Cold keeping mosquitoes at bay, city official says
It’s shaping up to be a bad year to be a blood-sucking bug.
As Edmonton ramps up its mosquito control program, there’s growing evidence this summer’s blood-sucking swarms could be smaller than in previous years.
Despite the wet April weather, mosquito populations in Edmonton are so far being kept in check by cooler temperatures, said city biological services technician Mike Jenkins.
“We certainly have a lot of moisture on the ground, so that’s provided a lot of habitat that’s suitable for mosquito development,” Jenkins said. “But the good news is it’s been so cool throughout all of April that development of the mosquitoes has been tremendously delayed.”
The weather station at Edmonton International Airport received 56.9 mm of precipitation in April, nearly double the 30-year average.
But Edmonton averaged just over 2 C in April, several degrees colder than usual.
That’s welcome news for a city that was dubbed Canada’s mosquito capital in 2011 after spring rainstorms created ideal mosquito breeding grounds and swarms so bad the Edmonton Eskimos were forced to practice indoors.
Mosquitoes thrive in warm environments with standing water.
Edmonton’s southeast, with its rolling hills and ponds, tends to be home to the city’s largest and most aggressive mosquito species, Jenkins said.
City crews began installing light traps to track mosquito activity in the past few weeks, but so far they’ve seen few adult mosquitoes, putting the insects two or three weeks behind schedule.
Edmonton pest control crews use a variety of weapons to fight mosquitoes, including a bacterial insecticide known as VectoBac that is fine-tuned to attack the stomach pH of larval mosquitoes.
The city continues to keep a reserve of the potent but controversial neurotoxin Dursban in reserve for emergencies.
Jenkins said yellow jackets, which prefer a warm, dry climate, are also having a tough time this spring. That could all change as the weather warms, but so far pest controllers have a head start.
“We’re suspecting that now that it’s starting to warm up a bit, that (insect) development will ramp up, but our crews are out there and already treating,” he said. “So we’re really not seeing much in the way of adult mosquitoes yet.”