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Buzz Off: Why Your Neighbor's Yard Matters in Mosquito Control · PEST PROSpectives

• 0:09
  Richard Piet: Richard Piet here.
• 0:10
  Richard Piet: We are back with another episode of PEST PROSpectives, with the PEST PROS of Michigan, talking about those pests that well, you know.
• 0:20
  Richard Piet: Some of them have some health risks.
• 0:21
  Richard Piet: Some of them are just darn annoying.
• 0:23
  Richard Piet: Some of them are both, and maybe mosquitoes fall under that category.
• 0:29
  Richard Piet: We're talking now about how to reduce the incidence of mosquitoes in your zone, in your yard.
• 0:37
  Richard Piet: Amber Byers is back with us.
• 0:38
  Richard Piet: Associate Certified Entomologist.
• 0:41
  Richard Piet: Overseas Field Operations at the Pest Pros of Michigan.
• 0:45
  Richard Piet: Hello, Amber.
• 0:47
  Amber Byars: Hey Richard.
• 0:48
  Richard Piet: Well, this is one of those.
• 0:50
  Richard Piet: I think that falls under both categories.
• 0:52
  Richard Piet: They're annoying and they carry some ailments, do they not, mosquitoes?
• 0:58
  Amber Byars: Absolutely.
• 0:58
  Amber Byars: They're like the nuisance and annoyance pests, but they also spread diseases.
• 1:02
  Amber Byars: So it's something that clients are always worried about contracting something West Nile virus, triple E.
• 1:08
  Amber Byars: And then the annoying part is if you're a person that likes to enjoy the outdoors, you don't want to be getting attacked by mosquitoes the whole time, especially in your area of your yard.
• 1:19
  Amber Byars: It's kind of your serene place to be.
• 1:21
  Amber Byars: The quality of life should be great out there.
• 1:24
  Amber Byars: It won't be if you're getting attacked by mosquitoes all night.
• 1:27
  Richard Piet: Yeah, and so we're going to talk about how you, as a professional, handle that.
• 1:32
  Richard Piet: But first we want to understand why they hang around and what kind of an environment makes them comfortable and some of the things that folks can do on their own to mitigate that.
• 1:44
  Richard Piet: But let's talk about this why are mosquitoes comfortable?
• 1:48
  Richard Piet: What is it about our yards that we might be doing that makes it inviting?
• 1:53
  Amber Byars: Yeah, absolutely so.
• 1:55
  Amber Byars: The thing to know about mosquitoes first of all is a little bit about their biology and their life cycle.
• 1:59
  Amber Byars: Mosquitoes have to have a water source in order for them to breed.
• 2:04
  Amber Byars: Their eggs are going to have a water source.
• 2:05
  Amber Byars: In order for them to breed, their eggs are going to develop in water.
• 2:07
  Amber Byars: Their life cycle starts in water and then ends in the environment that we're in.
• 2:13
  Amber Byars: So they lay their eggs on top of water, either in rafts or singularly, and that's where their development happens.
• 2:21
  Amber Byars: So the first thing that we think about on a property is where's the water source?
• 2:26
  Amber Byars: Sometimes that's nowhere near the property.
• 2:29
  Amber Byars: That's something to be considerate of.
• 2:32
  Amber Byars: The water source is three houses down, an acre away, in the swampy areas of the woods.
• 2:38
  Amber Byars: It's very hard to say.
• 2:40
  Richard Piet: We might not have control over that.
• 2:42
  Amber Byars: Yes, exactly.
• 2:43
  Amber Byars: So the water source is one thing, and then vegetation, right, adult mosquitoes rest upside down, typically in shaded areas.
• 2:51
  Amber Byars: So they're going to be resting on the leaves of trees, under the deck, in leaf piles, under the play set, you know, in areas away from the sun.
• 3:00
  Amber Byars: So typically in the trees, in the shade, you know, bushes, shrubs we don't really pay attention to too much higher than our head level for treatment.
• 3:10
  Amber Byars: But yeah, and some of our clients don't have any of that on their property, which is interesting.
• 3:15
  Amber Byars: But mosquitoes need to feed on blood in order to reproduce, so if there's humans around, there could be mosquitoes around.
• 3:24
  Richard Piet: So the notion of eliminating some of where they might breed or feel comfortable might be out of our control.
• 3:32
  Richard Piet: But let's just talk about that for a second.
• 3:34
  Richard Piet: If we have a pond in our yard, that could be a nice comfortable spot for them, right?
• 3:39
  Amber Byars: Yeah, absolutely, especially if that pond sits kind of stagnant, not a lot of movement to the water.
• 3:45
  Amber Byars: We're not really worried about, you know, fast moving streams, bigger lakes that have a lot of waves.
• 3:52
  Amber Byars: We're talking water that stays somewhat still so that that life cycle can move and not be affected.
