Try the Mosquito Bucket of Death
energyvanguard.com
energyvanguard.com
For those asking - a bucket of sticks and leaves gets stagnat pretty quick. My guess is that it's so attractive that it just manages to attract most the mosquitos? I put one near the shore in two places, and two near the corners of my property. Our lake has just enough surface distrubance that the bucket might be better for them.
Another technique I've tried which works (observably) well is described in this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6BhV-o77RqQ
tl;dw: Get a big drum fan with a screen on the back, attached with small/powerful magnets. Mosquitos are such poor flyers that they get pulled against the screen and can't escape, and they pretty quickly desiccate and die. Most other flying insects don't get caught, although there is a bit of collateral (some moths and lacewings, unfortunately). Another benefit of the fan is that you can hang out in front of it and mosquitos mostly won't bother you there either.
I did this in our shared backyard space in Brooklyn and would catch hundreds/thousands of mosquitos per week. Despite that, there were still a ton of mosquitos in the area so it's best combined with other methods of control.
edit: better/updated video link
In general though, if there are enough mosquitos around they will get caught in it without any additional effort.
On a larger scale, there's this https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AI3HE7BcIBk&pp=ygUQbW9zcXVpd... about mosquito factories
I have no idea where ours are coming from; I suspect they hatch somewhere, and then migrate to the shaded areas of my yard, which is where I typically get bit.
Adding a bucket will prevent some mosquitoes from laying eggs elsewhere, but not all, right? Or is the bucket so attractive to mosquitoes that they ignore other water sources?
treating your own garden means not leaving stagnant waters (including in water pots etc). then you can consider trap. also try to convince your close neighbours to do the same.
The general rule is that mosquitos need a pool of water the size of a bottle cap, and it needs to be there for at least a week. Good luck, and good hunting.
Just to be clear, my recommendation is to mitigate both man-made and natural breeding sites. Fortunately mosquito dunks don't harm other species.
So do I, but mosquitos are usually a problem for people who live close to nature. And then you'll have lakes, puddles, ditches, swamps, etc. But maybe I'm wrong and mosquitos don't fly that far, as another commenter here mentioned.
I will certainly try the mosquito dunks as you advise. Hope they can help.
I do. That's where I put the dunks.
Lakes are usually okay as long as they have minnows or other mosquito-eating fish, but puddles and ditches are the places I focus on.
Fortunately I'm not near a real swamp, but I do have some swampy areas. I break each dunk into quarters and toss 1-3 per puddle, depending on size and funkiness. The package optimistically says four weeks, but I have my phone remind me every three. Good luck!
They do take a while to take effect, and they do take maintenance, but my experience so far is that they're super effective.
It cannot and that is not its purpose. Practically you should be able to locate any other breeding grounds by mere observation and then you have to eliminate them one by one until the mosquitos are left with the ones you set up.
Check out Biogents brand. They use attractants like urea and CO2 to draw the mosquitoes to the trap instead of your body. You'd put these closer to the areas you inhabit.
This matches my experience. Building these buckets did nothing, and maybe made it worse. Putting 1/10th as much effort into eliminating standing water is what actually fixed my problem.
Remember, mosquitos can breed in a puddle the size of a bottle cap!
How could it have possibly made it worse? Even if it only prevented a small fraction of the mosquito population from reproducing it'd still be helping.
The common gardener's joke about these sort of bug attracting methods (eg Japanese beetle traps) is to buy one and put it in your neighbor's yard. :)
There's been so much rain these past months that my entire yard has been filled with puddles. There's only so much you can do to eliminate standing water when it's everywhere.
One thing that an HOA might actually be good for - I would love to see what happens if our entire neighborhood did this.
I've gotten nothing but benefits from living in neighborhoods with HOAs. Basic stuff like funding for landscapers to keep up the shared grassy areas along the streets, to plowing the access roads in winter time. But the main benefit has always been that it provides a legal mechanism to force everyone to maintain their yards and property. No need to drop passive-aggressive notes in a mailbox about people parking their cars on their lawns.
