You can expect to see a mosquito inside your home now and then if you live in Jacksonville. That’s just how it is. But when you notice mosquitoes indoors more frequently than expected, or you see a swarm of mosquitoes, you’re likely to have questions. Can mosquitoes infest a house or apartment? If so, how do they do it, and what can you do to get rid of them? You’ll find the answers to these questions here. We’ll give you all you need to know about indoor mosquito infestations and how to deal with them. Once we address how to arrest an indoor mosquito infestation, we’ll discuss the circumstances that can lead to an indoor infestation.
Before we get started, we want to remind you that you don’t have to read an article about mosquito control to address a mosquito problem in or around your Jacksonville home. You can navigate to our contact page and reach out to us immediately for industry-leading mosquito pest control in Jacksonville. The QualityPro service team here at Trad’s Pest Control is a leader in pest control. We can guide you toward an effective solution to your mosquito problem in person. With that said, let’s look at indoor mosquito infestations and answer our presented questions.
Can Mosquitoes Infest My House Or Apartment?
Many Florida insects can infest your home without making a nest inside. They nest near structures and send workers into homes. When the workers find food, an army enters the home. Some insects enter for a short time. Some continually go in and out, maintaining an ongoing infestation. Termites in Florida are an example of insects that may create a nest outdoors and maintain an ongoing level of infestation inside a home as they secretly feed on the interior of structural wood.
Let’s get back to those mosquitoes in Jacksonville. Can mosquitoes infest a home or apartment? Yes. You can have a mosquito population in your home that is considered an infestation. But mosquitoes don’t create nests, and it is hard for mosquitoes to live inside your home continually, though they would if they could. Mosquitoes prefer cool temperatures and would much rather live inside where the sun can’t dry them out.
Most of the time, mosquitoes get in occasionally when an opportunity presents itself. An open door is an open invitation for a mosquito. Jacksonville residents can expect to see a few mosquitoes indoors now and then, but something is wrong if you see a mosquito swarm in your home.
How Do Apartments And Houses Get Infested With Mosquitoes?
There are only a few ways an indoor mosquito population can rise to infestation levels. In most cases, you can get control of mosquitoes inside your home by altering the conditions that promote infestation.
- Mosquitoes breed in stagnant water. In a way, stagnant water is almost like a nest. It is where the mosquitoes hatch and grow, and it is the source of the mosquitoes. Mosquitoes can hatch and develop indoors if you have a container of stagnant water in your home. For example, a plant pot that you’re accidentally overwatering. A water resource like this can create hundreds of mosquitoes. One-half inch of water is all that is needed.
- Mosquitoes get inside through gaps, cracks, and holes. If you have entry points, Florida mosquitoes are going to get inside. You can prevent this by walking around your home and sealing these openings. The tools for this job are a caulking gun and a can of expanding foam. Use the foam for messy fixes and your caulking gun to make more esthetically pleasing patches.
- Mosquitoes can slip past unprotected points. A great example of this is the seal around your exterior doors. If you have old weatherstripping or missing door sweeps, you can expect trouble with bugs in Florida. Mosquitoes are no exception.
- Mosquitoes can fly right in through an open and unprotected door. Do you have kids that leave your exterior doors open? Expect mosquitoes. Do you have rips in your screens? Mosquitoes are going to get inside. They are constantly applying pressure to the exterior of your home and will get inside if they can.
- A moisture problem can be the source of a mosquito problem. When gutters clog and rainwater runs down the side of your home, the wood can rot. When wood rots, openings form, and mosquitoes hide in these. A pocket inside a piece of rotting wood where rainwater has collected may provide a breeding site for mosquitoes. You should know mosquitoes aren’t the only insects in Jacksonville attracted to damp wood. Wood-destroying insects, such as termites, wood-boring beetles, carpenter ants, and carpenter bees, may target your property.
In most cases, indoor mosquito infestations result from outdoor conditions and exterior vulnerabilities. The best way to keep mosquitoes out is to reduce mosquitoes around your home. One way to do this is to remove attractants.
What Is Attracting Mosquitoes To My House?
The greatest attractant for mosquitoes is stagnant water. Let’s begin with that one. There are many ways you may provide a stagnant water breeding site for mosquitoes to lay eggs by the hundreds.
- A bucket sitting in the yard
- Bowls and cups left out on the back deck
- A kiddie pool with rainwater that has sat for over a week
- Overfilled plant pots
- Pools of water on scrap wood piles
- Water collected on a tarp
- A toy dump truck
Mosquitoes need a little over a week to go from eggs to adults. In many cases, puddles dry up before mosquitoes take to the air. They need stagnant water that sits for longer than a week.
While stagnant water is the primary reason mosquitoes become a problem for Jacksonville residents, it isn’t the only attractant that can lead to a mosquito infestation in your home.
- Nectar and plant sap. Do you know that mosquitoes don’t survive on blood meals? Both male and female mosquitoes eat nectar and plant sap for sustenance. Female mosquitoes only draw blood meals for reproductive purposes. Therefore, reducing the number of flowers and other plants in your yard can make it resistant to mosquitoes. Our recommendation is to address lawn weed problems. Many Florida weeds produce flowers, and these flowers can attract mosquitoes.
- Damp habitats. Mosquitoes spend most of their time resting. Their preferred resting site is humid vegetation. When you clean your gutters and keep your landscaping open and dry, you make it less attractive to mosquitoes.
Stagnant water resources, lawn weeds, and damp landscaping work together to create the perfect environment for mosquitoes. Altering these conditions can reduce mosquitoes around your home.
How Can I Keep Mosquitoes Out Of My House?
There is no better way to keep mosquitoes out of your house than to get ongoing mosquito control for your property. Mosquitoes never stop coming into your yard. While addressing attractants can reduce mosquitoes below your threshold of comfort, more is needed if you want a level of protection to guard against mosquito-borne diseases.
At Trad’s Pest Control, our on-staff experts have selected two methods that work together to provide the most significant level of mosquito control. While it is best to have both, each can provide mosquito control that you’ll notice.
- Backpack misting targets adult mosquitoes that are hiding on your property. A backpack mist treatment is like a reset button. One day you have mosquitoes, and the next, you don’t. When applied every other month, this treatment will continually reset your yard and make mosquitoes have to get another foothold. Our service professionals will provide recommendations for your property to help you make it harder for them to do so.
- If you want a natural way to control mosquitoes, or you need added protection between service visits, we can install In2Care traps on your property. These traps provide a breeding site mosquitoes can’t resist. When a female mosquito enters an In2Care trap, she picks up a fungal agent and carries it with her as she continues to search your yard for places to lay eggs. The fungus in the traps eliminates the eggs mosquitoes leave, and the fungal agent spreads around your property by mosquitoes that entered your traps, making other potential breeding sites unusable.
Do you see how these products work to get effective control of mosquitoes? Would you like to get control of the mosquitoes around your Jacksonville home? Jump to our contact page and reach out to us. The pest control professionals at Trad’s Pest Control look forward to helping you make your yard a no-fly zone for mosquitoes. We can help.