Mosquito Magnet

[bobbledude25]

Has anyone tried one of these machines? Pretty expensive but I have heard they work well. I swear every mosquito in Waukesha county migrates to my yard. I need to get rid of these things!

[logan82]

After a little internet research it appears there is a mosquito specialist right here in our own state at Madison. Susan M. Paskewitz There is also a nice website about mosquito products. Looks like they even tried the product you are looking at.

[InsomniacInkRoss]

I knew a few employees at Menards who said the Mosquito Magnet got returned at a very high rate, would not recommend.

 

I always felt the coolest way would be to get a bathouse, bats eat an absurd amount of skeeters in a day.

[InsomniacInkRoss]

http://www.bestnest.com/bestnest/bat-houses.asp

 

"Did you know ... that one small brown bat can eat up to 1,200 mosquitoes

in a single hour!?"

[logan82]

From the previously provided link.

Bats http://www.entomology.wisc.edu/mosquitosite/media/Little%20brown%20bat.jpg

There

is no evidence that increasing the population of bats in an area

will

reduce the numbers

of mosquitoes enough to affect human biting rates.

The

claim that bats are particularly valuable as mosquito predators

may have

started with a mistaken assumption based on a real scientific

finding

in the laboratory. Research conducted in the late 1950s showed

that bats released in a room filled with mosquitoes could catch up

to

10 mosquitoes per minute (Griffin et al. 1960). The results have

been extrapolated to suggest that wild bats can consume 600

mosquitoes

per hour. Using that figure, a colony of 500 bats might remove

250,000

mosquitoes each hour and theoretically afford mosquito control for

an

entire neighborhood. However, a bat's behavior when locked in a

room with nothing to feed upon but mosquitoes tells us nothing

about

behavior in the wild where the community of insects that can serve

as

food is much more varied.

The diet of

wild

bats has been analyzed by dissecting stomach contents or

examining fecal

pellets. This research has shown that insectivorous bats are

opportunistic

feeders and that mosquitoes usually

make up a very small percentage of their natural diet. For

example, a look at fecal pellets for the little brown bat showed

71%

small moths, 16.8% spiders and 1.8% mosquitoes (Whitaker and

Lawhead,

1992) while the diet of the big brown bat was dominated by

beetles and

caddisflies (reviewed in Agosta 2002). Providing houses to

enhance

bat populations is an admirable activity for conservation

purposes but

it is not likely to help with a mosquito problem.

Some of this

information

was modified from http://www.rci.rutgers.edu/~insects/proprom.htm

[InsomniacInkRoss]

Well shoot. I still think it would be cool.

[bobbledude25]

Logan- Thanks for that link. Did it say anywhere on there what worked best in the tests? I couldn't find anything really

[burniebrewer]

Is there any truth to the theory that a breeze or wind keeps mosquitoes away? We were having skeeter issues, so I put a fan on the deck and that seemed to work. Just lucky?

[logan82]

It is harder for mosquitoes to land when it it windy. We use fans at work all the time to keep the mosquitoes away even if it is already cool.

[brucrustu]

Anybody remember the plastic bag full of water hung in the visitors dugout at miller park a couple years ago? by the astros?

 

I recommend lots of bags of water hung from the trees.

[dadofandrew]

Anything with deet in it works best. Put it on every 30 minutes or so, my son got eaten alive up at the in-law's cabin, they put stuff on him twice in 2+ hours, but it wears off.

[pitchleague]

it's threads like these that make me appreciate living in AZ more and more.

 

Yeah, we have to bear temperatures resembling those on planet Mercury, but at least I'm not full of itchy red welts!

[pretendastronaut]

I wonder if the fan works not so much because of the wind, but because it helps obscure so many of the things that attract mosquitos, like chemical secretions and heat signatures?

[bobbledude25]

Anybody remember the plastic bag full of water hung in the visitors dugout at miller park a couple years ago? by the astros?

 

I recommend lots of bags of water hung from the trees.