10/10 highly recommend
edit: apparently you guys don't like HOAs haha. Well I love them. Keeps the neighborhood from looking like a dump.
Indeed, God forbid people would like to park their cars on their property!
(And I am not a fan of HOAs personally, so I do in fact live elsewhere, but my neighbors house is also an eyesore)
Wildflowers? Generally good.
Tall grass that allows rats to thrive and spread into adjacent yards? Bad.
Most people don't want to have to go to court to battle pedantic neighbors who confuse the two.
Unless you're a decamillionaire (or a cop), the cops in America don't care about you.
People get fines all the time for failing to cut their grass. Some cities just love the income. They can add up to several thousand (https://caselaw.findlaw.com/court/in-court-of-appeals/168774...).
FWIW, I'd love to know how they're monitoring everyone's pools.
This I will take a nuanced position on. If your kids are playing in the backyard, and it doesn't impact me at all ... perfect please enjoy life.
But I can often hear people outside, especially children screeching and yelling, over my television with all of my doors and windows shut and the air conditioner on full blast.
In those scenarios, the laughter IS adversely affecting the ability of other people to enjoy their own property.
I do feel for people who move in next to schools or public pools/playgrounds but considering how much time kids spend indoors these days I'd guess that people today have it much easier than people did in the past.
I'd much rather have to occasionally be reminded that kids are somewhere playing and having a good time than deal with a lot of the other noises that can disrupt a person's day like loud cars/motorcycles, drunk people fighting, landscapers or sirens.
But it does often go on for hours at a time. And I'm not talking about a school zone or a park. As another person pointed out, if you move next to a school or a park you know what you are signing up for. But in a quiet suburb, if the issue is new neighbours that weren't there when you bought the house.. or who just started a family recently. That's something that's being imposed on you that didn't exist before.
And we don't tolerate this when it is barking dogs or loud music. Most cities have noise ordinances and I even read mine because of problematic neighbours. Not because of children, mind you. The man was an alcoholic who would get drunk early in the morning and go into his backyard where he would have loud screaming matches with hallucinations which terrified our small daughters so I wanted to know if the noise ordinance covered it. Answer is, technically yes but the police don't enforce yelling and hollering despite it being spelled out in the letter of the bylaw.
Why is it acceptable to expect people to keep their pets quiet, their music at a reasonable volume, their power tools and machinery at bay and to not have extremely loud parties where people are screaming and blasting noise ... but the second it's loud children we're talking about oh no ... you just need to learn to "live in a community"?
You can make the same argument about anything. Living with neighbours who have tall grass is part of "living in a community." Some people don't care about well trimmed lawns. Motorcycles with extremely loud engines, just part of "living in a community." Barking dogs. Honking car horns etc. etc. etc. We have noise ordinances for a reason; noise directly affects other people.
And I say all of this as a parent who raised two daughters to adulthood. I don't understand this weird standard. We (their mother and I) always expected our children to be respectful of our neighbours.
Key word there. HOA rules exist for the sole purpose of defining a common, enforceable, agreed upon definition of "within reason".
I'm happy somebody has. Except for you, I have never heard anything but nightmares from the people I know who suffer under HOAs.
I don't believe that it is a constitutional right to live in a neighborhood that will permit you to operate a chop-shop in your overgrown yard.
> They should leave if it is really that stressful and onerous.
Easier said than done. A few people I know found that it was difficult to sell their home because the existence of an HOA scares off buyers.
It can be a concern. But I actually found the opposite to be true in my case. During my house-hunt I was far more turned-off by the appearance and disrepair of several houses and properties near the places that I was looking at. So it can definitely be a consideration from both perspectives.
I didn't write those standards, so why would I agree with them? Should I be homeless now?
My building has an HOA, and the worst I can say about is that's it's pretty boring.
