What is the Mosquito Report in Your part of Winnipeg?

What is the hair fascination mosquito experts seem to have?

I was just going to say......

What's with these mosquito guys and their long hair?

EdWin wrote:But this year's numbers are nowhere near what they were in the early 1980s when it was not unusual to find more than a hundred thousand of the pests in traps each week, said Jenkins.

City biologists will check trap numbers Tuesday, but recent counts are in the hundreds per trap, about 30 to 40 per cent of what is normal.

Are they doing any larviciding in Edmonton? I have been thinking that the trap count for spraying in Winnipeg is too low by at least one, if not two orders of magnitude. Give me a break - 20 or 30 in a trap and they douse people with poison! They must have forgotten a few zeroes. Also, mosquitoes become resitant to malathion after only a few generations, so after decades of spraying I am surpsied that this still kills a mosquito. We probably see more human birth defects, asthma, nausea, cough, MS, and cancer due to malathion spraying than actual mosquitoes are killed by it.

We probably see more human birth defects, asthma, nausea, cough, MS, and cancer due to malathion spraying than actual mosquitoes are killed by it.

Source?

i don't really want to talk about the mosquitoes in my area...cause there aren't any!!! and i want it to stay that way!!!

we were out in the pool last night for about an hour...and i don't remember seeing one mosquito

on the other hand...there were about 3 dragonflies buzzing around most the evening...so maybe someone started a dragonfly farm near me and we're getting the benefits from it .

grumpy old man wrote:

We probably see more human birth defects, asthma, nausea, cough, MS, and cancer due to malathion spraying than actual mosquitoes are killed by it.

Source?

The WRHA should know. Certainly they would not allow their population to be poisoned if it was safe to do so. I am sure they are monitoring the effect of spraying on health, and if there are no health effects I am also sure they would publish the results that show it ... on the other hand what if they don't do these things? Is there something they don't want the populace to know?

EdWin wrote:Okay, so not only do I get swarmed when in my backyard, going for a run in my neighborhood and working outside, NOW when the car is idle at an intersection they attack you in your car when the window is open. Seriously, you have to HAUL a$$ outside from point a to point b anywhere you go around here and in most of Alberta if you don't want to get at least 20 bites per minute. It's disgusting how bad they are out here, day and night. We are under attack! You can hear them humming when my patio door is open in the evening, no word of a lie. In living in Winnipeg for 21 years, I have never recalled them being as persistent and relentless as they are in Edmonton this year, and I think I'm qualified to make that statement based on life experience in both cities.
Oh, and did I mention that the next seven days calls for rain, rain and more rain and also that they cut the insect control budget for the City of Edmonton by 200K this year?!?!?! Help...........................

See its all because of the oil boom. People heard about it and started flocking to Alberta 10 years ago.

Mosquitos dont have cars and cant get on planes or trains easily so it just took them alot longer to get there

AGEsAces wrote:i don't really want to talk about the mosquitoes in my area...cause there aren't any!!! and i want it to stay that way!!!

we were out in the pool last night for about an hour...and i don't remember seeing one mosquito

on the other hand...there were about 3 dragonflies buzzing around most the evening...so maybe someone started a dragonfly farm near me and we're getting the benefits from it .

increasing the number of dragonflies has always been one of Taz's go to things. Usually they dont get time to develop before we kill them off with the malathion. This year, we are doing better and there are an insane amount of dragonflies around. BUT...... I can see on the newspapers sites where many people are already DEMANDING they start the fogging.

boo

I killed one mosquioto last night that landed on my arm while I was in bed, and this morning I found 1 dead in my bathroom sink.

I guess there aren't many mosquiroes around because they all drowned in the heavy rainfall this last month?

Was at Blumberg last night for soccer and we stayed later in the parking lot chatting and my gosh, they got soooo bad at about 10PM that we ran for our vehicles and high tailed it out of there. And we weren't even near the grass. Last night was the worst I have seen this year.

