Mosquitoes are a commonality across northern Michigan. They can be found just about anywhere and can get very annoying for families who enjoy the outdoors. For those who have a specific problem in your own yard, here are some easy and simple tips to limit any mosquito breeding that is occurring at home.

One of the most important factors to consider is the standing water around your property. This can come in a variety of different forms as many people have natural flooding low points, intentionally placed water such as bird baths, or ponds, and even everyday outdoor items such as a tarp covering a table or kid’s toys can collect water after any sort of rain.

The reason this standing water is such a key factor is that mosquitoes lay their larvae inside of standing water. Any small amount can house hundreds of eggs that will eventually fly around the yard. The mosquito has a lifespan of about one month, so putting a stop to this stage of the process will have a relatively immediate impact.

The ideal solution to this problem is to eliminate any sort of standing water all together. Put all of your kids toys away, drain your bird baths, and for tarps, manually remove all water from them and try to store them somewhere that rain won’t reach.

For ponds, or large bodies of water that cannot be removed, there is a little bit more difficultly to the solution. The biggest suggestion to solve this problem is to go on amazon and purchase products such as mosquito bits and mosquito dunks.

These products effectively kill the mosquito larvae while it is still in the water, and they are very affordable. Another important factor of them is that they are both animal safe meaning that any wild life, or family pet could consume them and there would be no issue with the animal becoming sick because of it.

Another strategy to solve this problem without mosquito products is to put some sort of motor system inside your bodies of water to keep the water constantly moving so that mosquitoes cant lay eggs on it. Examples of this include water stream fountains, and underwater jets that continuously keep the water moving.

While this isn’t nearly as effective of a solution as a proper treatment, these tips can certainly limit a yards mosquito situation in a quick amount of time. If these tips aren’t doing enough for the yard, a treatment is probably a better option to remove the mosquito and other insect breeding all together.