• 3:59
  Richard Piet: What about a pool?
• 4:00
  Richard Piet: Do they like pools?
• 4:02
  Amber Byars: Pools are a valid place again.
• 4:03
  Amber Byars: If it's standing water for a while, you know it's not being used a lot, if it's not being chemically treated or yeah.
• 4:11
  Amber Byars: So again, stagnant water is more so, especially with certain species of mosquitoes.
• 4:17
  Richard Piet: Yeah Well, let's stick with that a second.
• 4:19
  Richard Piet: So if we have a stagnant pond on our property, how do we make it less attractive for them?
• 4:26
  Richard Piet: Obviously, we might want to keep the pond around, or at least getting rid of the pond is not an option.
• 4:31
  Richard Piet: So what do we do?
• 4:33
  Amber Byars: Yeah, the first thing that we want to focus on is, or that we think about professionally, is what stage of life is in that pond and how can we control it before it becomes an issue?
• 4:42
  Amber Byars: Right, so we're talking larviciding that area.
• 4:46
  Amber Byars: We want to get as much larvicide in the pertaining areas that we can to not allow them to become adult mosquitoes.
• 4:54
  Amber Byars: If we can control the larva, then we're in fact controlling the adults.
• 5:00
  Amber Byars: Interesting and now something else to think about is if that pond is not on your property, how are we going to control it Right?
• 5:07
  Amber Byars: One really cool product that just came out recently is a.
• 5:11
  Amber Byars: It's a 25 B product because it's eco-friendly, it's not a lot of pesticides being broadcast treated, it's called into care and it's a bucket that houses water, has an adult aside and a larva side.
• 5:24
  Amber Byars: So if your property doesn't have the water source, create one and then the mosquitoes that breed in that water source will take that product into every other water source they go to and effectively pass larvicide not just in your property but to the pond down the street.
• 5:43
  Richard Piet: Wow so if you can get your neighbor to go along down the street, Wow so if you can get your neighbor to go along, you might be helping the whole neighborhood Absolutely.
• 5:50
  Amber Byars: Neighbors are really important to get on if we're doing liquid applications.
• 5:55
  Amber Byars: So if we're going to be doing broadcast treatments to one yard, we know that mosquitoes do not discriminate and they will cross that property line to go over to the neighbors Right.
• 6:07
  Amber Byars: So if that neighbor is also getting treated it's more effective.
• 6:13
  Richard Piet: Yeah, Makes sense.
• 6:14
  Richard Piet: For some reason they don't pay any attention to the borders of our property.
• 6:19
  Amber Byars: Yeah, I wish we had a treatment that was effectively like a bubble around the home.
• 6:24
  Richard Piet: Yeah.
• 6:24
  Amber Byars: But we don't.
• 6:25
  Amber Byars: You know these, these treatments aren't magic.
• 6:27
  Amber Byars: They can only do so much, you know.
• 6:29
  Richard Piet: Well, let's elaborate on that.
• 6:31
  Richard Piet: You talked about a broadcast treatment, so what does that really mean?
• 6:34
  Richard Piet: You can apply this treatment in a yard, let's say mine, but does that really keep out those that are breeding in my neighbor's yard from coming over?
• 6:48
  Amber Byars: Yeah, that's a really good question.
• 6:49
  Amber Byars: The answer is it absolutely does not do that.
• 6:52
  Amber Byars: Now what the broadcast treatments do is gives our clients a reduction in population, a reduction in activity One of the things that we talk about when we're signing somebody up, just so that their expectations are clear.
• 7:06
  Amber Byars: You know, we don't want to disappoint anybody.
• 7:08
  Amber Byars: We want them to know exactly what they're getting into, and broadcast treatments are only going to reduce the population a certain amount.
• 7:16
  Amber Byars: 60 to 70% is an appropriate amount to be reduced.
• 7:19
  Amber Byars: However, you're still going to see and have mosquitoes.
• 7:23
  Amber Byars: That's why we look at things in a holistic way.
• 7:26
  Amber Byars: What else can we focus on?
• 7:28
  Amber Byars: What else can we do to make this treatment more effective?
• 7:31
  Amber Byars: We can talk about larvaciding.
• 7:33
  Amber Byars: We can talk about adding into care buckets to the property.
• 7:36
  Amber Byars: We can talk about getting the neighbors on a neighborhood discount to treat multiple properties on one street.
• 7:44
  Amber Byars: All of those things combined is what's going to be really effective.
• 7:47
  Amber Byars: The broadcast treatments alone are great.
• 7:50
  Amber Byars: I use it on my house but it's not a complete elimination, unfortunately.
• 7:55
  Richard Piet: Well, I have to say 60 to 70 percent is pretty good.
• 7:59
  Amber Byars: Yeah, it is pretty good.
