‘A glass full of water can create 1,000 mosquitoes’: Traps beginning to buzz

After the heavy rainfall last week, the City of Regina’s mosquito traps are starting to get a few more of the blood-sucking bugs.

“Our pesky mosquitoes are a little below average right now,” said Russell Eirich, the City of Regina’s manager of open space services.

“We had a fairly rainy week last week, so we think the rain actually kept those numbers down because they weren’t able to do a whole lot of flying.”

To monitor the mosquitoes, 12 traps were set up across the city. Each area has two traps.

“We are averaging four mosquitoes per trap,” Eirich said. “Compared to an average of 14 mosquitoes per trap (normally at this time of year), it’s below average.

“That said, we know that it’s been a lot of rain and we know that the water bodies are out there and the mosquito larvae are developing. We’re going to be seeing a bit of an increase over the next few weeks.”

With dry conditions in the forecast, mosquito numbers will stay down.

“It all depends on what Mother Nature throws at us,” Eirich said. “If we get that sort of daytime heating and the nighttime rain activities, it will continue to aggravate the mosquitoes. But again, the grounds have been fairly dry.

“So if we don’t get any more rain, then things should dry up and hopefully the mosquito numbers will go down. So right now we’re at a bit of a doorway, and we just don’t know which way Mother Nature is going to push us.”

Eirich suggests ridding your yard of standing water to keep the counts down.

“If anybody’s in their backyards, just get rid of any standing water,” he said. “Empty glasses, empty pails (and) empty bowls that are holding water from the rain, just to make sure it gets dumped.

“A glass full of water can create 1,000 mosquitoes so get rid of the water in your yard.”