You like paying extra for stuff that is normally included in your property taxes? I'm dumbfounded.
People are grudgingly willing to pay to put in a brand new sewer once. No one wants to fund maintenance or pay millions to replace it in 60 years and cities are literally going bankrupt because the population density isn't enough to maintain the infrastructure.
Cities realized this decades ago which is why many are reluctant to add more unsustainable public roads/sewers/etc. and insist new development owns and funds them privately....which tends to require a HOA to fund maintenance from communal contributions/reserves.
https://www.theatlantic.com/books/archive/2024/01/benjamin-h...
They were so lucky this happened in the summer. In the winter, the hoses would have frozen solid.
These folks were very sad the city’s water utility couldn’t do the work. They fix water main breaks within a couple days, usually the same day.
I'll often upvote comments with opinions that are counter to my own, especially if they are presented in a clear, coherent, or novel way that causes me to think a bit.
It helps prevent brigading and ensures that users have a moment to adjust to the community and its general expectations before being able to participate in community moderation.
If a user cannot reach that low bar after a while, they probably aren't a particularly active or positive member of the community.
HOA is another layer of local government, I think it's great that moving is a chance to choose the government (or anarchy) that you prefer.
I lived in a four unit condo buildings before and the HOA was fine, because all residents were on the board.
I now live in a more typical suburban HOA development and the HOA is very unobtrusive and only comes down on the actual problem properties (overgrown, uninhabited houses) and doesn’t do much other than handle common area upkeep. Dues are only $150 per year.
I've seen both - folks who are good stewards of the community's money and add to its energy, and folks who can't manage money and exhaust the community's energy on trivialities.
This is so good, it can be used as a textbook definition of a strawman.
The single highest priority in life. Completely reasonable to give up everything else to get that.
So frickin noisy!!!!
I can't understand the people that think the artificial look holds any beauty whatsoever.
That being said, a yard of native plants can still do more good than a yard of grass. Grasses are cool and come in many other forms though, and can be extremely resistant to drought. Native grasses often have much deeper roots, or even taproots sometimes.
When cutting i use a scythe and sheers to minimise the amount of caterpillars etc. getting killed.
For my protected potted/bedded plants i use a variety of natural methods to keep aphids and snails at bay, and they work brilliantly. Bait plants (some weeds fill this purpose too), Neem oil treatment, nematodes, and more.
The amount of life, happy bugs, birds, bees, etc. i find thriving, and the variety, fills me with far more joy than the equivalent of giving my garden a bowl cut.
This is not to say that traps don’t make your house more livable. Once, I lived in a house connected to a forest in Brazil—no real neighbors, and a shitload of mosquitoes.
I did buy some fancy traps with UV lights and fans, and oh boy, I killed a shitload of them. Not to say I fully solved the mosquito problem, but I significantly reduced the bites. My wife is allergic to them, so she’s a great sensor—if there’s even one mosquito in the room, she knows.
It's the same reason you have a high density of sports fans when you stand near the exit of a stadium after a game. The people (mosquitos) are streaming out of the stadium (standing water) so fast that there's a local high-density zone.
I literally live in a swamp, so I reasoned "how much could one tire hurt?" Oh boy was I wrong! Eliminating that one single mosquito breeding site near the house made an enormous difference on the local mosquito density.
"As a toxic mechanism, cry proteins bind to specific receptors on the membranes of mid-gut (epithelial) cells of the targeted pests, resulting in their rupture. Other organisms (including humans, other animals and non-targeted insects) that lack the appropriate receptors in their gut cannot be affected by the cry protein, and therefore are not affected by Bt."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bacillus_thuringiensis
Edit: "Spores and crystalline insecticidal proteins produced by B. thuringiensis have been used to control insect pests since the 1920s and are often applied as liquid sprays and donut pellets."
