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...the one that never existed.
Sorry folks, everything you said about mosquitoes is absolutely true. Some of the stuff about gambusia affinis and lebesti reticulata (guppies) is even niffty, true, and a great source of food for the fish in your tanks but...
I want you to fill an ordinary pail, half full of water. Add a wilty piece of lettuce leaf and put this in a cool shady spot in your yard.. Do this, say, on a Saturday.
Now on the next Saturday, I want you to kick it over and do it all over again, and every Saturday after that. You will be attracting every mosquito within a 100 metre radius. They will seek out your bucket, lay their eggs, and cease to exist. Why?
During a typical summer, it takes eight days to go from an egg, to a flying adult. Right, you have destroyed their life cycle. After three weeks, the population is virtually non-existent. By putting the wilty lettuce in the water you have provided a medium second to none for mozzies to lay their eggs in. Bacteria, the wigglers' primary food source, will flourish. The mozzies will select your bucket over anything else, except perhaps the swamp in your back yard.
To test this theory, I took an old tire filled with stagnant water and put it beside the bucket. Not one egg raft was in the tire. The bucket was loaded.
Now, you need to convince your neighbours to do this, to spread out and extend the range of the mozzie-free zone.
If your area gets snow, start this a month or so after the melt. In Canada, you can actually find active wigglers in the water, under the rotten ice. Probably were you live as well. Cheers.
Didn't I read that the eggs can stay dormant for 5 years (laying in wait)? I don't know under what conditions other than freeze that the eggs can with stand. Also it takes about a week for them to go threw all 4 stages?
I would hate to think I was collecting all these eggs that are well on there way or are at the Pupa stage and just dump them on the ground to fly away in a few hours. Do you treat the area you dumped the water with anything to prevent the emerging pupa from becoming flying adults? I live in Florida between the mangrove marshes and I am butt up to a well wooded area when the clock stikes we make a mad dash for the house before the black mass emerges. Don't get me wrong on an over cast day we are chased at high noon by them. 9 months out of the year we deal with the dreaded blood sucker if it's not them it deer flies and horse flies.
ptooming, I see your point about dumping the mosquito mess in the grass, but I would assume the heat of the day on concrete or asphalt paving would fry skeeter eggs, larvae, or pupa, especially down in your region. As spiersy indicates, they would survive a freezing!
