Insect And Insect Control

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

The most common causes of complaint are mosquitoes in the garden and ants in the house. Enjoying a drink and a chat in the backyard on a warm evening can be miserable 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 manner of insect control? There are a number of methods of dealing with mosquitoes and it is best not to rely on only one course of action. Occasionally, mosquitoes are only a problem for a few days a year, but if they are a constant problem you have to do more.

The best method of control is prevention. Mosquitoes can breed in half-an-inch of water, so the first job is to get rid of their breeding grounds. Make certain that the drains, do really 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 place guppies or goldfish in it, because they like to consume mosquito larvae. This should almost solve your difficulty, but a few mosquitoes will still come in from next door, so as dusk is falling, 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 about 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 put insect repellent on your skin or / and clothes and have a tennis racquet style insect zapper for the one or two persistent mosquitoes.

Ants will come into your home to live occasionally, but usually they have a nest outdoors but they have found 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 work surfaces down often? A small sticky patch of sugary water can feed a host of ants all day, so your kitchen does need to be kept extremely clean.

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

The ants will eat 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 get groomed by their comrades, who will also get it on them and die. This process normally takes a few weeks to a couple of months, but you will see a big drop in ant numbers within a week.

Owen Jones, the writer of this piece writes on a number of subjects, but is currently involved with finding a home remededy for mosquito bites. If you would like to know more, please go to our website at Getting Rid of Mosquito Bites.