The end product is produced in large submersion fermentation tanks where the bacteria is first grown, then then forced to sporulate and allowed to ferment which produces the Cry/Cyt toxin crystals within the spores. Going through these phases requires precise control over nutrients, pH, agitation, and electron acceptors. Even activating the spores to create the inoculum and begin the reproductive cycle is nontrivial because of how sterile everything needs to be.
I did skim read a few papers on the subject and honestly I'm wondering how this stuff even grows naturally, everything has to be so specific it just doesn't seem possible at all.
My non-SME answer to this thread is:
1) 100 years is not that long in evolutionary terms; 2) cropland is large but not all land; 3) evolution is complex; 4) resistance is actually already observed in some species.
Evolution is complex and 100 years is not very long. But eventually some effect is likely.
There's clearly something going on where their systems are being extra cautious on what can and cannot be shipped to CA.
No affiliation: https://us.biogents.com/
The fan intakes CO2 from the coals... and blows it out into the neighborhood (I think he claimed it was detectable at 60 or 80 feet?) to essentially advertise. When mosquitos approach, they're sucked into the fan intake, and can't get out past the blades and netting. Most are dead by morning, and the rest you spray down before removal. IIRC he said he only needed to do it one night every few weeks to keep the population unnoticeable, and he'd wake up to thousands in the netting the next morning.
I'm sketched-out by the CO2 mechanism, so I've never tried it, but figuring out an extremely slow release mechanism from a small tank seems doable. Maybe one day I'll get around to tinkering with it. My neighborhood started spraying, so it hasn't been bad enough to put much effort into.
The company has always made it as a typical moisturiser/lotion but then started hearing from RV/caravan/campers that it was keeping mosquitoes away.
Ascorbic acid is a great, environmentally-safe reducing agent that readily donates electrons to these compounds. A 500–1000mg Vitamin C powder capsule will contain enough ascorbic acid to neutralize 5 gallons of even the worst city water with a good buffer to spare. What's left is harmless to most life, so you can throw your organic matter straight in.
Ascorbic acid is the only one I've found that I like to rely on. I use it for aquaria. Although my water is very clean and has virtually no chlorine in it, it does have trace chloramine, and I can't know if my municipality suddenly needs to treat the water more intensively. So, I always treat water I put in aquariums with around 250mg of ascorbic acid to be safe. The byproducts are safe for aquatic life, or in some cases even beneficial.
I've learned this in an aquaria context where killing the bacterial coating in a tank is a bit of a disaster, and fish tend to be quite sensitive so it could be very risky to use potassium metabisulfite. But what you're detailing here is really interesting. I've used it in brewing before, but it was part of a kit and I didn't really understand it beyond basic mechanics. It's a lot more interesting than I realized!
So it’ll be a reduction. How much probably depends on their other options.
I'm sure there is some extra egg-laying, but there are also eggs laid there that would have otherwise been in suitable water.
Here I was under the impression that the water in the toilet is the same water as go into the taps, potable water, at least that's common here in Spain. Is it not the same in the US? Then both of them may have stagnant water or even "polluted" water in one way or another, but seems more or less the same.
(Americans also like to put all kinds of chemical pucks/cleaner devices in our toilets, so maybe the author is referring to that?)
Non-poisonous and from what I've heard fairly effective. Not sure if these exists in the US?
Haven't used it so I can't comment on its effectiveness
https://www.costco.com/dynatrap-1-acre-insect-and-mosquito-t...
catches moths as well, so it's not as eco friendly.
If there's a nice shallow pond on the property line 100 feet from your porch (or water filled tires at the sloppy neighbour or whatever it might be), I seriously doubt the efficacy of the method in the article.
This thing would lure in any mosquitoes (and unfortunately other things, as per sibling comment) that fly in your backyard, wherever they come from.
For electricity: That also of course depends, but around here it's not uncommon to have an outlet on the outside of some garage or outbuilding or something. The product I linked have a 50 feet cord as well. The fan noise has not been noticeable at all when I've seen it.
