izzi81

Hello! First time posting for quite a long time :-) We've lived in NS for almost 7 years now, and love it here. But what we don't love are the mosquitoes. And blackfly (though at least they're somewhat temporary). I can just about handle them, but they drive my husband spare. For whatever reason he's super attractive to them, and he can't go outside without a cloud of mosquitoes forming. It's pretty miserable, when it would be nice to enjoy the outdoors! I was wondering if anyone had come up with any methods that actually work?
We live in a rural spot, in young woodland (which I know doesn't help much). We also have some swampy areas on our land, which we're working on dealing with but that's certainly not a quick fix. DEET seems to have little effect and I'd rather not coat myself in chemicals unless it really works - which it doesn't. We were given a Mosquito Magnet by a friend which definitely has an impact; it clearly catches mosquitoes and reduces the population, but it's hard to work out exactly where it should be placed for maximum impact, and it doesn't completely deal with the problem. I've seen other gadgets that claim to attract mosquitoes as an egg-laying place and then kills the eggs, but again it's just one device (and it's not cheap, but I'm on the verge of investing just to see if it helps).

Has anyone tried anything that really made a difference? Gadgets? Plants? Sprays? Landscaping? I'd love a solution that at least gives us some of our land to be able to sit out in when the weather is nice! Thanks :-)

Jerseygirl

I am a mozzie magnet. They do not bother with the rest of the family but love me. It usually comes up as a large red itchy circle with a boil in the middle. Usually lasts a month or more. I use a clip on fan device from Lentek...it can also be stood on a table. It’s a little bulky but hey it is the only thing that has ever worked for Me.

bats

Invite Jersey Girl to stay and the mozzies will feed off her and leave you alone.

Otherwise get a batbox or two. A pond with fish and frogs. Plant marigolds and other stinky flowers. It all helps a little but nothing will get rid of them.
Last year I bought two UV lamps from CAA that worked well at zapping the buggers

Jerseygirl

scrubbedexpat091

They mostly leave me alone, but they target my wife. Luckily we don't have super bad mosquito issues in the city, but we can go out to the woods and she will come home with bites galore, and I will have nothing.

dave_j

Apparently mosquitoes are are attracted by carbon dioxide. A colleague of mine tried to set up a business making ripoff mosquito attractor/killers. The gadget featured a cool CO2 generator, basically a small specialised burner, that was designed to attract the little blighters into a cavity where presumably they were electricuted and would collect at the base of the unit to be disposed of later. They were quite expensive I believe and the idea was that he'd make and sell as many as possible at a substantial cut price and hefty profit before the owners of the patent and manufacturers of the much more expensive item caught on.
He never got it off the ground but explained the principle to me.
If your husband drinks beer you might want to read this https://abcnews.go.com/Health/things...ry?id=24676818 it might explain his attractiveness, to mosquitoes that is.
Have a look at https://www.mosquitomagnet.com/store...to-magnet-trap, like I said, they're expensive.

Jerseygirl

It’s not only mozzies that’s a problem with me...It seems to be any biting, stinging bug.

Siouxie

They love to hang around trees - so perhaps clear an area where you can 'sit' and relax.. I've also heard that making the swamp area into a proper pond (dig it out) and then put in a solar fountain or two, and a few fish, can help keep the population down (they don't lay eggs in moving water, preferring stagnant)

One of these might help = covers half acre https://www.canadiantire.ca/en/pdp/s...3720p.html#srp or this slightly bigger one.. https://www.canadiantire.ca/en/pdp/s...3706p.html#srp

scilly

Mosquitoes are really attracted to me, OH not so much.

We have very few problems in the city, although there are more around our area now than there were, say, 10 years ago. That's largely because we have had some high water run-off seasons along the Fraser River and the water rose way above average levels reached over about the previous 20 years. Mosquito eggs can survive many years in dry ground, but hatch very quickly once that ground is swamped with water.

We had a remote cabin on 20 acres of woodland, grassland, running stream that used to flood the low areas every spring, and a few swampy areas around. We had the breakfast, lunch and dinner squads of mosquitoes. I could sit out in the open air for about 1½ hours mid-morning and mid-afternoon.

Best thing is to get yourself a gazebo with mosquito netting surrounding it for when you just want to sit out. The cabin had a screened sun porch off the back of it, and I spent a lot of time there. We got battery-operated "bats" to kill ones that got in the house before we went to bed. Windows were all screened so we were usually safe overnight.

I bought some little fans that emitted a repellent and they worked well if you were sitting or standing still, but not so good for me when moving around. OH found them good when he was working out on the property.

