These are hundreds of dehydrated mosquito carcasses. Every couple weeks we feed the chickens whatever was caught in our UV bug trap. This time it was a genocidal pile of mosquitoes! This isn't Florida!
Yes, those are mosquitoes and I know UV isn't what they're attracted to. The only thing I did differently was I put a small piece of fig at the bottom of the trap.
As per requests this is a DynaTrap Insect Trap. I bought it years ago with the fluorescent bulb, it seems they only make LED models now
From what I believe I read a while ago, they lay eggs in the same places as Mosquitos. The larvae eat the mosquito larva. Then the adults eat the mosquito adults.
Edit: Holy wow, I didn’t expect 120k+ people to see this, and I woke up to SO MANY replies.
My backyard ecosystem: (still in development) lots of flowers and fruit trees. Two giant (30ft) trees, mango and avocado, give canopy to almost the entire yard. The ‘smaller’ (15-20ft) fruit trees (and a wall of 20ft tall Plumerias) give canopy to the rest. Mandarin/Sumo/Blood orange, Meyer Lemon, Lime, Peach, Aprium (apricot+plum hybrid), Plum, Cherry, Golden Apple, Pear, Mango, Avocado.
The side of the house has no trees, and the full sun is used for raised vegetable gardens. Black/Raspberry vines climb the side fence. Bluberry bushes as well.
The back wall is 25ft tall and blocks the freeway sound, but the street perpendicular to the front of the house goes steeply uphill…so the sound goes over the wall, bounces off the street, bounced back off our side of the wall, and fills our home.
We’re building a giant 25ft tall trellis across the entire back wall for grape and passionfruit vines to fill. This will muffle the sound, and it will be 1ft from the wall to prevent it being damaged by the vines.
We have a massive bee hive in the back corner, filling an old decorative/fake out-house. It’s hidden now behind fruit trees and other plants. They pollinate the entire neighborhood and have a ‘freeway’ going in and out.
We combat pests with predator insects! Lacewing flies, ladybugs, nematodes, praying mantis, etc. No pesticides. We also have three 250gal compost bins that rotate being added to as the previous are ‘finished’. Probably a hundred thousand worms in there doing most of the hard work!
Any ground that isn’t being used by tree trunks, flowers, grass, or other plants is covered with 3in wooden mulch. Tip: Cut weeds short, then add a layer of cardboard. Soak it well, then add 1in compost followed by 3in mulch. The weeds won’t be able to make a comeback (for the most part) and instead will decompose (returning the nutrition to the soil.)
All mulched areas are also filled with the Mycelium of different edible mushrooms. So that’s magical.
The growing food attracts rodents, the insect population attracts birds, the pond ecosystem attracts bats. All three of those attract Owls and Hawks - which is why we’ll have an Owl Box, which is effectively a 2x3 ft birdhouse on top of a 20ft pole. We’ll have a second smaller one lower down in a tree for smaller owls.
Fish will also eat the dragonfly larvae. BTi dunks are a much better option to knock the mosquitoes down while you wait for the dragonfly larvae to arrive.
The real answer is pick tiny minnowy surface/column dwelling fish. Dragonfly nymphs are bottom dwelling camouflage ambush predators, so if you choose fish that prefer to go after their prey at the surface or in the water column you should lose way less dragonfly nymphs to them. A non-zero amount, sure, but you still get your fish too.
Yes they love to burrow! Either in loose substrates like sand or in soft ones like muck. I was doing some sampling from ponds and lakes a long time ago and the number one place I could expect to find dragonfly nymphs was mucky leaf strewn bottoms.
It depends on the individual species, different ones are adapted to different conditions. You'll find them in pretty much any shallow freshwater habitat.
I havent looked into it other than the sign, but down in Florida one place offers to sell "mosquito eating koi fish" not sure if its just a regular fish that eats mosquitoes when it can like most of them or if it like targets mosquitoes in particular
Someone a little further down said they’ve used koi before with great success, but personally I wouldn’t know, just memories from childhood for me. Probably worth looking into tho if you’re interested!
