How to Kill Mosquitoes in Metro Houston

You can do things as a homeowner to kill mosquitoes, and there are things that BUGCO® Pest Control can do to help you reduce the populations of mosquitoes biting you and your family. BUGCO’s Darrell Mather covers all of this in the video. Contact BUGCO® Pest Control for more information.

Summary of the How to Kill Mosquitoes Video

How Can Homeowners Reduce Biting Populations of Mosquitoes

In a survey, it was found that Houston ranks #4 in the US in mosquitoes. They are a massive problem in our area, and they can be active during warmer periods any time of the year. Mosquitoes breed in moist areas around your home. So the more you can do to eliminate standing water, the more you’ll be able to reduce the populations of mosquitoes bothering you and your family.

  1. Look for standing water around your home that could provide mosquitoes with a place to breed. They can lay eggs in something as small as a bottle cap of water, so you should remove anything that could catch and hold water for several days.
  2. Long grass can provide a breeding site, so keep your lawn mowed and bushes trimmed.

How Can BUGCO® Pest Control Help You Reduce the Populations of Mosquitoes Around Your Home

The In2Care System Kills Mosquitoes for 30 Days

BUGCO® Pest Control technicians are highly trained and experienced mosquito control experts. They can inspect your home and give you concrete recommendations to kill mosquitoes and reduce the populations in your yard. Contact us for more information and to schedule an appointment.  

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    Here’s what BUGCO® Pest Control can do for you.

    1.  We can install In2Care mosquito traps around your home. The In2Care system is more than a trap — it reduces mosquito populations around your home by using mosquitoes as vectors to kill mosquitoes and eggs at breeding sites all-around your property. The In2Care system eliminates breeding sites in your neighbors’ yards too.
    2. BUGCO® Pest Control can install and service a mosquito misting system to protect your family. Our misting systems are usually set to operate for short periods a couple of times a night when beneficial insects are not active. However, you’ll have a remote that allows you to operate the system for 20-30 seconds in advance of a barbecue or pool party to keep mosquitoes from bothering your family and your guests. The mosquito misting chemical dries quickly and is not a hazard to your family and your pets. Mosquito misting systems are also very effective at eliminating spiders, roaches, and other insects that can invade your home.
    3. Our technicians can provide you with backpack fogging services to kill mosquitoes and other flying insects over areas of your property in advance of an event.
    4. Truck-mounted fogging is very effective at reducing populations of mosquitoes in your community. Our trucks usually operate between midnight and 2 am and they supplement any spraying that your city or county may provide.
    5. If you have ponds on your property or your community, BUGCO® Pest Control can use larvicides to control mosquito populations using those ponds to breed.

    For more information about how to kill mosquitoes and reduce mosquito populations, please check out our video.

    The Transcript of the Video

    – Okay, I’m Paul Sherland, and I’m with Darrell Mather from BUGCO®. And the first question up today, Darrell, is how to kill mosquitoes.

    – All right, so the question is, how do you kill mosquitoes in the greater Houston metro area. So, there’s going to be a variety of ways. So, we’ll start kind of on a smaller scale, locally, when you’re talking about commercial or residential accounts. So, a homeowner is going to want to look for the minutia, the small areas around the home. Standing water, places that aren’t well-ventilated. If you have a pier and beam home, you’re going to have a variety of issues just under a pier and beam home, such as standing water and being poorly ventilated. So, we want to make sure that mosquitoes don’t have breeding areas. That’s going to be really key. But as far as killing them, let’s go ahead and just make sure that they can’t breed in the first place. While you can make your residence or your commercial property mosquito-proof, you’re not going to be able to keep them away. They’re flying insects. So, if you have bug spray that you keep on the back porch, just locally, you can always just kill on contact. But as far as what a pest control company can do for the consumer, we have everything from the In2Care mosquito traps, which helps to not only lure them to the trap, but it also allows them to carry a secondary kill chemical, or it has an effect where it takes to secondary and tertiary or breeding sites, and it allows them to kill other mosquitoes at the source. So, not only that, but we offer mosquito misting systems. So, with mosquito misting systems, what we do is we’re going to strategically place a 55-gallon drum. There’s going to be line and hosing going throughout the property, and these nozzles will spray at strategic times, typically, when mosquitoes are most active and beneficial insects such as butterflies, bees, and other insects are not active.

    – And you were talking about the In2Care system and the secondary effects and stuff like that. Basically, it kills the mosquitoes in your neighbor’s yard, too. So, if your neighbor isn’t as meticulous as you are in keeping your yard maintained, that In2Care system is going to be able to follow the mosquitoes back to the breeding sites in the neighbor’s yard and kill the mosquitoes back there. Is that right?

    – Yeah, so that’s right. Not only does it lure the mosquitoes to the In2Care trap, but they’re going to go look for other breeding sites. They’re not just going to hang out at that one isolated site. So, they’re going to come, and they’re going to lay their eggs. So, not only does it kill the eggs and the larvae that have hatched in that stagnant water, but when they go to look for other breeding sites, they’re going to carry a secondary chemical with them. So, they’re going to go to the neighbor’s house, and they’re going to just expose all of those other mosquitoes and those other breeding sites to this chemical, which allows those mosquitoes that have bred in those secondary sites to go to the tertiary, the third site, and so on. So, it has a kind of domino effect, allowing mosquito populations in very large areas to basically, we’re turning those breeding sites into kill sites.

    – Do you normally install the mosquito misting systems, so they work in conjunction with the In2Care systems?

    – Not only does it work in conjunction with, but it has kind of an exponential or compounding effect. So, not only is it killing the ones, because we’re not spaying chemicals using the misting system 24 hours a day.

