Insect Control

Mankind has to live with insects because we could not live without them. Insects are essential for clearing rubbish both human and natural, but sometimes they become a nuisance and that is when we have to carry out some local, temporary insect control. This is normally when insects make a pest of themselves within our personal space.

The most common causes of complaint are mosquitoes in the backyard and ants in the home. Enjoying a drink and a chat in the garden on a warm evening can be wretched if there are mosquitoes making constant attacks and it is a constant worry if you always have to protect yourself and your food from foraging ants.

So, what can you do in the way of insect control? There are a number of ways of countering mosquitoes and it is best not to rely on only one procedure. Occasionally, mosquitoes are just difficult for a few days a year, but if they are a constant problem you have to do more.

The best course of action of control is prevention. Mosquitoes can breed in half-an-inch of water, so the first job is to eradicate their breeding grounds. Make sure that the drains, do actually drain away and that the gutters are not blocked. Then up-turn anything in the backyard that can hold water: flower pots, buckets, containers and boats etc or sheet them over.

If you have a water feature put guppies or goldfish in it, because they like to eat mosquito larvae. This should almost solve your problem, but a couple of mosquitoes will still come in from next door, so as dusk approaches, hang one of those fly zappers near where you sit.

They have a black or ultraviolet light within an electrified coil and are very effectual. Hang one roughly six or seven feet off the ground. Some models claim to be able to clear half an acre of airspace.

Finally, on a very local level you can rub insect repellent on your skin or / and clothes and have a tennis racquet style insect zapper for the one or two determined mosquitoes.

Ants will come into your house to live occasionally, but usually they have a nest outdoors but they have discovered a good, regular source of food in your house, so they have added it to their list of places to visit every day.

So, think about your house carefully, is it a bit grubby? Do you often leave food out? Do you do the washing up regularly and do you wipe the prep surfaces down frequently? A small sticky patch of sugary water could feed a host of ants all day, so your kitchen does have to be kept really clean.

If that is not the cause of their visits, you will have to find their nest. That is not a problem, merely follow a line of ants back to their nest which is almost certainly a hole in the ground. Buy one of those poisons which kills by poisoning and by contact. Place some on a piece of tile of glass and put it outside their nest.

The ants will consume it and die and get it on them and die. They will take it back inside and feed it to the others who will die and they will be groomed by their colleagues, who will also get it on them and die. This process normally takes a couple of weeks to a few months, but you will see a big drop in ant numbers within a week.

Owen Jones, the writer of this article writes on several topics, but is currently concerned with finding a home remedy for mosquito bites. If you would like to know more, please go to our website at Getting Rid of Mosquito Bites.