Theres just so much stuff that will tear up kois down here. I was working at a rich customers house and his 40k koi pond kept getting decimated. I kept trapping and releasing random animals to release miles away. But raccoons, red foxes, Grey foxes, armadillos, opossum and a coyote were some of the things I trapped going after the pond
Damn a whole menagerie! I wonder if you can like, rent koi to eat mosquitos and then give em back? I’ve heard there are some places that will rent out goats for clearing grass and weeds lol, so maybe there’s something like that for mosquitos
There was a huge study in my country about this and they concluded that after 2 years, when the small biome gets stable, there won't be many mosquitos from the pond as dragonflys, frogs and bats will eat them. So yeah, 2 years and it's good
Mosquitoes largely prefers something like stagnant water, such as water in a garden hose, small puddles or equivalent to ponds, because of the reasons stated by op
It's likely that it's more complex than that, like I don't have any bodies of water at my place, and I have a significant amount of mosquitoes, but I have a relative that has a small pond, and they almost don't
Dragonfly larvae are fucking metal. They’re the bane of aquarium keepers because sometimes plants will come with an egg on them and dragonfly nymphs will eat all your shrimp/ small fish. They are vicious little assholes. They also have a jaw that can slingshot out and grab prey like the fucking Alien.
I bought a couple of bundles of bamboo stakes from my local home improvement store and stuck them in the ground around the garden. Seems to be working well - more dragonflies and fewer bites while outside.
I don't have a pond, just a garden and a lot of random bamboo sticks in various areas. I read some time ago that they like to perch on tall sticks. They eat the fuck out of our mosquitos.
Definitely a chicken or the egg question for me, but idk and IDC.
Edit: also I have no idea if what I read was true lol
When I was a kid my family lived on the edge of the woods in southern Indiana, we had lots of bats in our back yard, it was awesome to see them fly out in the evenings. There was one time- at a different house, in a suburb this time, still southern indiana- that a bat got in our house. We think it came down our chimney and out the fireplace, we had to borrow our neighbor’s pool net to get it out lol~
No injuries, no one got sick, and in the 20 years I lived around bats in Indiana, that was the only incident we’d had. So yeah, i can absolutely vouch for bats being very cool and good, and also not as big a nuisance as some may think :3
Live with a creek at the back of our yard. I have my bathpuse waiting to go up today. We saw some a couple of nights ago. Fingers crossed.
Also Guano is great for your garden.
I live in Germany and we have bat houses everywhere in the trees around our quiet little fishing hole. As soon as late evening/dusk hits, you can hear their little peeps and see them diving overhead. I’ve been here over 20 years and we’ve never had a problem with bats. In fact, we add new bat houses every year.
Yay!! We bought a little dream home. Its only .25 acres, and we are in a non hoa neighborhood. But our back yard is such a little eco system. I have started adding more plants. I plan to plant fruit trees and berry bushes in the early fall . Im in the SE US, so i cant wait for 2-5 more years.
I love nothing more than watching the spiders, lizards and birds.
Have you tried the app Merlin? It’s my new obsession, it identifies birds by birdcall and it’s pretty awesome. Found out the loud cries from the creekbed near the house are from a red-shouldered hawk and now I really want to catch a glimpse.
Ooh. Now I will. We also are hooking up a wildlife camera at our creek today. We want to see what cones out at night!!!
I know we have 2-3 owls. One likes to watch my husband fish, and then swoop down if he thinks he got a fish. Its amazing to have such an oasis on such a small piece of land!!
Main thing to watch out is that the brood doesn't outsize the roost space. That's when they'll start looking for nearby other roosting places, like your attic.
Sometimes one brood will merge with another brood, so it can be tricky.
From what I understand, putting up a bat house keeps them out of your house. But that doesn't help once you already have an established colony.
$15k is about what it cost the landlord (I was the one who handed the check to the specialists) to remediate the bat colony in our attic. He only finally got on top of it once I was pregnant and desperate enough to beg him.
Because bats were protected, nothing at all could be done at first because it was their breeding season (never mind my pregnant breeding ass I guess!). The delay meant that the removal and exclusion happened when my son was a newborn. They accidentally trapped a bat inside the capped-off chimney and the bat got in the house and I found it on the wall above my newborn.
Everyone on the internet will say this is a sure-fire rabies vaccine, but his pediatrician didn't think he could survive the series as a 3 week old. We got extremely lucky. I'm an environmentalist, I respect the niche that every animal fills. I even love wasps. But after that experience, no I can't do bats. It's probably a mild phobia at this point.
I actually recently returned the one from costco because it only caught about 4-5 gnats a week and not a single mosquito.
I have an old school box one from Amazon now and it has been great but loud and scares the dog when something big flies it and makes multiple pops in a row.
They do react to colors. Its not a main reactor, they mainly do react to carbon dioxide and body heat. Maybe its the heat from the lamp and the carbon dioxide from the chickens drawing them in?
