I’ve Spent Years Fighting Mosquitoes. Here’s What Works
Mosquitoes suck. Literally, figuratively, and every other way. These bloodsuckers have been a worldwide menace since the beginning of recorded history. A popularly reposted infographic lists them as—by far—the world’s deadliest animal, thanks to the parade of nasty diseases they can transmit. West Nile, Zika, chikungunya, malaria, dengue—these are no longer illnesses confined to the global south. In recent years, all have been discovered in bugs in the United States.
Ridding your property of mosquitoes is a decidedly Quixotic effort. You can stem the tide for a while, but you can’t ever win the war. Once whatever abatement method you use has worn off, they swoop back in, thirstier than ever. Nevertheless, you have to do something. Left unattended, mosquitoes can quickly turn from a nuisance to an epidemic that makes your outdoor space completely unusable.
Outside of wide-scale community mosquito spraying programs, most personal and home-based mosquito abatement tools focus on repelling them rather than trying to outright kill them. Insecticides like DEET work by being rubbed onto the skin, while metofluthrin and allethrin work in vapor form, creating a cloud of repellent that works without you having to make physical contact with the chemicals. Trapping mosquitoes is another potential option, luring them into a chamber from which they can’t escape.
For years I’ve tried innumerable technologies and tactics to rid my property—and my very susceptible skin—from mosquitoes. Here’s what I’ve uncovered to date that works—and what doesn’t.
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Featured Products
Best Personal Repellent Gear
This pint-sized repeller weighs a little more than a pound and recharges via a USB-C cable. Power it up and a heating element inside warms a vial of metofluthrin, releasing mosquito-repulsing vapor in your immediate vicinity, about 10 feet in every direction. It’s simple and extremely portable, making it easy to move from one area to another.
The system works. It warms up in just a few minutes and effectively keeps bugs at bay, provided you keep the repeller close by. Best of all, I was able to take it with me as I moved around the yard—but be warned, there’s some lag time for the vapor cloud to reform each time you relocate. A small chemical replacement cartridge lasts for about 36 hours; refills are $39 for a 2-pack.
Note that Thermacell markets myriad versions of this product, including a unit with a built-in light, one with a docking station for easier charging, one with longer battery life, and one that is ruggedized and can be worn around the neck on a lanyard. Any of the above will get the job done (and done well) in functionally the same way.
This butane-powered device offers a twist on the E-ZoneGuard line, containing no battery at all, which may be preferred in some exceptionally off-the-grid environments. Instead, a butane cartridge twists into the system. When activated (no flame needed), it heats up a replaceable chemical mat that slides into a groove on top of the device, this one using allethrin instead of metofluthrin. One downside: The vapor shield promised by the Fuel-Zoneguard stretches only about 7½ feet in each direction, more restrictive than the E-Zoneguard, and a butane canister will only get you about 12 hours of operation. Allethrin may also be less effective than metofluthrin against pests. That said, I experienced great results with this product and found the freedom from cables to be liberating. Refills run $19 for 24 hours of extra fuel and insecticide mats (sold together).
The Fuel-Zoneguard is also sold as part of a lantern or in a handheld form, designed for use on the go. (As with E-Zoneguard products, the underlying technology is identical.)
Best Large-Scale Repellent Gear
Take Thermacell’s E-Zoneguard system and make it yard-sized, and you’ve got LIV, a semi-permanent solution that uses the same repellent chemical (metofluthrin) but dramatically expands its coverage potential.
The system is built around a hub that plugs into wall power and connects to your home’s Wi-Fi. Up to 10 freestanding repellers connect to this hub via cables. You string them in a chain to surround your deck, your pool, or whatever else you want to protect from mosquitoes. Arranged in a rough circle, the resultant cloud of repellent serves as a large-scale barrier that can protect the whole family from being attacked. It’s all controlled via a mobile app (with Alexa support allegedly in the works), so you can fire the system up before you even head outside.
It’s one of the most effective systems I’ve tested, in large part because it pumps out so much repellent at precise locations. While nothing is perfect, LIV is about as close as it gets, protecting my entire swimming pool and deck at the touch of a button on its mobile app.
The only catch is that LIV is far from inexpensive, and Thermacell no longer sells it as a DIY solution; you’ll need a professional installer to complete the job. If saving your skin (and potentially your health) from mosquitoes is important to you, it could be worth it.
Tiki BiteFighter—from the company that makes the iconic torches—is an ingenious twist on the wider-scale repellent concept that takes advantage of wiring you may already have. The system works with string lights: Just remove a bulb from your lights and screw the Plug & Repel into the socket. When the lights are on, the device heats up a vial of metofluthrin that attaches to the bottom of the repellent unit, protecting the immediate vicinity from mosquitoes. (In theory, you can also use it with any overhead light socket.)