I do try to take great care not to get bitten since I got an infected bite about 4 years ago. Mosquito bites usually come up in a big red lump that stay around for about 10 days, very itchy, then slowly subside. One particular one was from a city mosquito, lump near my elbow went down after the usual time, but it then re-appeared about 3 weeks later. It was very itchy, then a rash developed around it. That was Friday, by Sunday evening the rash had spread across the inside of my elbow, and up and down my arm. I phoned my doctor on Monday morning, got in before lunch time, and they diagnosed erysipelas. They prescribed the strongest antibiotics that you can take by mouth, and said that I was hours away from having to go to Emergency for intravenous treatment.

It worked, although the docs weren't sure, the bite and erysipelas were bad enough but the antibiotic and its affect afterwards was terrible. It took me about 6 weeks to recover.

caretaker

Try mixing 3 parts white vinegar and 1 part lemon dish soap, put it in a spray bottle and apply liberally. It's a trick they used to use up on the northern reserves. If you're sweating, it will wear off in 10 or 15 minutes, but so does Muskol, and this isn't poisonous. I started using it while duck hunting, after Deep Woods Off took the varnish off the stock of my shotgun.

Tumbling_Dice

I am in NS too and can report my first bite of the year. I was out for a run last night, there was a decent breeze, and I found some wee so-and-so on the back of my hand getting wired in. Northern Irish blood seems to be irresistable to them!

My Mrs has whipped up a concoction that involves things like apple cider vinegar, natural oils etc. Can be pricey, and needs regular application, but it tends to mean that they hover around me but never land. We have been using this potion for two years and I have been a lot happier. I used that deet stuff too but I don't like to think what chemicals are getting inside me.

izzi81

Thanks everyone :-) We have a Mosquito Magnet (which is propane powered) which does a reasonable job but can't handle them all. I think you're right about dealing with the swampy areas... that's certainly the plan but we're not sure how big of a job it might be to put in a pond and it's harder at the moment to get advice from landscapers! It was my husband's birthday the other day so I got him a mosquito repeller thing that you clip on to your belt... we shall see whether it actually works or not because they just loooove him. I wasn't sure whether the plant thing - marigolds etc. = actually had any effect or was just an old wives tale. A couple of years ago I tried mixing up a spray that was supposed to repel them from the garden but I don't think it had much effect :-/ As for bats, here in NS almost all the bats were wiped out by a fungal infection, they're really rare now. I'd love to have bats in the garden - used to have them in Scotland - but we have to make do with dragonflies!

Tumbling_Dice it must be the Celtic blood; my husband and I are Scottish and seem to be bothered a lot more than the Canadians!

scilly

I once had a theory, which has never been tested or proved, that a person was usually not bothered too much (or did not have a huge reaction to) biting insects where they grew up. However, they did have reactions when they moved to a different country.

I was not at all bothered by the biting insects in England, areas of Scotland were a bit of a problem. It was not until I moved across to North America that I began to get the huge itchy red swellings that stay around for days. The erysipelas event was just the last straw............ I try not to go out at mosquito time of day or make sure I'm wearing long sleeves etc.

OH doesn't get the same reaction that I do, but he does get bitten more often over here than he did back in the UK.

We found that mosquito repeller that clips to your belt worked well ..... although OH found that it easily unclipped when he was working and bending down, etc. He finally clipped it to the breast pocket of his shirt, with the repeller inside the pocket. It was most effective when you were sitting or standing and not moving around a lot, as you tend to walk out of the cloud of protective repeller.

Paul_Shepherd

Yes, this is what I found, however mosquitos probably vary from region to region….. take Spain and Greece for example went there a lot with my parents on family holidays, my Dad and I were not bothered too much, but my mom and sister were, and even they were not bitten to the scale as what people are here, and none of us ever really used bug spray or other deterents.

Now when I first came here, I was expecting it to be like Spain and Greece. So I remember sitting on a pub patio one summer evening 11 years ago….didnt even give mosquitos a thought, next day I found I had been bitten to death!! My legs were like rice pudding, and the itching drove me insane! Had to cover my legs in calamine lotion to calm the itching….much to the amusement of the locals at aforementioned pub….”ah look spot the fresh off the boat Brit” lol So…..I have found mosquitos here much more aggressive and a greater number of them than in Spain and Greece….

I spend a lot of time outdoors, so now as soon as mosquito hour arrives, I spray up with bug spray….its not nice stuff, but id rather that than get bitten to hell! A friend of mine developed the mosquito dance it looks like some exotic dancer doing the Frank Sinatra New York New York dance…. So…..not a viable solution, he seems to like it though ( he doesn’t like bug spray) lol. Think Ill stick with the bug spray.

Siouxie

Asian Tiger mosquitos always did a number on me when I lived in Hong Kong - I would have huge welts which then bruised.


Weirdly the few bites I got in South Africa barely bothered me at all. In Canada I do get bitten but they don't last too long and just a normal 'itch..... unlike the deer fly / horse fly bites, which hurt like hell!