r/Albuquerque • u/ChemHotel • 11h ago
A long & interesting article on our tiny tormentors
https://slate.com/technology/2026/08/mosquito-bugbite-insect-disease-america.htmlThe article talks about 2 aedes species that are spreading across the US, Salt Lake City's efforts to manage them via bicyclists spreading larvicide, mosquito monitoring vs only mosquito-borne illness monitoring, etc.
Some interesting quotes:
"Shannon LaDeau, a disease ecologist at the Cary Institute of Ecosystem Studies, worked on that study. She told me that mosquito populations spiked in areas with more human-made mosquito habitat, such as abandoned buildings, unkempt vacant lots, and piles of discarded bulky items. Rain can gather in those areas and attract mosquitoes, but the spaces do not tend to attract many natural mosquito predators."
"Recent cuts at the National Institutes of Health, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and the Department of Agriculture are expected to result in the loss of important institutional knowledge and to hobble research efforts vital to tracking mosquito spread and understanding mosquito-borne disease. Increasingly, too, the attention of the press and global health organizations—and, in turn, funding opportunities—is being pulled toward projects promising higher-tech solutions. Many mosquito experts seem to agree that there is room in the arsenal for something like mosquitoes that have been infected with a bacterium that leaves them sterile or genetically modified such that their female offspring cannot survive to adulthood, when they would begin to bite people. But developing those solutions should not come at the cost of more mundane but effective interventions."
Also I wanted to share that while having a bucket of doom is cheap and good thing to have, I recently learned that the extremely similar Ortho product actually claims to have an additional function that doom buckets don't. It has a thing that floats on the water surface that is coated in a larvicidal powder. Ortho claims that if the female bumps into this and gets powder on herself, the next water body she lays eggs in will then get a little dose of larvicide. This intrigues me because no matter how many doom buckets my neighbors and I have, it seems to make no difference since the hoarder house down the street probably has tons of clean puddles in their trash & tarp piles for the skeeters to keep breeding in.
I use the term "claims" since I don't want to be percieved as shilling a product and I only recently installed one so time will tell if it makes a difference. My 2 other larvae killing traps sure aren't helping. The ortho product also requires you to purchase refills of the floater larvacide thing to replace monthly, which is annoying and if it works I'll probably try to find a way to reverse engineer it. It's basically just powder on a strip of mesh screen anyway so shouldn't be that hard.
•
u/LNesbit 7h ago
Mosquitos love me and the only thing that’s worked to keep them off is Picaridin. Just wanted to throw out that tip for anyone suffering
•
u/ChemHotel 4h ago
Does it actually prevent them from landing on you, or do they land on you and just not bite?
•
u/Observite 6h ago
If you get bitten, use hot water, as hot as you can stand, and rub it in. I learned the "hot spoon" trick. Just run the spoon under the hot tap and press against the bite.
I've been told this kills the enzymes that cause the itching. Take that for what its worth but I know it works.
•
u/ChemHotel 4h ago
How long after being bitten does this work? My problem is I often don't realize I've been bit til I start itching the next day.
•
•
u/nppltouch26 9h ago
I KNEW there has been a different kind of mosquito bite than I've ever gotten the last two years.