As always, YMMV
https://us-shop.biogents.com/products/bg-mosquitaire-co2
Admittedly, it is more annoying to refill.
That being said, depending on your mosquito species, the Biogents chemical attractant may be even more effective than CO2.
As you can imagine it quickly got invaded by mosquito larvae. By the time I realized I was getting raided by mosquitos each night, much more than previous years.
After getting hold of the bacteria (not sure if it's completely allowed here, only Amazon would sell it to me) mosquitos are completely gone, in the pond and around.
Cool mosquitofish facts:
- An adult female can eat between 300-400 mosquito larvae in a single day.
- They're highly tolerant of low-oxygen and high-temperature water. They're hardy fish.
- They're native to North America, so pose little risk to getting into the water system, as they're already there.
- They're so effective at reducing mosquito populations, some local governments give them out for free.
I have a dog and do a lot of yard work, so I honestly am in my backyard in the summer 5 to 10 times a day. When I have the traps out, I don't think I've gone more than 18 hours without checking them.
They are going to lay eggs somewhere, might as well give them a place to do it and then kill them before they mature. It isn't foolproof, I'm not sure I recommend it to others, but it has worked well for me for years.
What's really happening is that the heat basically overloads (I don't recall the exact biology, but this is the gist) the sensory neurons that would be reporting about the itch. For a short time, until the neurons get unscrambled, the itching sensation is blocked. But it'll likely be back again if you're sensitive to bites.
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC3257884/
e.g., "An explanation of the mechanism of action for the effectiveness of concentrated heat in this study can be found in the activation and suppression of receptors. A rapid temperature increase to a maximum of 51°C leads to an activation of transient receptor potential cation channel subfamily V member 1 (TRPV1) via C- and Aδ-fibers."
But skip the bucket - just buy a bag of Mosquito Bits. Scatter them whereever water settles. Once the organism is established nature takes its course.
I used Mosquito Bits for years to minimize mosquitoes in our condominium project. After two years of doing this, mosquitoes were almost absent.
I'd like to know how to empirically measure a population of mosquitoes to be able to evaluate the over time effectiveness of the treatments I've used as nothing seems to help.
Mosquito tubes with pesticide placed around the property, butane dispersers, zappers, citronella candles. I've tried everything! More than willing to try this.
That being said on an ecological level I am concerned about wiping out sub species non biter mosquitoes.
https://www.alieward.com/ologies/culicidology
Great episode going over them but I'm curious as to whether science should step in and eliminate human menacing mosquitoes. Why? Well clearly we're trying to accomplish it ourselves and there's no selection for sub species here.
We always hear about mosquito science rumors down here in the land of UF inventing love bugs (myth). I wonder if it would be capable of impacting only a single species. (Neutering males with a generic modification ruining breeding efforts.)
Don't use a bug zapper. The zapper does kill things, but... the zapper also attracts bugs from far away into your area. If you have a large property, a zapper placed far away at the boundary can pull bugs away from the living area.
You can pay a company to come spray your yard frequently, but it gets expensive over time. I bought a gas-powered fogger (https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0746S92WW) and the chemicals: Insecticide and Insect Growth Regulator (https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00RW197XG and https://www.amazon.com/dp/B005CT9IDO)
Spray everything once a week initially, then you can try dropping down to every other week. Very few mosquitoes remain.
Further, look into repellents: https://www.nytimes.com/wirecutter/reviews/best-bug-repellen...
Mosquitoes are weak flyers; if you want to defend a static area, like a picnic table, a large fan can be used to keep a breeze up over the area and keep mosquitoes out.
https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/worlds-first-portable-mos...
The energy needed to kill a mosquito shouldn't be more than a joule or so, and regarding blinding, I suggested the microwave spectrum specifically to avoid that problem.
There was an interesting idea the other day for a mini drone that bashes them with its prop - top comment here https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44702833
I don’t know much biology, but is there a general principle where things that have a shorter reproductive cycle tend to “win” these sorts of arms races? I wonder if we will have to occasionally go out and find better copies of the bacteria, haha.
