What’s the buzz?: Mosquito counts in Regina above average

Regina residents have been slap-happy this summer.

Mosquito counts in the city have been higher than normal lately, with an average of 167 mosquitoes per trap. The average for this time of year is 43 mosquitoes per trap.

“We’ll see peaks and valleys inside the mosquito population,” Russell Eirich, the City of Regina’s manager of open space services, said during a media conference Tuesday.

“We’re seeing a peak right now, and I think probably over the next week or so, we’re going to start to see those numbers come down.”

While the latest counts are above average, Eirich also offered some context for the current counts and just how high the numbers have reached in the past.

“Our record count for this particular week is 1,719 mosquitoes (set in 1993), so we’re roughly 10 per cent of what it could be,” he said.

“If you look comparatively back even three years, for about this same time period, we were averaging about 350 mosquitoes per trap. We’re doing all right.”

Storms like the one that rolled through Regina on Monday have left standing water in their wakes, which has created breeding areas for mosquitoes.

That water has been the target for city employees, who have been liberally applying VectoBac to standing water to kill mosquito larvae.

“Our crews are out there seven days a week — we’ve scheduled a full seven-day service this year — and we’re just out there trying to treat the mosquito sites as best we can, and try to keep the numbers down,” Eirich said.

The City of Regina is also providing people with a chance to see counts via an online mosquito map.

The map divides the city into six zones, each of which has two mosquito traps. Residents can access the map to see the full counts by area.

As for wasps, Eirich said their population likely will peak around Labour Day.

— With files from 980 CJME’s Gillian Massie