Deank wrote:

EdWin wrote:Okay, so not only do I get swarmed when in my backyard, going for a run in my neighborhood and working outside, NOW when the car is idle at an intersection they attack you in your car when the window is open. Seriously, you have to HAUL a$$ outside from point a to point b anywhere you go around here and in most of Alberta if you don't want to get at least 20 bites per minute. It's disgusting how bad they are out here, day and night. We are under attack! You can hear them humming when my patio door is open in the evening, no word of a lie. In living in Winnipeg for 21 years, I have never recalled them being as persistent and relentless as they are in Edmonton this year, and I think I'm qualified to make that statement based on life experience in both cities.
Oh, and did I mention that the next seven days calls for rain, rain and more rain and also that they cut the insect control budget for the City of Edmonton by 200K this year?!?!?! Help...........................

See its all because of the oil boom. People heard about it and started flocking to Alberta 10 years ago.

Mosquitos dont have cars and cant get on planes or trains easily so it just took them alot longer to get there

Many new suburban developments out here are now making many small, shallow lakes for the residence, with no drainage that I am aware of. And they don't spray them because they have also become wetland habitat for ducks and geese. This has happened over the last decade or two. Now, the experts are saying that a majority of these mosquitoes are likely the offspring of eggs that were laid probable about 10-20 years ago, during more plentiful water years. So these little buggers never had all the extra help of man-made lakes to help them proliferate back then like they do today. So now, they have even more areas to breed, so they won't need to lie dormant for as long anymore during our next drought. Which means that these bastards will be more proliferate for more years thanks to our need for aquatic aesthetics. In short, we are screwed.

Oh, and now these bastards are finding their way into cars through the vents. There is no escaping them.

EdWin wrote:Oh, and now these bastards are finding their way into cars through the vents. There is no escaping them.

LOL

EdWin wrote:

Sourpuss wrote:Mmm. That gives me something to look forward to, fo 'sho. That said, I don't find this any worse than growing up in Northern BC. We lived in a valley surrounded by moose-bogs and rivers.

Where in Northern BC?

This miserable dump. Ever heard of it? http://www.kitimat.ca/

Most of my classmates ended up in Alberta because there's no work in Hicksville anymore. My Facebook feed from the Edmonton area folk corroborates your mosquito complaints/sightings. It sounds like it's really bad there this summer.

I always thought of Kitimat as a marvel of nature and industry.

Sourpuss wrote:

EdWin wrote:

Sourpuss wrote:Mmm. That gives me something to look forward to, fo 'sho. That said, I don't find this any worse than growing up in Northern BC. We lived in a valley surrounded by moose-bogs and rivers.

Where in Northern BC?

This miserable dump. Ever heard of it? http://www.kitimat.ca/

Most of my classmates ended up in Alberta because there's no work in Hicksville anymore. My Facebook feed from the Edmonton area folk corroborates your mosquito complaints/sightings. It sounds like it's really bad there this summer.

Hahaha. My co-workers husband is from there. He, along with most people there apparently, think it's a dump as well. I've been there and can't say I found it appealing; sorry. Terrace itself was moderately better, as was Prince Rupert. Smithers on the other hand is a gorgeous, well-kept town. I'm glad I have work sites out there so I can stay and enjoy the town, especially Twin Falls.

Sourpuss wrote:My Facebook feed from the Edmonton area folk corroborates your mosquito complaints/sightings. It sounds like it's really bad there this summer.

It's terrible. They are persistent in biblical proportions both day and night, non-stop. And apparently it's only going to get much worse before it gets better towards the end of the summer. And now with all the rain we are recieving this weekend and well into the end of next week...............well, we are truly fricked for a long time to come.
I'm finding out the hard way that Edmonton truly is a mosquito city, just like Winnipeg.


Edmonton’s mosquito population still hasn’t peaked
High point usually comes late in July

By Gordon Kent, edmontonjournal.com July 8, 2011


EDMONTON — The city’s biggest mosquito outbreak since 2007 could become worse as Edmonton heads for the insects’ usual peak around the end of July.

About 30 female nuisance mosquitoes were caught this week in eight light traps around the city, almost double the number from the previous week, biological sciences technician Mike Jenkins said Friday.

While that figure is five times lower than the 30-year average, it only picked up the initial surge of mosquitoes created by the recent rain and doesn’t indicate how many of the bugs are actually flying around the city, he said.

“It doesn’t always reflect the entire story. The light traps are not very good at drawing in the daytime biting species.”

The high point for nuisance mosquitoes usually comes later in the month, he said, adding so far the species linked to West Nile virus hasn’t been detected.

Although there hasn’t been an appreciable increase throughout July in the last three years, numbers in 2007 more than tripled between July 12 and July 19 to nearly 400 mosquitoes per trap, city figures indicate.

The July 19 average from 1981-2010 is more than 4,000 mosquitoes, with a second, slightly lower peak in early August.

The all-time record was set in 1982, when the average weekly trap count for the year spiked to 110,000.

Dry weather over the past decade has kept populations way down, with 2008 the lowest on record. So with more snow and rain Edmonton is simply returning closer to normal, Jenkins said.

“We’re certainly seeing more habitat out there than we have in a decade or so … We’re not used to the populations that would normally be considered average,” he said.

“We have kind of lost our acclimatization to mosquitoes in the Edmonton area.”

Tell that to Silver Elvis. He has brought his robotic impression of The King to the Edmonton International Street Performers Festival five or six times in the past, and has never seen so many bugs.

But he said his spangly costume is keeping the bites at bay on Churchill Square.

“Mosquitoes see their reflection in the mirrors of my suit, and my (silver-coloured) face, and they don’t want to go near me because they’re kind of creeped out,” said the Toronto-based performer also known as Peter Jarvis.

Although he generally stays frozen in place until someone feeds his cash box, he has a few tricks to brush away a pesky Aedes vexans.

“That’s when I do the Elvis windup, the arms get swinging, or I fix my hair, my chrome coif.”

Sword swallower and escape artist Amy Saunders, who bills herself as Miss Behave, said she realized it was a bad year when mosquitoes attacked her on arrival at the Edmonton International Airport.

Part of her act involves eating a banana, a fruit reputed to attract the blood-suckers.

She’s now trying to find an alternative.

“There’s nothing funnier than a banana. I was thinking of a carrot, but who can eat a carrot in 10 seconds?” she asked.

“I heard that apparently if you cover yourself in tobacco (they stay away), so I’m going to go home and have a bath in tobacco.”

gkent@edmontonjournal.com

© Copyright (c) The Edmonton Journal

http://www.edmontonjournal.com/healt...892/story.html

meanwhile.. I just spent 2 hours outside, in the shade.. narry a skeeter in site.

EdWin wrote:It's terrible. They are persistent in biblical proportions both day and night, non-stop. ..............
About 30 female nuisance mosquitoes were caught this week in eight light traps around the city, almost double the number from the previous week, biological sciences technician Mike Jenkins said Friday.

Wow they caught 30 skeeters. Roll out the pesticides now.
These trap count reports are very confusing.

eViL tRoLl wrote:

EdWin wrote:It's terrible. They are persistent in biblical proportions both day and night, non-stop. ..............
About 30 female nuisance mosquitoes were caught this week in eight light traps around the city, almost double the number from the previous week, biological sciences technician Mike Jenkins said Friday.

Wow they caught 30 skeeters. Roll out the pesticides now.
These trap count reports are very confusing.

Regardless of what the trap counts say troll, they are what they are, and they are bad. Very very very bad. Why don't you come out here and experience it for yourself it you are such a doubter.

EdWin wrote:
Regardless of what the trap counts say troll, they are what they are, and they are bad. Very very very bad. Why don't you come out here and experience it for yourself it you are such a doubter.

Oh, I have no doubts about your first hand acounts. I just don't trust trap counts, that are used here to decide when to spray with poison even if there is no real threat. Do they use pesticide in Edmonton?

They don't have spray programs here for adults; they only larvacide. And we have likely seen between 50-100mm of rain over the weekend, so things are going to get much much MUCH worse before they get any better. frick me.

"Why don't you come out here and experience it for yourself it you are such a doubter."

send tickets... I will come for klondike days and give you an official winnipeg mosquito rating

30 count I think is pretty low? At what number do they start spraying? 100? 150?

i was in West K over the weekend...
skeeters were TERRIBLE there....

yet in the West End we still seem to be pretty clear of them.

Its a complex calculation, but normally only around 100ish. but can start as soon as AFA is "HIGH" which means nothing really since city wide we are "HIGH" at 15