Things to do to Help Yourself

• Use mosquito repellent on exposed skin. The Center for Disease Control recommends products with DEET, picaridin, or oil of lemon eucalyptus. Read and follow label directions with all repellents.
• Wear light-colored clothing.

• Any standing water in any item in your yard can be attractive to adult mosquitoes looking to lay eggs. Empty, cover, stack, store, or remove these items. Do a routine check after rains or lawn watering in items such as wheelbarrows, boat tarps, flower pots and saucers, garbage cans, recycling containers, buckets, rain gutters, and tires.
• Change the water regularly in birdbaths, pet dishes, and children’s pools.
• Maintain chlorination and filtration in swimming pools.
• Ornamental bromeliads should be flushed out twice each week or treated monthly with larvicides (Bti, methoprene or permethrin sprays).
• Ornamental ponds can be stocked with mosquito-eating fish.
• Rain barrels should be screened or covered.
• Monitor discharge from air conditioning and heat pump units.

Mosquito Surveillance:

Field technicians inspect areas known to breed mosquitoes throughout the year. They sample standing water, looking for larvae and pupae. They investigate citizen requests, inspecting yards and surrounding neighborhoods for mosquito breeding.

 

Because mosquitoes aren’t always present when the technicians are investigating, they occasionally ask citizens to provide specimens. By providing the mosquitoes that are bothering them, citizens can expedite the proper treatment based on the species provided.

 

Technicians look for adult mosquitoes by setting traps and by doing “landing rates counts” – counting the number of mosquitoes that land in on them in one minute. Forty traps are set each week throughout the year to monitor adult mosquito populations. The species of mosquito and the number provide valuable information for making treatment decisions.

 

• For more information on arboviruses, visit the Florida Department of Health’s website.

 

 

 

 

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(727) 464-7503 -- E-mail

Mosquito Control Request Form

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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