’t like bergamot or any other volatile oil.
I wonder if the Skin-so-soft works because it’s simply a blocker (?) If it’s as effective a moisturizer as the ads indicate, it must really be sinking into those top layers of skin!
Seems as if u had taken a severe beating frm the mosquitos….thanx for the tips..
http://www.reloaddd.blogspot.com
I absolutely swear by vitamin E. I start taking it before mosquito season starts and don’t get a single bite all summer unless for some reason I miss more than a couple of days.
How about filling a bucket with soapy water or water with an oil film on top. The mosquito lands to breed. The mosquito and larvae can’t escape because the surface tension is too low.
I go around my yard after every rain and spray vegetable oil on any standing water. It seems to help.
I just returned from Belize and the Mosquitoes were horrible. they would just dive at me. I had 98.9% DEET on and it didnt even phase them. A man there had Avon Skin So Soft and it was the only thing that protected me. It wasnt amazing, but it worked better than the super strong DEET. I am still up for suggestions though. i think garlic pills and vanilla spray might not be a bad idea.
Please help… My daughter is allergic to mosquitoes. Everyday she has a new bite. It’s like they swarm her. I have tried almost everything. We use skin so soft every night but it is not working. I won’t even allow her to eat bananas. I really hate to use insect repellent because she is still a baby and she puts her hands in her mouth. We do have a pond about 20 feet behind our house. PLEASE HELP ME FIND SOMETHING ELSE THAT WILL WORK. MAYBE SOMETHING THAT WILL WORK INSIDE AS WELL AS OUTSIDE. thanks
I will check on what my parents use . They live in Texas and have a pool in their back yard and never have mosquitoes. The contraption is fabulous.
If you have a pond, what are the fish doing? Good old fashioned guppies or their equivalent should stop the mozzie larvae breeding. Otherwise check your property for containers etc that could be holding dead water.
Garlic on the yard huh? That’s a new one to me.
I am the world’s largest mosquito magnet. So the only advice I can give you is, if you get bit, RUB SOME SOAP ON IT. The high pH of the soap stops the itching better than any medicine. Trust me, I live in Taiwan, I feed an average of 20+ mosquitos a week…