Spring has come early to Georgia this year, bringing gentle
showers, warm days and
swarms of mosquitoes.
“Without question, we’ve got some big mosquito populations much
earlier than
normal,” said Maxcy Nolan, an entomologist with the University
of Georgia Extension
Service.
Nolan said county extension agents throughout Georgia have
called him with
mosquito-control problems. “It seems to be more of a problem in
south Georgia,
though,” he said.
Those wonderfully warm, unseasonably pleasant days have
apparently come with a
price tag. “We seem to have had the warm weather and the
moisture at just the right
times for mosquitoes,” Nolan said.
Mosquitoes are mostly a nuisance with their painful bites, he
said. But they can carry
encephalitis to people and horses and heartworms to dogs.
Mosquitoes don’t normally reach troublesome numbers this early
in the year. “These
things fluctuate,” he said. “But we do have a heavy population
of mosquitoes earlier
than normal.”
Don’t count on that mid-March cold snap to take care of the
early mosquito problem.
“It’s just going to slow them down a little,” he said. “A freeze
will kill a ton of adult
mosquitoes. And a hard freeze will ice over the water and kill
the larvae and pupae.
But we’re not likely to get a hard freeze.”
The early outbreak of mosquitoes may have caught some cities off-
guard with their
control programs.
“We learned from the 1994 flood that hardly anyone is prepared
to handle things like
this,” Nolan said. “We need to have equipment in good operating
condition for heavy
outbreaks when they happen.”
Nolan said some municipalities will use their mosquito-control
equipment in nearby
rural areas. Most rural homeowners, though, are on their own.
Whether you live in town or in the country, you can do some
things to help ease your
mosquito woes.
“The critical thing is to be sure you get rid of the trash where
mosquitoes breed,”
Nolan said. “Spring cleaning is a great time to take care of
mosquito problems.”
Clean out gutters and pick up any trash that could hold water.
Look carefully. A
discarded cup or can — even a plastic food wrapper — can be a
breeding place for
mosquitoes.
Remove old tires or drill holes in those used for playground
equipment to allow them to
drain. Check tarps on boats or other equipment that may collect
water in pockets or
indentions.
Remove any trash pile and clean up other areas that can shelter
adult mosquitoes.
A thorough cleanup helps because “99 percent of the mosquitoes
that bite people come
from within a few hundred feet,” Nolan said. “Most inland
mosquitoes don’t fly far.”
If you live out in the country, with no municipal control
program, be sure to use
repellants and wear proper clothing outside, he said. You can
also buy commercial
foggers, from aerosol cans to larger hand-held products, that
will kill mosquitoes.
Check your screen doors and windows to make sure they aren’t
torn. And have fly
swatters and aerosol products ready for the pesky biters that
get inside despite your best
efforts.
Well-managed ponds aren’t good breeding grounds for mosquitoes,
Nolan said. Wave
action keeps larvae from surviving in open areas. Fish feed on
the larvae, too.
In shallow edges the fish and waves can’t reach, you may want to
use a donut-shaped
Bacillus thuringiensis (Bt) product.
“It floats and treats 100 square feet of water for 30 days,” he
said. “You can get them
in local farm supply stores or mail-order catalogs. They run
about $11 for seven
‘donuts.’ And they won’t harm fish, pets, livestock or
people.”
