Bug Zappers Don’t Really Kill the Bugs That Haunt You
The error messages seem logical: insects fly towards the light, so why not hang up the insect-killing light and have an error-free evening? Unfortunately, the mistakes you are targeting don’t really fit your plan. Those hit are almost all harmless; those who want to suck your blood will do it anyway.
I was reminded of this by a tweet from Alex Wilde, curator of entomology at the University of Texas at Austin:
Mosquitoes and other biting insects find us by smell and by the carbon dioxide we breathe out. They don’t really care about light. Meanwhile, horseflies and other insects that bite during the day won’t see the light hanging from your front porch as anything special.
Instead, Wilde says, insect killers mainly catch night-flying insects that use moonlight to navigate. These include moths, midges, beetles, and wasp species that prey on other insects. In other words, they kill beneficial insects. Many of them are pollinators or help control insects in your garden, or serve as food for bats and birds.
Many of these insects may look like mosquitoes, but it turns out that there are many small, harmless insects that look like mosquitoes. Entomologists once conducted an experiment , setting up an insect trap in a Delaware suburb and counting bodies during the summer. Of the 13,789 corpses of small beetles, only 31 belonged to female (biting) mosquitoes or biting mosquitoes.
“This pleasant insect pop [in the zapper] is unlikely to ever become the biting insect that bothers people,” Wilde says. “Most likely, it was some kind of random mushroom mosquito, just passing from one mushroom to another.”
What to do instead
If mosquitoes are bothering you, some of the easiest ways to keep mosquitoes free of them in the short term are to install a ventilator (mosquitoes cannot fly in the wind) and apply an effective repellent spray to your skin.
Wearing long sleeves and long pants can help; so you can go indoors if there are really too many insects. Wilde also notes that carbon dioxide traps like these may work, but since they have to attract mosquitoes to kill them, you might as well invite more insects to the party. If you do use them, be sure to place them further away from your home.
But nothing beats the prohibition of mosquitoes from breeding. “If you are serious about mosquitoes, clean your gutters, wash your bird baths regularly, and keep water from collecting in containers,” Wilde says. If you have a pond, add a mosquito fish that feeds on mosquito larvae.