How Bay area residents can help take precautions this mosquito season

ST. PETERSBURG, Fla. - It’s that time of year again where bug spray becomes part of your everyday outfit.

Experts warn if you’re outside for a prolonged amount of time, that outfit should include pants, long sleeves and insect repellent that has at least 30% DEET to protect you from mosquitoes.

Members of Pinellas County’s Mosquito Control Department said even though we haven’t had much rain, check your yard once a week and dump out any standing water that could help mosquitoes breed.

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Even irrigation from sprinklers can build up.

Mosquitoes only need one-quarter to one-half inch of standing water for larvae to survive, the county says. They recommend residents flush birdbaths and wading pools weekly, flush ornamental bromeliads, clean roof gutters that can become clogged and hold water, change the water in outdoor pet dishes regularly, keep pools and spas chlorinated and filtered, stock ornamental ponds with mosquito-eating fish and cover rain barrels with screening. 

"It's going to be a hot summer and, you know, people are going to want to be outside, and so if everybody kind of works together and does their best, we're going to we're going to do our best to help everybody out," Glen-Paul Edson, Operations Manager at Pinellas County Mosquito Control, said. "But we can use all the help we can get by people checking, and if you're still having an issue, please give us a call."

The county has 56 mosquito traps throughout the area. Crews bring those traps back to a lab each day, and analyze how many mosquitos are in each area and what types of mosquitoes they are. There are 36 different species in Pinellas County alone.

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Edson said if they can identify the species, they’ll know where to look to kill it because they breed in different habitats. He said they try to get to mosquitoes before they hatch.

"We try to get everything at the larval level, get them before they hatch out and become a nuisance or virus vector," Edson said.

He said they spray insecticide as a last resort. It’s almost like a Band-Aid fix, he said. If they see a significant increase in mosquito activity in an area, they’ll spray between 2:30 a.m. and 6:30 a.m. as needed. They spray in the early morning hours when most people are asleep and pollinators, like bees, aren’t out.

Edson said they also use chickens to help them fight off mosquitoes. 

"We also have eight sentinel chicken coops, and we use those chickens to test every week. We take a small blood sample on Monday, and we get results on Friday and that tells us if we have West Nile Encephalitis or Eastern Equine Encephalitis, or Saint Louis Encephalitis in the area," he said.

Edson said if an infected mosquito bites a chicken, it doesn’t harm the chicken and they produce antibodies. The county also uses fish in its fight against mosquitoes. 

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"We breed mosquitofish on our facility to provide to residents because they have such an appetite to eat mosquitoes and the aquatic larval and pupil stages," Kailey Travis, an environmental specialist with the county, said.

She said adult mosquitofish eat about 100 mosquito larvae a day. The fish are free for residents. They just have to file a service request with the county.

"If you have an appropriate location, like an ornamental pond or a pool where the pump is no longer functioning, we can place some mosquitofish for residents," Travis said.

Mosquito Control also works with the county’s health department to keep residents and visitors safe. Mosquitoes can be carriers of serious illnesses, such as the West Nile and Zika viruses and dengue.

A spokesperson for the health department said they’ve had some travel-related mosquito borne illnesses reported so far this year, but at this point, they say there’s no cause for concern.