When that happens, natural selection almost always fails to develop a resistance because a resistant organism needs to have a defense against every mechanism of action at the same time. The probability of two beneficial mutations lining up perfectly to create that resistant organism are just extremely unlikely. That’s the basis for modern oncology, which uses combination therapy to prevent tumors from growing resistant to any one drug.
Edit: yep I was right. Against mosquito larvae, Bt produces multiple Cry toxins that bind to specific protein receptors in the microvilli of midgut epithelial cells and Cyt toxins that directly interact with membrane lipids [1]. It’s a triple whammy because there’s six major toxins (Cry4Aa, Cry4Ba, Cry11Aa, Cyt1Aa, Cry10Aa, and Cyt2Ba), Cyt1Aa creates more binding sites for the Cry toxins to attack the cell, and Cyt1Aa itself has two mechanisms of action, one of which disassembles the cell membrane, leading to cell death. That is an incredibly difficult evolutionary hole for an organism to dig itself out of.
I'd prefer not to use the dunks as I'm uncertain they only impact mosquitos, but my insect population seems healthy. I saw a stag beetle two weeks ago! There are certainly fewer spiders though.
One thing this won't help with are the chiggers which also populate my yard. But I'll happily deal with less mosquitos. I'll look forward to giving this a try.
But the only places where they're useful is exurban, edge of the city kinds of places. Places where we've already disturbed the local ecosystem so much that the populations aren't kept in balance. Otherwise your other environments don't need them:
- a place where they're spraying so many pesticides that nothing survives, ie most cities
- a place where the bats, barn swallows and larval predators are so plentiful mosquitos are kept in check.
- a place where there are seasonal swarms of small bugs you simply cant put a dent in. people tend to visit these in-between seasons.
At home though, I use Thermacell. It's the only thing I have ever used that makes a measurable difference. Of course, you need to have one ever four or five feet unless the air is perfectly still but that's a small price.
I keep bottles and sachets of OFF's DEEP WOODS DEET fueled repellant in my car, book bags, its a must-have.
"Their mouthparts include two pairs of cutting "blades" that lacerate skin and cause flow of blood out of the wound, which females lap up with a sponge-like mouthpart."
https://extension.entm.purdue.edu/publichealth/insects/taban...
(If you find that a fan works, that's even better! But I never really find these environmental interventions are good enough, they always get me at some point regardless)
The problem, of course, is that the path of a fan is huge and how many fans are you really going to have around?
Same with incense-style repellents, I'm pretty convinced they reduce the number of mosquitoes but eventually one will be attracted to me via some path where the repellent isn't currently flowing and I'll get bitten regardless. (I think that smoke is also probably pretty bad for you if you use it a lot, too).
And since the difference between one bite and zero bites is a really big deal I usually just go for on-skin repellents.
For fans, I have seen people make mosquito traps by attaching a bug net to a fan, sometimes combined with a CO2 generator as bait. I don't know how effective it is in practice. What we do sometimes is to put a fan under the table, it helps a little against low flying mosquitoes, definitely not as effective as DEET though.
I make a very strong point to not kill arachnids and similar creepers. I'm not a fan of gigantic spooky looking spiders and their homes, but I recognize they are much more efficient at killing my enemy than I am.
It just seems like luck though, I wish there was a way to better support the dragonflies as they seem so helpful.
Add aquatic plants like water lilies, cattails, or submerged plants like hornwort that provide egg laying sites and habitats for dragon fly nymphs. Around the pond plant native plants like tall grasses, sedges, and wildflowers - dragon flies use these as perches for hunting and resting. They especially like plants that grow 3-4 feet tall. You can also plant tall stakes, bamboo poles, or dead branches around the pound and other water features which the dragonflies use as perches for ambush hunting.