Naturally, the device comes with some caveats. The biggest is that it requires a (standard size) E26 socket to connect to; many string lights, including mine, use much smaller E12 candelabra bulbs, so compatibility can be a problem. Second, the range of BiteFighter’s vapor is considerably smaller than Thermacell’s: Tiki recommends plugging in a repeller every 12 feet. That can require a significant investment in hardware, mar your lighting aesthetic, and require lots of maintenance. (The system ships with a 12-hour metofluthrin pod; 48-hour replacement pods cost $10 each.)
Still, if you have the right environment, with compatible string lights surrounding or criss-crossing your outdoor space, the solution is much more affordable than a hard-wired system like LIV. If you only plan to use the system occasionally, the math is even more compelling.
Just OK: Mosquito Traps
These devices may look like old-school bug zappers, but they’re actually traps, designed to lure bugs in with a purple light, then sequester them in a chamber thanks to the tiny fan that sucks them in. Mosqitter’s and Dynatrap’s devices work almost exactly the same way, boasting coverage that spans up to an acre, depending on the model you choose.
I tried both of these products—in Mosqitter’s case for months, letting it run all summer long—and found that while they were both effective at capturing insects, neither one attracted many mosquitoes. In both cases, I returned after a few weeks to find the trap chamber filled almost exclusively with moths. I don’t really love moths, either, but I don’t feel like I need to go out of my way to kill them.
I spoke to Mosqitter about my results and they suggested adding a packet of mosquito attractant to the device ($25, lasts a month), but this didn’t have any result on my mosquito catch rate. Again, mostly moths at the end of the testing period.
So, why am I saying these might be worth a try? As Mosqitter pointed out to me, there are countless species of mosquitoes—3200 globally, 174 in the US—and they don’t all behave the same. The ones around Austin may be resistant to the attractant and blasé about purple light, instead preferring to dine exclusively on human flesh. (This certainly tracks.) So while my results were lackluster, I’m willing to concede that users in other parts of the world, where the bugs are less hearty, may have better luck with it. If you don’t get good results, you can always return the gear for a refund.
If You Do Get Stung
Bug Bite Thing
Suction Tool
Try as you might, you are still going to get stung once in a while—even with the best anti-mosquito solution in place. The bugs are simply too tenacious (and there are too many of them) to ward every last one away, no matter what method you use.
One of the most powerful items I’ve found for reducing the impact of stings isn’t calamine lotion or hydrocortisone but rather this little device called the Bug Bite Thing. It’s a tiny tube that you place over the source of a fresh sting or bite, then pull back on its handles to create a localized suction. It only takes a few seconds for the system to suck irritants from under the skin, lessening redness, swelling, and itching. I’ve used it for years and it honestly works remarkably well, provided you get to the sting quickly.
Heat It
Smartphone-Powered Insect Bite Healer
This wacky but simple device plugs into your smartphone’s USB-C port, which causes it to heat up within a few seconds. Just place the warmed dongle directly on the bug bite (as directed, of course, by the Heat It app) and hold for a few seconds. The system can help to alleviate itching to a degree, but it isn’t as effective as the Bug Bite Thing, and it requires jumping through a lot more hoops to work properly. It’s nice to have on hand as an extra tool in the arsenal, though.
Less effective
I’ve tried plenty of products that promise to kill or repel mosquitoes. These have not been effective—or, at least, not worth the money and effort involved.
This oddity arrives as a plastic bucket that you fill partway with water, mimicking a mosquito breeding site. A chemical-laced band hovers over this water, slowly contaminating it with a poison that kills adult mosquitoes and their eggs. The band must be replaced monthly. I tested this system for two months but found that the water evaporated much too quickly and, more importantly, the whole thing became an attractant for mammalian wildlife like racoons and opossums, which periodically tossed it around, maybe in the hopes of getting at the water. It’s a cheap option at $35, but not something I was keen to leave on my patio long-term.
The lowest of low-tech anti-mosquito solutions, Mosquito Dunks are small discs that you can drop into any amount of standing water, either natural (water feature like a fountain) or man-made (a bucket you intentionally fill with water as a trap). These contain a bacteria that’s toxic to mosquitoes but won’t hurt other wildlife, slowly releasing into the water as they dissolve over the course of a month. The only problem: They smell awful, and of course you need a reliable source of standing water for them to work at all. That’s fine if you have a handy pond that you don’t want to drain. Much less exciting in the average backyard.
$100/treatment and up
If you live in mosquito country, chances are your neighborhood is teeming with companies that promise to repel the bugs by spraying chemicals into the trees and foliage around your property, warding them off. I paid for a service to spray my property for years, and found that a very familiar routine developed: Immediately after each spray, my yard would be almost devoid of bugs, and my family would have two or three days of bite-free bliss. After that, the spray would wear off and the bugs would return, leaving us another 18 days or so until the next triweekly treatment. (Any amount of rain would also wash away all of the treatment chemicals even quicker.) Given the cost of over $2,000 per year, I’ve never been happier with a decision to cancel a service.
Mosquitoes just aren’t attracted to shiny lights the way other insects are. You’ll hear plenty of satisfying pops if you hang a bug zapper near your pool, but you won’t likely find many of the dead to be mosquitoes. Skip ’em.
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