Ha. Yeah I remember that. I heard this works for flies better then mosquitoes though

 

[logan82]

I wonder if the fan works not so much because of the wind, but because it helps obscure so many of the things that attract mosquitos, like chemical secretions and heat signatures?

That could be. I admit I have been bit while in front of fans but it has always been on the side of my body not facing the fan or at the edge of the area where the fan is blowing.(bit on legs when fan was blowing at upper body)

[bacon06]

Jack Handy recommends hanging a big bag of blood at your outdoor gathering.

[And That]

Import dragonflies.

[mothershipconnection]

it's threads like these that make me appreciate living in AZ more and more. Yeah, we have to bear temperatures resembling those on planet Mercury, but at least I'm not full of itchy red welts!

 

The great thing about north Texas is that we get the pleasure of both. I was so sweaty mowing the lawn today that I had to reassure myself that I had not peed my pants, maybe the DEET running into my eyes clouded my thinking.

[eanelson4]

Anything with deet in it works best. Put it on every 30 minutes or so, my son got eaten alive up at the in-law's cabin, they put stuff on him twice in 2+ hours, but it wears off.

This.

 

The New England Journal of Medicine did a study a while back and determined that deet products were by far the best. Specifically, they recommended OFF Back Woods. Mosquitos are attracted to the CO2 that is put out by our body and deet masks it the best. Products such as the mosquito magnet are simply meant to work as a source of CO2 and are notoriously uneffective.

[TooLiveBrew]

DEET isn't something to take lightly, that's the drawback with it.

 

- http://www.organicconsumers.org/bodycare/deet.cfm

- http://www.atsdr.cdc.gov/...deet/health-effects.html

 

There are plenty of good alternatives to using products with DEET, and personally I would never let a child use it. I try to find products that utilize Picaridin, which has been rated out very favorably, without the risk of severe side-effects. Here's an Oregon State fact sheet on Picaridin

[eanelson4]

DEET isn't something to take lightly, that's the drawback with it.

 

- http://www.organicconsumers.org/bodycare/deet.cfm

- http://www.atsdr.cdc.gov/...deet/health-effects.html

 

There are plenty of good alternatives to using products with DEET, and personally I would never let a child use it. I try to find products that utilize Picaridin, which has been rated out very favorably, without the risk of severe side-effects. Here's an Oregon State fact sheet on Picaridin

I'm going to have to disagree and go with the New England Journal of Medicine on this one:

 

"DEET has a remarkablesafety profile after 40 years of use and nearly 8 billion humanapplications.³⁵ Fewer than 50 cases of serious toxic effectshave been documented in the medical literature since 1960, andthree quarters of them resolved without sequelae.^35,37 Manyof these cases of toxic effects involved long-term, heavy, frequent,or whole-body application of DEET. No correlation has been foundbetween the concentration of DEET used and the risk of toxiceffects."

 

Basically, "when applied with common sense,DEET-based repellents can be expected to provide a safe as wellas a long-lasting repellent effect. Until a better repellentbecomes available, DEET-based repellents remain the gold standardof protection under circumstances in which it is crucial tobe protected against arthropod bites that might transmit disease."

 

The study I talked about earlier can be read HERE. The safety of DEET is referenced in the final paragraph.

[dadofandrew]

To me, worrying about deet side effects would be the same as bypassing vaccines due to Jenny McCarthy having autism fears about them. As gorgeous as she is, I'll go with the thousands of very intelligent people who have studied this and think she's a raving loon.

 

50 cases in 50 years is likely to occur with any product. Considering that lyme disease also has nasty repercussions, I'll take my chances and bathe in Off like I have for years.

[mothershipconnection]

The McCarthy/Andrew Wakefield nonsense has had very damaging effects on public health, as it has not only prevented children from getting life-preserving vaccines, but will seriously damage the credibility of the next group who finds a real link between something common and a dangerous side-effect. Those idiots cried wolf when there wasn't even a Dachshund to be found.