You’ll also want to maintain some algae and organic matter in the pond to provide food for the nymphs. It’ll take a year or two to establish themselves, but once they’re going a single dragonfly can eat up to a hundred mosquitos a day so they’re excellent pest control.
https://catchmasterpro.com/products/ovi-catch-ago-mosquito-t...
There are many forms that require even less investment. I made some out of some plastic water bottles and a few pairs of old socks, for example.
There are also lethal ovitraps, which kills the mosquito, but I havent experimented with those.
I’m not sure how to judge their effectiveness. I’m still bit. Is it down some significant percentage? I have no idea. I’m going to continue until I run out of the product. Jury is still out.
https://academic.oup.com/jme/article/39/1/115/879132
choice quote:
> Cliff swallows occasionally eat mosquitoes (Brown and Brown 1996), but they represent an insignificant part of the diet
https://www.mosquitoalert.com/en/depredadores_naturales_de_l...
Put some cloth in a bucket, fill it with water and wait. Once in a week, remove the cloth. This removes all eggs and larvae.
Apparently this is quite effective as mosquito "pheromones" (?) build up in the bucket. This makes the bucket a preferred breeding ground .
I hate cutting my grass and don't spray because I don't want to decimate the ecosystem in my yard (also, I'm lazy and it's hot out, so mowing sucks) but mosquitoes are a real problem.
Am I missing something?
A couple improvements are to: - Add bifenthrin to the sticks - Use a black bucket for better attraction - Consider spinosad vs BTI for longer lasting larvicide action
I have a big Obsidian file if anyone’s interested.
I believe this is quite dependent on the timing in the lifecycle though so maybe there's a design for this that works regardless, just by getting the periodicity right.
Edit: ah no, according to AI, the window before they become dessication-resistand is very short.
However, another idea (actually even simpler, no moving parts): a UV lamp that turns on for an hour every day would probably kill them pretty dead!
That said, the more I garden, the more I find the entire process a bit horrifying. Waging biological warfare on the critters is not what I thought I was signing up for.
Gardening is often much more about preventing the stuff that you don't want to grow from growing, whether that's weeds, microbes, fungus, insects, critters, etc.
Alternate framing: A grey-goo apocalypse caused nanobots to consume and occupy all the convenient parts of the planet, and after billions of years of assimilation and hacking, some of the survivors formed a mobile hivemind megafortress which can "garden" and feel conflicted about it. :p
In other words, it's biological warfare all the way down.
I will try again with buckets. The HW store actually has green buckets so it won't even look like a dump! Thanks for the posting!
A deer fly goes after movement and the color blue, so your traps tend to be sticky traps, like a lowes bucket coated in tanglefoot. but you can't feed them to fish, chickens and they're a pain to clean.
I've been looking for someone to scale up some kind of fan trap for deer flies, like think a bigger version of the Katchy UV traps, but so far nobody has done anything. A fellow had a good example of using blue nitrile gloves blown up and coated in tanglefoot on a stick but while cheap, still messy.
Do that, but paint the fan (with blades) blue. If more movement is needed, you could probably do something pretty simple with a plastic plate painted blue and hung about a foot from the fan intake.
Cleanup isn't great, but it's better than sticky traps. Spray the mesh down with a 50:50 water:alcohol solution as needed to kill live flies in the trap before dumping.
Food grade diatomaceous earth is somewhat safe, and you can sprinkle some around the corners of shelves.
Has anyone found success in this approach? This could be a game changer for my backyard this fall.
I could imagine it working alright if you live in the city or maybe a suburban area.
Not the first one this happened to. Article offers a suggestion:
> If you want to keep squirrels, chipmunks, and other small critters from getting trapped in the bucket, you also could put a piece of hardware cloth or chicken wire over the top of the bucket. To keep it in place, you can use zip ties.
More seriously, Hornets vs Spray Glue https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GCLCewL5NVg
(note: he's still wearing a full bee suit—so hornets are probably best left to pros—unless you're properly equipped & very brave!)