I’ve never had issues with mozzies before. Yes I get bit, they itch a bit, and that’s it. Hubby usually attracts them all . This year we seem to have a lot AND they are tiger mossies. Last night I got bitten twice on my arm and had huge swelling, first time ever!
After fleagate, and now having a stock of citronella essential oil , I’ve been using it with a light spray on me + adding some to a vaporiser with tea candle to evaporate it. So far, this seems to be successful as have sat out each night and not been bitten. Previous to this I used:
There was an indepth piece on this subject in the NY Times the other day, and the items I took from it were as follows:-
Citronella candles etc work because of the smoke, not its horrible smell. Thought I’ d test this by burning incense sticks indoors: seems to work regardless of the scent - used both trendy Japanese ones and old hippie stuff from India.
Fans help because the mozzies don’t like the air being disturbed - our pompes de chaleurs have a simple fan only option which is OK too providing it’s on quite high setting.
Despite being alongside the Lot, we don’t have a serious mozzie prob - the water’s not stagnant and we mainly get flies.
Lastly, maybe this is what you need - these Thermacell’s devices came out top in the survey. There’s a link to one below but there are other models that are worth checking out
You are not alone.
I get bitten in the house, this evening it was a fly and my ankle swelled up.
Gone down now though.
Treated with Dapis stick and Sedermyl.
Can’t help with preventing the mozzies from initially biting, although I can recommend this device for calming the itching once they have feasted on your blood.
Beurer BR 60 Dispositif soulageant les piqûres et morsures d’insectes, stylo réduit la démangeasion et le gonflement, sans substance chimique, petit et pratique https://amzn.eu/d/iwRWkbE
For flies our neighbour has had success using this product…
I’m going to pick some up and try it myself in the coming days, but in the meantime I find burning some cheap instant coffee does a good job of keeping them at bay.
I agree, but in reality it’s the only 100 % effective stuff. I wouldn’t use anything else in malaria zones. But here I normally I just put up with the bites and try and develop a tolerance. However this year the bite reactions seem to be particulary bad.
As an aside, we spilt part of a jar of instant coffee last week and vacuumed it up. Ever since whenever we’ve used the vacuum cleaner we’ve had a lovely aroma of coffee in the room. Well worth doing on purpose
Wasn’t someone saying they burned ground coffee last year? I was wondering how. Does one just put some in a jar and toss in a match?
Yes they seem more aggressive this year. I tried out a mosquito net round my chair. The little beasties were literally hurling themselves against it trying to get in. Then the little s*dz worked out almost immediately to follow the seam hanging vertically to locate the door into the net and get behind it. So that is now triple folded and clipped not just overlapping.
I have loads of out of date ground coffee to get rid of, if there is a method to use it to deter these beasties I shall be watching closely.
Emptied what was there last year, covered the new water butt immediately with mosquto net and its lid is mostly on as well, same number of insects just more aggressive and till later hours. Flypapers working, less populated than last year but there are more ‘outliers’ and they seem to be behaving more aggressively.
That was one good thing about the drought last year - they just disappeared and only came back for a short time at the end.
old coffee grounds in a small container (I use a ramekin) , set alight as one would for incense… smoulders gently and repulses nasty insects…
Worked well all last summer, during our Commune’s open-air soirées…
The organisers put small smouldering saucers here and there, on the Bar and where folk would be eating.
Initially, this was to repel wasps, but worked for everything… from what we could tell.
A coffee aficionado on tv the other day was talking about the amount of cafeen in different brews. Cheap coffee from lower down the mountains uses more rustca beans as the plant protects itself from predatory insects. Thats whats used in most instant coffee. I have been drinking more coffee recently but got bitten the other evening when working on the car, I was a bit hot and sweaty at the end of the day +29c outside so I doubt drinking more coffee would help.
I noticed on the site @gareth and @JaneJones recommended on another thread, that they had sort of tents made of mosquito net that could be used outdoors.
These are the only things that work for me outdoors - the pic is Amazon but we got ours in the local supermarket…
We tend to sit on our terasse in the evenings and I have potted up a load of carnivorous plants. The sarracenia work well for flies but these work for mosquitos…
@Stella has given some excellent advice already. In our case we had an old brick so use that.
One thing to be aware of is the coffee takes a little while to catch fire, so don’t use matches otherwise you’ll burn your fingers before it takes. Instead I find one of those “briquet cuisine” to be ideal.
. This year we seem to have a lot AND they are tiger mossies. Last night I got bitten twice on my arm and had huge swelling, first time ever!
, I’ve been using it with a light spray on me + adding some to a vaporiser with tea candle to evaporate it. So far, this seems to be successful as have sat out each night and not been bitten. Previous to this I used: