Mosquito Control in Lemon Grove, CA

How mosquito control works

They do not come from the marsh down the road. The container-breeding mosquitoes now common in this region rarely travel far. If they are biting in your yard, they are almost certainly breeding in your yard or the one next door.

They need almost no water. A bottle cap is enough for some. The usual sources are the saucer under a potted plant, a plugged gutter, a wheelbarrow, a pet bowl left out, a tarp fold, a bird bath, a rain barrel without a screen, and the drip tray of an air conditioner.

They bite during the day, which surprises people expecting a dusk insect. Ankles and elbows, in shade, often without any warning whine.

Source reduction outperforms spraying. A treatment kills the adults present today. The water produces more within a week. Emptying, tipping and screening is what changes the result, and a good technician will spend more time on that than on the sprayer.

What the visit involves

A technician walks the property looking for water rather than insects, including the places people forget: under decks, behind the shed, in the plant saucers, the gutters and any container that has been outside through a rain.

Where water cannot be removed — a pond, a rain barrel, a drain that holds — the treatment targets the larvae in it rather than the adults around it.

Adult treatment goes on the resting places, which are the shaded, humid, sheltered undersides of vegetation rather than the open lawn.

Common questions

Why did the fogging only work for a few days? It killed the adults. Whatever was breeding kept breeding.

We have no standing water. Almost every property has some. Plant saucers and gutters are the two that are missed most often.

Can the whole yard be made mosquito-free? No, and a company promising it is describing something that does not exist. The realistic aim is far fewer, and for that the water has to go.

Who to call

Call and say when you are being bitten, where in the yard, and whether there is a pond, a rain barrel or anything else holding water. Those answers decide whether this is a larval job or an adult one.