Sarasota County officials urge residents to help keep mosquitoes under control as summer heats up

SARASOTA, Fla. - Florida becomes the perfect breeding ground for mosquitoes as the rain continues, and the summer heats up. They can carry diseases, so Sarasota County Mosquito Management is urging residents to help keep mosquitoes under control. 

Wade Brennan, the manager of Sarasota County's Mosquito Management, keeps track of mosquito species in the county. Now is the time the bugs start breeding and multiplying. 

"Everything is starting to hold water. That threat is out there, and it’s constantly out there. We need to be cautious about that," Brennan said.

Sarasota County Mosquito Management works to eliminate them at all life stages, but they focus on the larva, before they can spread their wings and fly. Trucks and planes are still used to spray, but not as often.

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"By the time we have to do that those mosquitos are already flying and biting people," said Brennan.

While the county works to do as much as they can, it's often items in a resident's backyard that can turn into a breeding ground. That's where they need the public's help.

"It's your plastic buckets, your containers, your tarps, boats. They thrive on that specific habitat," said Brennan. "Those habitats actually produce the two main species that transmit, dengue,chikungunya and zika. If you don’t have containers. If the entire neighborhoods don’t have the containers, you don’t have the treat of that disease. It’s a human-driven disease."

Mosquito management uses 72 chickens at 12 sites across Sarasota County, and they test for antibodies of viruses that maybe present. So far, none have turned up, but they said we need to be caution.

"Just because those diseases like zika and dengue aren’t here, those mosquitos that spread them are," said Michael Drennon, the Disease Intervention Services program manager for Sarasota County's Department of Health.

It's as simple as doing your part, to make sure to stop mosquitoes from biting. 

"You can stop a lot of the different disease that are vectored by mosquitos, actually all of them," said Brennan.