Comment by happyopossum
7 days ago
The key to this working is ensuring that the buckets are the only standing water around. If even 10% of the females decide to use your clogged gutter, broken water fountain, or forgotten livestock waterer instead of your buckets, you will still have a mosquito problem.
In other words, the real tip is to eliminate standing water.
This matches my experience. Building these buckets did nothing, and maybe made it worse. Putting 1/10th as much effort into eliminating standing water is what actually fixed my problem.
Remember, mosquitos can breed in a puddle the size of a bottle cap!
> Building these buckets did nothing, and maybe made it worse.
How could it have possibly made it worse? Even if it only prevented a small fraction of the mosquito population from reproducing it'd still be helping.
Mosquitos are attracted to breeding sites, including the buckets. They may not successfully reproduce but they're still preferentially lured into your yard.
The common gardener's joke about these sort of bug attracting methods (eg Japanese beetle traps) is to buy one and put it in your neighbor's yard. :)
> Remember, mosquitos can breed in a puddle the size of a bottle cap!
There's been so much rain these past months that my entire yard has been filled with puddles. There's only so much you can do to eliminate standing water when it's everywhere.
I’d still take 10% as many mosquitoes over 100%.
Yeah, I tried using the dunks as-is when we first moved to the semi-woods and realized how Sisepheyan the task was. That said, this bucket approach is interesting.
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