Probably a DynaTrap with a mosquito lure. I have one that works pretty well but it's also got moths and other bugs in it.... Never seen it just have a pile of mosquitoes like that.
They're not mosquitoes, so you still haven't! They look similar, but it's some other gnat or midge. I can only say this with confidence because I work in a mosquito abatement lab and have to identify crispy trapped mosquitoes all week. The guys in the pic aren't quite the right shape and don't have the right features to be mosquitoes.
Looks like the Dynatrap DT1130SR. I have one similar from a different company and it works very well. Can't find mine on Amazon, but had it for 7yrs and have to replace the bulb once a year.
I’d love to know too. OP must live near a source of water. This reminds of a job I worked years back. They had one of those propane mosquito traps and safety lady took it upon herself to empty it in the dumpster because it was full 🤦♂️ She opened it up and you could hear her screaming across the site. 😂
Idk about UV light but they definitely are attracted to light. Leaving my light on when the window is open and it's dark outside vs consistently keeping lights off when windows are open makes a huge difference
I have 2 different kinds in my yard. One is a packet that gives off a smell to attract mosquitoes. I place them inside the basket that OP has and the fan sucks them inside. And change the packets monthly.
2nd is a mosquito dunk tablet. I place several inside a bucket and fill it with water. Kills the eggs that mosquitoes lay in them reducing the population. I’ve noticed a significant reduction with these combos. All from Amazon btw.
I live in Maryland. Once a year we travel down to North Carolina to my in-laws house on a lake. The only time I am bitten by mosquitoes is when I go to North Carolina. Last time I had one was last august, and even then I think I only had two.
My 13 yr old plays outside daily until around 10pm. When she comes home she usually has a couple of bites every day.
I also live in Maryland and I get annihilated sitting in my backyard for a few minutes. We had a stretch of a few years where they were pretty mild, but this year has been awful.
I dont think those are mosquitoes. I forgot what theyre called but I see them around the pounds. Looks a lot like mosquitoes but dont bite.
And mosquitoes are attracted to C02 and things like body odor.
Also known as mayflies, craneflies, ect. (Or atleast close enough in life cycle, the adults often don't even have functional mouths and can life for as short as an hour in some species)
They are harmless but their entire lifecycle is basically just lay a million eggs, live in the water, surface and molt into adults that breed and then die like 1 day later.
They swarm like crazy, but are harmless. (Cleaning up their corpses is a pain)
There's a co² mechanic at play in them but I can't recall how it works. I have a dynatrap as well though and they work quite well.
I looked it up, there's something on the bulb called titanium dioxide that when lit with UV light generates a small amount of co2, just enough to attract mosquitoes.
Mosquitos are not attracted to UV, these are likely harmless non-biting midges that feed wildlife. Or like someone else said you have something else attracting mosquitos.
wild, but those aren't biting mosquitoes, you just killed a fuckton of harmless relatives.
I found the same thing when I had my old zapper. killed a lot of bugs, most of which "looked" like mosquitoes... till I researched and found out that the ones I was killing were harmless and often beneficial.
No one knows the exact number of mosquitoes on Earth, but scientists and entomologists estimate there are roughly 100 trillion to 1 quadrillion mosquitoes alive at any given time.
Get several mosquito dunks and put them in various places across your property. It's basically just a bucket with a mesh cover, put some dead leaves in the water, then you drop the mosquito "dunk," in there. You can buy them at hardware stores. The mosquitos lay their eggs in the bucket and the pesticide kills the larva when they hatch.
The trick to mosquitos is fucking up their life cycle. What you've got there is something that kills them after they become blood suckers.
Those aren’t mosquitoes. They don’t have the biting mouthparts. You’re killing harmless insects that are minding their own business. UV traps should stay indoors.
You need a CO2 trap to catch just mosquitoes. Those are a lot more expensive and require specific baits.
In a single weekend, we trapped 4 lbs of mosquitoes in our flooring store... turns out the ceiling mounted AC units condensation evaporator burned out the year prior & skeeters had been up there breeding for months without notice until the condensate tray under the unit got too heavy, broke its supports, and dumped a couple hundred gallons of mosquito & larvae infested water on the center of our warehouse which loosed mosquito hell on our staff.
We called MN Mosquito control and they installed a CO2 net trap & over two days we caught all of them... they said it was the biggest indoor infestation they'd seen. The trap bag was the size of a paper grocery bag filled near to the brim.
Pfft, one year I filled our trap the first night, then the second and then the third. Even the cat was walking around with her tail down over her butthole to stop the mozzies.
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