Reduce Your Yard’s Mosquito Population

Memorial Day has past, which means more and more people are moving their activities outdoors. If you’re like all of us at Mosquito Squad, you enjoy being outside entertaining friends and family, playing with the kids, tossing the ball with dog, etc. One thing we don’t like at The Squad: mosquitoes.

Mosquitoes, simply put, are not our friends at The Squad. Their bites not only can ruin your time outside, but they can ruin the days after with the itch. The only way to protect yourself is to reduce your exposure to mosquitoes.

Mosquitoes require standing water to breed and they do not travel too far from the areas where they hatch typically, so reducing the amount of standing water on your property will decrease your mosquito population. Here are some tips from our friend Jason Cameron, licensed contractor and television host:

At Mosquito Squad, we pride ourselves on allowing our clients to fight the bite and take back their backyard with our mosquito control treatments.

Our most common and most effective mosquito package is the traditional barrier spray summer package. The Squad’s barrier spray is applied by our trained technicians to the areas where we know mosquitoes feed and harbor. Mosquitoes feed on vegetation, so make sure to pay particular attention to bushes, ivy, plants and trees. The spray eliminates mosquitoes on contact and provides continuous protection for up to 21 days. With our season package, Mosquito Squad visits the property every three weeks for a summer without mosquitoes.

With consistent treatment, Mosquito Squad eliminates 85-90% of the mosquito population.

For clients that would like more control over their mosquito control, there is the automatic mosquito misting systems. The system is installed on the property and sprays short bursts of mosquito control products at times that mosquitoes are most active. If you see more pests, you can use a remote for extra control.

Our last solution is the all natural mosquito control which needs to be reapplied every 14 days and works at a repellent.

If you have questions on which mosquito services are best for your property, please contact your local Mosquito Squad office.

New Ways to Find Standing Water

Happy New Year everyone! All of us at Mosquito Squad want to wish you a great 2015.

The Squad is excited for 2015 and to helping our clients fight the bite at home. As always, we’re trying to stay abreast of what’s happening with mosquitoes, ticks and the diseases they carry and a new article from Florida recently caught our attention.

In the mosquito control world, standing water is a big nemesis. Female mosquitoes lay their eggs in standing water. If the water is circulating or moving, the eggs cannot mature and develop into pests that bite. Florida, which has a lot of mosquitoes, is looking for new ways to locate standing water and they think they’ve found it: drones.

The Florida Keys Mosquito Control District plans to use two drones this year in the search for standing water. The drones’ planned flight paths stay away from all airports but can survey remote areas that may otherwise be unseen. With the location of standing water, the municipality can go out and treat the standing water with larvicide and growth regulators.

The Federal Aviation Administration authorized the use of drones for this purpose.

We’re excited to see what comes of this new tool and development. We’re always on the looking out for standing water while treating our clients’ properties for mosquitoes and ticks. We’ll treat any areas that we feel are causing the mosquito population to increase on the property, but we know that mosquitoes can come from other properties, commercial, municipal or residential. If the drones work well, it could be a great way for cities and counties to be more proactive with their mosquito abatement programs.

Reducing the amount of standing water in your yard is the first step in reducing your mosquito population (one impacts the other), that’s why we came up with the 5Ts. The Ts will help you to look for and remove the standing water on your property. Just take a look at this to see what we mean:

Thankful to Named to Top Franchise Concepts List

The holiday season and end of the year is the best time to reflect on what’s passed and be thankful for what you have. At Mosquito Squad, we’re so happy to be named to Entrepreneur Magazine’s 2015 list of top franchise concepts and want to thank all those who helped us get here.

Mosquito Squad is the only pest control franchise named to this year’s list and our spot is due to both our clients and our franchisees. We would like to take this opportunity to thank all of you.

With nine years of mosquito and tick elimination under our belt and 90,000 yards protected, we’re so appreciative of where the business is. With over 160 locations across the U.S. we’re excited to finally be opening locations in Florida and Arkansas in 2015. As our president and founder of Mosquito Squad, Scott Zide, explains: “our ‘Squad’ concept has resonated with consumers and homeowners throughout North America who want to take a proactive stance against the nuisance and diseases that both mosquitoes and ticks bring.”

