ARDMORE, MONTGOMERY COUNTY (KYW Newsradio) — We swat, we zap, but what we shouldn't do is spray pesticides on our lawns to get rid of mosquitoes. Mosquitoes are certainly a summer nuisance. They can spread disease, and their bites can leave you scratching for days. So it’s only natural that we want to avoid them.
However, when you fog or spray your lawn, chances are you're using a broad insecticide that kills all insects like bees, butterflies, and lightning bugs. And, mosquitoes, like it or not, are an important part of our ecosystem, so killing them off entirely would be harmful.
There are more effective, environmentally friendly ways to battle the biting buggers without harming beneficial insects and wildlife.
Joe MacNeal has a yard full of native plants that attract all kinds of beneficial insects, including a swarm of bees that are so tiny you have to squint to see them on his Goldenrod.
Those bees would be goners if MacNeal weren't so careful about how he fights mosquitoes. MacNeal uses mosquito buckets. He takes a 5-gallon bucket, fills it with water, stuffs some garden debris in there like grass clippings or cut perennials, and then tosses in a quarter of a Mosquito Dunk. The dunk contains a natural soil bacterium called Bacillus thuringiensis israelensis or Bti.
“The female mosquitoes will be attracted to the kind of funkiness of the water in the bucket with the fermenting grass, the hay, or cut perennials. They'll lay their eggs in that water....the mosquito larvae will eat the Bti and they will die. So that is an ecological trap for them," he said.
Bti specifically targets mosquito larvae and black flies. It's safe for other insects and wildlife. You want to cover the top of your mosquito bucket with chicken wire to prevent critters from falling in. Place the buckets around your yard away from things like patios and porches.
Villanova professor and ecologist Samantha Chapman said the buckets are a great way to cut down on mosquitoes because one adult can lay tons of eggs.
"Until you stop that egg production turning into larvae, turning into adults, it's really hard to stop mosquitoes from becoming abundant in a given place," she said.
Chapman said fogging isn't effective because it only kills the adult mosquitoes that are in your yard at that exact moment.
She said another natural way you can control mosquitoes is by planting native plants to attract birds, bats, and dragonflies, which all feast on mosquitoes. That’s the important role mosquitoes play in our ecosystem.
MacNeal has been using mosquito buckets for about 5 years. He places three buckets around his house. He notices a difference about a week after putting them out.
“You have to go through a life cycle of the mosquitoes. The mosquitoes that are around, they're going to stay around until they die, but their offspring are not going to be around because they've died in your bucket,” he explained.
You can find the 5-gallon buckets and Mosquito Dunks at hardware and garden stores and online. You should add a quarter of a dunk to your bucket every 30 days. When summer’s over, you can dump out the bucket in your yard or garden.