• 8:00
  Amber Byars: Yeah, and the trade-off is if I don't do this, the population's at 100%, right, yeah right.
• 8:06
  Amber Byars: So I know that it is a little disappointing when people are getting bit still, but it would be so much worse without it is the truth, you know.
• 8:14
  Richard Piet: So it's an interesting point and something to file away.
• 8:17
  Richard Piet: Folks, If you have a neighborhood that might like to band together and try to have a broadcast treatment across several yards, Pest Pros is mindful of that and you'll offer sort of a volume discount of sorts.
• 8:32
  Amber Byars: Yeah, absolutely.
• 8:33
  Amber Byars: We love doing neighborhood discounts because it's so much easier on our routes.
• 8:37
  Amber Byars: It's so much easier for efficiency and then it's more effective for our clients.
• 8:41
  Amber Byars: It's just a win-win win all around.
• 8:43
  Richard Piet: Yeah, in the meantime, there are things that we can do in our own yards to further mitigate mosquitoes.
• 8:52
  Richard Piet: Right, for example, talk about what we can do around the yard ourselves.
• 8:57
  Richard Piet: That will be helpful.
• 8:59
  Amber Byars: Absolutely Just maintaining your yard is going to be one way that you can do this on your own making sure your grass and your shrubs are trimmed up.
• 9:19
  Amber Byars: Adult mosquitoes are resting there, remember.
• 9:20
  Amber Byars: So if you eliminate the places kids, toys, pools, dump trucks that can hold sand, just containers right that will fill with water when it rains and that will become a breeding site all of a sudden.
• 9:33
  Amber Byars: So we spend a lot of time before we start service.
• 9:36
  Amber Byars: We spend a lot of time going around dumping out water, letting clients know hey, you might want to, you might want to keep these put away during the day and nights, unless you're using them, or else you're creating breeding grounds here.
• 9:48
  Amber Byars: So just making sure that there's minimal clutter.
• 9:52
  Amber Byars: Leaf piles are a big one.
• 9:54
  Amber Byars: Getting rid of leaf piles because mosquitoes will hide and harbor there in overwinter.
• 9:59
  Richard Piet: Oh really.
• 9:59
  Amber Byars: Yeah, I made the mistake last year of not getting my leaves taken care of, because I heard that they're really great for mulch for the next season for the lawn yeah.
• 10:09
  Amber Byars: Well, I go to get rid of some leaves this spring before I mowed and mosquitoes just blew up out of that pile of leaves.
• 10:17
  Amber Byars: Just overwintered mosquitoes.
• 10:19
  Amber Byars: It was wild.
• 10:21
  Richard Piet: What do they think?
• 10:21
  Richard Piet: This is Florida.
• 10:22
  Richard Piet: I know it's not that warm, you know.
• 10:28
  Amber Byars: They don't care yeah.
• 10:29
  Richard Piet: Interesting, so let's talk about some of the DIY stuff that's out there that we hear about.
• 10:35
  Richard Piet: What comes to mind immediately is citronella, right, yes, Light that citronella candle, there you go.
• 10:40
  Richard Piet: Light that citronella candle, there you go.
• 10:42
  Richard Piet: And the stuff we spray on ourselves with maybe deet in it or other stuff mosquito repellent are all those helpful?
• 10:52
  Amber Byars: Yeah, absolutely.
• 10:52
  Amber Byars: I recommend that all the time, especially for clients that you know we cannot do the treatment for certain reasons, whether there's limitations on the budget or they're going to go spend time at a friend's property and they're worried about these things.
• 11:07
  Amber Byars: Then we can talk about all of the repellent products that they can use personally.
• 11:11
  Amber Byars: And the spray that you put on works well.
• 11:14
  Amber Byars: Again, it's only as effective as it can be, so things break through that barrier still.
• 11:19
  Amber Byars: But the citronella lavender just natural essential oil deterrents are great.
• 11:25
  Amber Byars: Also, just having open airflow and having like an open area that you want to spend your time in is good as well.
• 11:33
  Amber Byars: But, yeah, that citronella maintaining your lawn and the over-the-counter sprays that you can buy work great.
• 11:40
  Richard Piet: That's an interesting thought that you could be sitting outside on your patio and just put on a fan that oscillates.
• 11:48
  Amber Byars: Yep.
• 11:48
  Richard Piet: It's like a windstorm for them, right.
• 11:51
  Amber Byars: It is.
• 11:51
  Amber Byars: They're very weak flyers, so any type of airflow that we can give to obstruct their pathway is going to be helpful.
• 11:59
  Richard Piet: Right, let's talk about the products that you use and what's available out there.
• 12:05
  Richard Piet: Some things, of course, are pesticides and insecticides, and you know all about that stuff, and then some things are green, right.
• 12:12
  Amber Byars: Yeah.