Again, thank you to all of our clients and franchisees for helping us grow the Mosquito Squad name.

If you are unfamiliar with Mosquito Squad, we’re America’s leading tick and mosquito elimination company. We protect families with our effective yard treatments. Our traditional barrier spray treatment is applied to the areas of the property where mosquitoes are known to feed and live, including around and in bushes and high grasses. The spray will eliminate mosquitoes on contact and provides continuous protection for up to 21 days.

For our tick control service, we combine our barrier spray and tick tube treatments. While the spray eliminates adult ticks on contact, the tick tubes help with nymph ticks before they bite you. Tubes that are filled with treated cotton are placed along fences and foundations and other areas where mice may pass. Most ticks get their first blood meal from mice. The mice take the cotton back to their nests for bedding material and the pesticide that’s on the cotton eliminates the ticks.

If you have questions or want to be more proactive with your mosquito and tick control in 2015, please contact your local Mosquito Squad office.

And because it’s the season; Happy Holidays from all of us at Mosquito Squad:

Who Wouldn’t Want a Mosquito Free Year?

The holidays are officially here. The lights on the malls are on and radio stations have started playing Christmas music. Do you know what that means? It’s time for Christmas shopping. If you’re like me, this is something that fills you both with excitement and dread. Excitement because I like giving my loved ones gifts, dread because there is always someone I have a hard time buying for.

If you have that hard to buy for person on your list too, I have a gift idea for your: a mosquito-free 2015.

Yes, it’s an out-of-the-box idea, but it’s also sure to please. With a Mosquito Squad gift certificate for service, you can let your friends or family enjoy the spring and summer outside without bites.

Mosquito Squad provides continuous mosquito protection throughout the year with our traditional season-long package. Every three weeks, trained technicians visit the property and spray the areas of your property where mosquitoes are their most active. That spray eliminates mosquitoes and tick on contact.

How does the spray last three weeks you ask? The spray settles on the vegetation it is sprayed on. Mosquitoes feed on plant sugars (female mosquitoes only suck blood for protein to lay eggs). When they try to feed on the plants, they ingest the treatment, eliminating them. The spray has a component in it that makes it last despite the weather, but after 21 days, it does need to be reapplied.

If you’re interested in giving a Mosquito Squad gift certificate to a friend or family member this holiday season, contact the local office in the recipient’s area. Our team will simply need the address and idea of the size of the property to give you a quote. Or, you can give a dollar amount!

We hope that we made your gift giving a little bit easier with this idea. Have a very Happy Thanksgiving this week!

Do Mosquitoes Transmit Ebola?

Unless you’ve stayed away from all news for the last few weeks (and who really can do that), you’ve heard about the current Ebola epidemic in Africa and cases in the U.S. Ebola is a life threatening disease that currently doesn’t have a vaccine to fight it. One question we’ve been asked recently is can mosquitoes, who transmit numerous disease worldwide, infect people with Ebola?

In short, the answer is no.

Mosquitoes aren’t born with malaria, yellow fever, chikungunya, dengue fever or other mosquito-borne disease. Female mosquitoes become carriers of those diseases after feeding on a person or animal already infected (only females suck blood). Because mosquitoes don’t go person to person biting, the disease has to survive a complicated digestion process to be passed on.

The reason female mosquitoes require blood is to create eggs. A female mosquito will take in enough blood to properly nourish her eggs and then go and digest. After laying her eggs, she will then require more blood. For her to infect a human with the disease, the viral strands need to stay in the gut and migrate into the mosquito’s saliva. The mosquito injects saliva into its victims as they bite. In the case of malaria, it evolves in the mosquito before getting into the saliva.

Right now, Ebola cannot make its way into the mosquito saliva. And until it can, mosquitoes cannot transmit Ebola.

Despite not playing an active role in the spread of Ebola, mosquitoes are still the most dangerous animal on the planet, killing over 700,000 people each year. They kill approximately 600,000 by infecting them with malaria. While malaria isn’t a threat in the United States, mosquitoes still transmit west nile, dengue fever and chikungunya domestically.