    – Right.

    – They’re flying insects. They are going to get past it. That’s just the fact of the matter. So, yes, it certainly works in conjunction with and compounds the effect. So, when the misting system’s not spraying and killing or reducing the population and controlling it, then we’ll have the In2Care system to act as a backup. So, it acts as a supplement to an already great system and allows us to help control when the misting system’s not acting.

    – Okay, and with the In2Care and the misting system, so maintenance is required. You need to, if you have that, the chemical that’s used with the misting system, and I’m sure the In2Care system needs to be maintained in some way. Is that a quarterly maintenance schedule that you all have, or is it a monthly schedule? How does that work?

    – With the In2Care systems, that’s on a 30-day schedule because the primary component, or the chemical that allows us to control that mosquito population, that’s going to go ahead and start, the effectiveness is going to start waning after about 30 days. So, we want to do monthly maintenance on them. And depending on the size of the misting system, it could be as frequently as monthly, every other month, or more often than not, it’s going to be quarterly, once every three months. And with that, not only are we doing the general pest control, the yard treatment, which aids in reducing the mosquito population in the yard, but we also maintain the misting system, change out any nozzles that are perhaps clogged or just not working as effectively. We run the line, we clean it out, add new chemical, top it off, and we can readjust the settings for more frequency during the summer months, which allows us to, say, we go from a standard three sprays per night to maybe four. Not only that, but the consumer’s going to have a remote control, so if they know they’re going to have guests over, they can hit their remote control. You get a 20 to 30-second spray in, and that’s going to help kill off the mosquito population that’s out there currently. And so, it dries in about 35 to 40 seconds. So, just give it a minute to dry and then you could go out there safely and effectively have a mosquito-free or reduce the mosquito population before going out.

    – Okay, that’s great. And I know that you also have backpack spraying for, I guess that’s kind of an immediate hit kind of thing, isn’t it, for an event or something like that?

    – Well, you know, that’s really effective for multiple things. We have clients, say, for instance, a car dealership, and their staff goes out in the morning to wash the cars or maintain the vehicles, and they’re just getting eating up by mosquitoes or even gnats. And these systems, not the In2Care, however, but they’re effective against more than just mosquitoes, but let’s just go ahead and focus on the mosquitoes. With those backpack foggings, we can cover a very large area. You’re not talking about something as small as a yard because mosquito misting systems are highly effective at residences, and we’re trying to focus on outside living areas. When you start talking about backpack fogging, we could cover really great areas. You’re talking about acres at that time.

    – Okay.

    – And that does help also, besides the mosquito population, the gnats, the spiders, and other pests. But for the purposes of the mosquito, yeah, if you’re having an event, you’re having a wedding, a party, pool party, you’re just having your standard Friday night get together, and you want to reduce the mosquito population, it wears off relatively fast, so that’s why we say for an event. You know, you’re talking a 24 to 48-hour efficacy rate. So yeah, definitely, if you’re having an event, go ahead, have somebody come and do the backpack fogging, as opposed to backpack spraying. There is a difference. We come out, and we do that fogging, and that’s going to knock down the population for the immediate future.

    – Okay, well, I wasn’t aware that there is a difference between backpack spraying and backpack fogging. Could you briefly explain what the difference is?

    – Sure, the fogging’s going to cover that greatly reduced area. It takes that particle, that liquid, and turns it into an ultra-fine mist. That’s the fog, emphasis on fog. It’s very fine. It hangs in the air, it lingers for a little bit, and you can cover when you’re spraying, say you’re having that spider issue up on the second story, that’s when you’re going to get those areas that are not normally accessible or easily reachable with something as a handheld sprayer. And then when you’re talking about backpack sprayers, that just holds a larger content for chemical, and it covers a greater area for liquid application.

    – Okay. It’s best for your common crawling insects, and then the fogging is for your mosquitoes and other flying insects.

    – Okay, yeah, I didn’t realize that. Thanks, Darrell. Is there anything else that you want to add to how to kill mosquitoes?

    – Well, safe to say that mosquitoes, being a flying insect, you’re never going to be able to create a dome around your house that’s going to bar them from coming in. They’re uninvited guests. They’re going to fly over fences from the neighbor’s yard. They’re going to fly in from the bayous, the creeks, the stagnant water. That’s the fact of the matter, especially in the Houston metro area. Everything from Conroe over to Magnolia, all these areas. It’s forested. There’s stagnant water, and there’s standing water. That’s just a fact of living in the great city of Houston and surrounding areas. So, at some time or another, a backpack fogging, the In2Care system, or mosquito misting systems are going to warranted if you want to combat these mosquitoes. Other than that, just do your part to remove that water. Get their shelter and their little hidey holes away. Unfortunately, if you have a deck in your backyard that’s just an elevated wood deck, they’re going to be breeding under there. So, from time to time, and especially if it’s not well-ventilated, if it’s sealed on all sides, they’re going to be down there, and that’s something that you’re going to be seeing. So, just make sure to use your repellents, go ahead and get rid of their breeding sites, and do everything that you can. Even if you don’t want to call BUGCO immediately, the fact of the matter is they do carry disease, they do have vectors for disease and breeding sites, and no one wants that. So, just be safe. That’s going to be really key. And should anyone have any questions, I would always implore them to call BUGCO, ask their questions, get their quotes, but it really comes down to start on a small scale, do your part, and then if you need BUGCO’s assistance, we can always help.

    – Okay, I appreciate it. Thank you very much, Darrell.

    – No problem, Paul ♪ BUGCO, we make the bugs go ♪

    – [Child] B-U-G-C-O.org

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