Nobody wants to deal with mosquitoes—especially during the summer when kids are home from school and there are all sorts of things to do. You do not have the time, money, or patience to perpetually battle a mosquito menace.
When looking for a solution, you’ll want to find something that’s affordable, reliable, and fast.
It is important to understand the solutions out there—and why so many of them might not work for your needs.
Typical Mosquito Solutions Many Households Try
When trying to control mosquitos, you have a wide range of options, from DIY remedies to full-blown extermination services. We talk in-depth about all these options in our Comprehensive Mosquito Elimination Guide. Here are the broad basics:
DIY
Lavender
Do-it-yourself solutions involve anything you make from scratch, such as customized mosquito traps. For these, it is important to know how a mosquito breeds. Once you understand where and why a mosquito lays its eggs, lures can offer a way to trap growing larvae before they become biting pests.
The DIY option also includes natural remedies like essential oils or targeted gardening. Growing certain plants can help mask your natural scents from a mosquito on the hunt. Good options include:
- Marigolds
- Rosemary
- Lavender
Spraying your house with essential oils like eucalyptus blends may also help make a temporary boundary. Lighting citronella candles is another handy repellant.
Store-Bought
Electrified bug zapper
Store-bought mosquito solutions include bug sprays, sticky traps, and even electrified bug zappers.
Bug sprays work to both mask your natural scents and repel mosquitos with a chemical cocktail that confuses their senses. Some sprays are outright insecticides and rather than spraying them on you, you spray them as directed on mosquito-heavy areas.
Traps and zappers do not focus on invisibility, but rather attraction. These lure bugs toward them and then kill the bugs upon contact.
Elimination Services
Professional companies frequently offer their services to homeowners to help deal with pests. Some focus on an overall spray with insecticides while others may work with you to identify potential hotspots that need to be cleaned up.
The Reasons Why These Solutions Often Fail
Once you invest in these solutions, it can be disappointing when they don’t deliver. Each of these options has its weaknesses.
DIY
Rows of plants and pungent candles run the risk of affecting your lifestyle. Maybe the mosquitoes avoid you less, but your whole house may also reek of citronella and smoke—or perhaps you just simply don’t have the space.
In the worst-case scenario, the mosquitoes still don’t avoid your home due to holes or access points your scent-based repellents fail to cover.
DIY solutions are also the most demanding of your time. You need to research, gather up the materials, and frequently deploy these solutions if there’s to be any hope of lasting success.
Store-Bought
Store-bought bug sprays run into some of the same problems as DIY scents.
The smell of DEET shouldn’t be one you have to live with all summer long. It doesn’t actually solve your mosquito problem either. They’re still around, you’re just more hidden from them.
Consumer-grade insecticides, while purpose-built to kill mosquitoes, pose a number of issues:
- Do you know where it’s best to use them?
- Do you know where it’s prohibited from using them?
And you also need to consider which chemicals mosquitoes are more or less resistant to.
You have a lot to research before using these.
Sticky traps and bug zappers don’t help much either if the goal is avoiding mosquito pests. They actually bring more mosquitoes around you by attracting them.
While they may kill dozens or even hundreds in a night, they won’t kill all of them. Those that survive will be gathered up around your zapper and the barbecue you’re trying to host.
Elimination Services
Each extermination company goes about delivering its solution differently. Between varied practices and proprietary chemicals, each service can provide very different results.
Many offer quarterly or monthly services, which do not take into account mosquitoes’ 2-week egg-to-breeding life cycle. You’ll typically enjoy a clear yard for a couple of weeks, only to have the insects return long before your next appointment.
Why Mosquito Shield Works
Mosquito Shield Professional
Mosquito Shield Mosquito Services has learned from each of these truths. To maximize your mosquito control, you need a reliable solution on a consistent schedule. Your solution needs to eliminate mosquitoes from 3 distinct angles:
- You must kill the current mosquitoes
- You must clear the breeding grounds of eggs
- You must repel and mask mosquitoes from coming outside to inside your lawn.
Your solution must meet these requirements every 10-17 days because of how the mosquito life cycle works. This schedule demands a major time investment on your part if you were to tackle it all on your own.
At Mosquito Shield, we take that obligation off your plate by providing you with consistent, reliable elimination service. Our technicians will point out key spots on your property that may attract mosquitoes. Then, they spray our Mosquito and Tick Proprietary Blend to cover the areas of your property where mosquitoes rest and breed.
This custom blend has a dry time of only 15 minutes. This means you, your children, and your pets can get back to enjoying summer shortly after a Mosquito Shield session.
All of these tactics combine to create an elimination strategy that tackles mosquitoes at their source for lasting relief. By centering on the mosquitoes’ biology and your needs, Mosquito Shield provides a solution that avoids the usual pitfalls.
If you want a summer with fewer mosquitoes, we’re available to discuss your immediate and seasonal needs with just one call. Contact us today at 1-800-908-7076 or get a free quote to avoid this pesky pest all year.