At Mosquito Squad, we protect our clients by greatly reducing their property’s mosquito population with our mosquito control services. Our trained applicators visit our clients’ properties every 2-3 weeks and spray the areas where mosquitoes are most likely to feed and live, like bushes and trees. The spray eliminates mosquitoes on contact as well as settles on the vegetation. When a mosquito then goes to feed on a leaf, it will ingest the product.

If you have questions on how to protect your property from mosquitoes, please contact your local Mosquito Squad office.

A Robot that Fights Malaria?

Malaria, as we’ve discussed before, is a terrible mosquito-borne disease that kills over 600,000 people every year, yet it is both preventable and treatable. While health officials and non-profits like Malaria No More are helping to fight the battle against malaria, a Dallas tween is doing the same thing with a new invention.

An underwater army of Culex mosquito larvae, courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.

David Cohen is a Texas based 12 year old who is a finalist in this year’s Discovery Education 3M Young Scientist Challenge for a robot that helps fight malaria.

Mosquitoes (whether they are carrying malaria or not) need water to breed. During their larval stage, they sit on the surface of the water to breathe and to continue the maturation process. Cohen’s robot stops them from further maturing by reaching them in this stage. Using a pump-jet system, the robot essentially drowns the mosquito by moving it away from the surface and trapping it under mesh.

Cohen first became aware of health issues that mosquitoes can cause after his sister had a staph infection after itching a mosquito bite.

Matched with his mentor Delong Langer-Anderson, Cohen began to look at how best to stop mosquito-borne illnesses from spreading. As Langer-Anderson explains: he “looked at the problem…in a different way. He asked ‘what if the mosquito was never born?’ …he’s never lost sight of the idea that if he can stop the mosquito from emerging from the larvae stage, he can prevent them from spreading disease.” Source.

Dread Skeeter and the whole Mosquito Squad is happy to support Malaria No More in their fight to end malaria deaths in Africa

While we’re not sure how Cohen’s robot will be used moving forward, we at Mosquito Squad are always happy to see people thinking up unique ways to decrease the spread of malaria and other mosquito-borne illnesses. Congrats David!

Mosquito Squad joined the fight against malaria several years ago through our partnership with Malaria No More. Malaria No More has made great strides in helping to end malaria deaths through its educational, prevention and treatment programs.

If you’d like us to help fight malaria, please donate now at SwatMalaria.net.

New Mosquito Species Enters US

From time to time we see the news of a new animal or bug entering the U.S. Some don’t thrive well in our eco-system and habitat while others, like the stink bug, blossom in the new conditions. When it comes to mosquitoes, we’ve seen that a large number of species can thrive in the states and we’re now watching a new one: the Aussie Mozzie.

The Aedes notoscriptus is an Australian mosquito species with the nickname the Aussie Mozzie. It was found in the Los Angeles area of California in June, its first ever spotting in the United States. As the San Gabriel Valley Mosquito & Vector Control District’s spokesman Jason Farned explains: “in Australia this mosquito is very widespread and capable of transmitting several viruses.” Source.

The Aussie Mozzie is described to have similar characteristics as the Asian tiger mosquito. The Asian tiger mosquito received notable attention a few years ago as its population boomed. Both the Asian tiger and Aussie Mozzie are most likely to bite during the day (most mosquitoes bite around dusk and dawn). They are known city dwellers that lay their eggs in containers.

Like many other mosquito species, the Aussie Mozzie infects humans and animals with disease including the Barmah Forest and Ross River viruses. Both viruses can be serious, but are non-lethal. Their symptoms include joint pain, rashes and fever.

In addition to transmitting mosquito-borne disease to humans, the Aussie Mozzie also infects dogs with heartworm. Heartworm is one of the most serious illnesses a dog can face. Heartworm is a parasite that settles and grows in the heart and lungs of its host, most commonly the dog. Dogs with heartworm may display symptoms through coughing, exhaustion, weight loss and fainting. Once diagnosed, dogs have to through a series of treatments to kill and get rid of the heartworm that could take several months.

Currently only a few Aussie Mozzies have been confirmed in California. Homeowners in the areas have been encouraged to report any day biting mosquitoes so they can be tested. As the mosquito control experts, we at Mosquito Squad will stay on top of the news and let you know everything there is to share.