• 12:12
  Amber Byars: So we have a lot of clients call with well, is this good for the environment?
• 12:16
  Amber Byars: Do you guys have any eco-friendly options?
• 12:19
  Amber Byars: Absolutely we do.
• 12:21
  Amber Byars: There are some things to consider about eco-friendly products.
• 12:24
  Amber Byars: Eco-friendly products work well in there, work well for certain environments, especially if there's a lot of flowering plants, vegetation, consumable items, fruit and vegetable trees and things like that is they don't last as long as your standard insecticide does.
• 12:43
  Amber Byars: They break down quicker.
• 12:45
  Amber Byars: They don't have the strength that the normal insecticides do.
• 12:48
  Amber Byars: So it's like take your pick, whichever one works best for our clients.
• 12:53
  Amber Byars: We're going to do both, as long as they know the risks of the product breaking down quicker.
• 12:58
  Amber Byars: That means we may have to treat more often.
• 13:00
  Amber Byars: That means we might have to do instead of our typical mosquito service is monthly.
• 13:05
  Amber Byars: We do monthly service with eco-friendly products.
• 13:09
  Amber Byars: We recommend bi-weekly, which is twice a month, because we know from experience and just based off the product that it's not going to hold on as long, and so if clients are really worried about the environment, then that might not be the best choice, because if we're sending somebody out twice a month in a vehicle that's pumping out all this gas into the environment, that might not be so eco-friendly at that point.
• 13:36
  Amber Byars: Defeating the purpose, yeah, but if they're doing it for reasons of, you know, not wanting to harm the pollinators, or they have a lot of vegetation on their property that they don't want insecticides around, then great, that's a really good option.
• 13:50
  Amber Byars: Or if they'd rather just feel better about using an eco-friendly product, we're all for it.
• 13:56
  Richard Piet: All right.
• 13:57
  Richard Piet: Well, here's the point.
• 13:58
  Richard Piet: There are options and of course, the pest pros of Michigan know about those options.
• 14:04
  Richard Piet: So you can ask Amber and her colleagues about exactly what's happening with each of these and you can make an informed decision about how that works.
• 14:14
  Richard Piet: You said monthly for pesticides and insecticides.
• 14:18
  Richard Piet: When does that start in our Michigan climate and when is it over?
• 14:22
  Amber Byars: Yeah, so with Michigan.
• 14:23
  Amber Byars: It's weird because sometimes the season stays longer, comes later or early, but typically April through October is a great plan for mosquito treatments.
• 14:34
  Amber Byars: Last year we were treating into the early weeks of November because there was just weeks where it was still nice out and people still wanted to be getting treated.
• 14:42
  Amber Byars: Sometimes we've started in March because the season broke early.
• 14:46
  Amber Byars: So it all depends on when the weather starts getting nice and when the mosquitoes start moving around.
• 14:51
  Amber Byars: But typically it's a seven month rotation, april through October.
• 14:55
  Richard Piet: All right, and you're monitoring that, of course.
• 14:57
  Richard Piet: So if it's warm early or warm late, you're going to respond accordingly.
• 15:03
  Amber Byars: We absolutely do.
• 15:04
  Amber Byars: We like to blast all of our clients with a get started early email, especially because we bundle our package is mosquito fleet and tick, so if the ticks are out early we will blast the clients with hey, we can get granular treatment started early.
• 15:21
  Amber Byars: Let us know if you want to get going before April.
• 15:24
  Richard Piet: And let me just tell you, the ticks are out there.
• 15:27
  Amber Byars: Yeah.
• 15:28
  Richard Piet: I pulled one off myself a couple of weeks ago.
• 15:30
  Richard Piet: If you're going to be out in the yard, I wasn't even out in the yard, I was just out walking on a trail.
• 15:37
  Richard Piet: Yeah, it's not like I ran off into the brush or anything.
• 15:41
  Richard Piet: I was on the trail.
• 15:42
  Richard Piet: He found me anyway.
• 15:43
  Richard Piet: So, yeah, think about that.
• 15:45
  Richard Piet: Anyway, if you're thinking about what kind of pests mosquitoes are going to be in your backyards, for example, or front yards this year and you want to deal with it, reach out to the Pest Pros of Michigan.
• 15:59
  Richard Piet: Amber and the team are ready to answer your questions and talk about your specific situation.
• 16:06
  Richard Piet: The link is in the show notes.
• 16:07
  Richard Piet: The number is in there.
• 16:09
  Richard Piet: They are ready to help.
• 16:10
  Richard Piet: Amber Byers, pest Pros of Michigan.
• 16:13
  Richard Piet: Thank you, thank you so much.
• 16:15
  Richard Piet: Now make sure you subscribe to Pest Prospectives, where you get podcasts.
• 16:20
  Richard Piet: We'll have more of these episodes coming soon.