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Take Back Your Yard

Take Back Your Yard:

Expert Tips to Eliminate Mosquitoes and Reclaim Your Outdoor Living

Introduction

As mosquitoes become a widespread nuisance around the world, they undoubtedly impact you and your family. Whether it’s been on your own property or elsewhere, everyone has felt the effects of mosquitoes.

This Mosquito Control Guide gives practical advice for those who don’t dare step out into their yard because of the swarms of mosquitoes that always seem to be waiting for them.

In it, you’ll find expert tips on how to create effective barriers around your home and your loved ones—barriers that help keep mosquitoes at bay.

When you need to provide relief for your family from this menace, there are a variety of strategies out there. We’ll be breaking down the whats and hows of mosquito control in this guide:

How and where mosquitoes breed
What steps you, or a professional, can take to eliminate their breeding grounds on your property
How to disrupt their breeding cycle to help reduce their population around your home

Mosquitoes do not aggravate humans out of malice. They are insects determined to survive any way they can. So, they live around places that aid their survival.

This means near ponds or any standing water. It could also mean near groups of people or animals—really anything that breathes out CO2.

This also means around your home and property.

Your home and backyard may look like a smorgasbord for mosquitoes.

Wet soil and grass, standing water, and nearby people or pets to feed on make for a mosquito wonderland, perfect for breeding.

You may wish to control your local mosquito population for any of these reasons:

Knowing the details to these mosquito side effects further explains why the need to control mosquitoes is so important.

Itchy, possibly painful bites

Mosquito allergies

Mosquito-borne illnesses

Itchy, possibly painful bites

A mosquito’s proboscis is the needle-nosed feature we’re all familiar with when thinking about these bugs. This mouthpart is thin enough to slip into our skin unnoticed as the insect feeds.

It’s a little misleading, but the bite is not actually the painful part when a mosquito bites you. The painful part is your reaction to the cocktail of saliva that mosquitoes pump into you.

Your body reacts to these foreign chemicals like any invader— by producing histamines

Histamines are a part of the body’s immune response and frequently lead to allergic reactions we’re all familiar with:

Runny noses

Sneezing

Itching

Mosquito Allergies

Most people react to mosquito saliva with a combination of a swollen bump and itchy area. Others, however, may respond worse.

Those with an allergy to something in the mosquito’s bite may experience:

Larger areas
of itching

Bruises near the
bite site

Fevers and
headaches

Anaphylaxis

As with any allergy, prevention is the best approach, and controlling the population may help reduce the number of bites.

Mosquito-borne illnesses

Some populations of mosquitoes carry things worse than mere contaminants in their saliva. Some mosquitoes are carriers to serious and life-threatening diseases such as:

West Nile
Virus

Triple E
(Eastern Equine
Encephalitis)

Zika

Dengue Fever

Malaria

These make mosquitoes one of the deadliest animals on the planet. Mosquito-borne diseases around the world account for over 700,000 human deaths per year — malaria accounting for 600,000 of that number.

Governments and medical professionals and alike recommend we take precautions when it comes to mosquito exposure.

These health concerns may push you to invest in common repellents such as bug sprays.

Beyond the annoyance of having to continually reapply, these sprays can also come with certain concerns.

You may wonder if the solution is better than the problem with these questions:

Are bug sprays harmful to your health?

Do they worsen asthma symptoms in some people?

What if you’re allergic to the spray?

In short, any substance not meant for human consumption can be dangerous if used improperly. Breathing in too much may irritate your sinuses or lungs.

People with asthma may experience worse outcomes. Even if you apply bug spray carefully, you may still experience itchy hives as a reaction if you’re allergic.

These cautions apply to natural remedies like plant extracts found in essential oils just as much as industrial-grade pesticides.

It is important to know as much as you can when determining the right mosquito control solution for you.

How Have Mosquitoes Survived for Millions of Years?

Ancient fossils show that mosquitoes have been around for millions of years. In the next chapter, we’ll explore what it is about their unique biology that makes mosquitoes survivors.

DID YOU KNOW?

Color matters to mosquitoes.

After indulging in a bloodmeal, female mosquitoes are attracted to dark places to hide and digest their meal. So, they tend to rest on people wearing darker colors.