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Peskies Pest Control Birmingham Alabama PodcastPest Solutions and Tips from Peskies Pest Control in Birmingham, Alabama Author: Peskies Pest Control Birmingham Alabama Podcast
Our motto at Peskies Pest Control Is 100% Guarenteed Or You Dont Pay a Penny for pest problems in Birmingham Alabama! Monthly discussions on how to have a pest free home with pest expert, Michael Wienecke how to Language: en-us Genres: Earth Sciences, Home & Garden, Leisure, Science Contact email: Get it Feed URL: Get it iTunes ID: Get it |
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Mosquitoes Are Already Back in Birmingham Alabama!
Thursday, 12 February, 2026
In today’s episode of the Peskies Pest Control Podcast, Michael and Travis discuss mosquito treatment and prevention for your Birmingham, Alabama property! Podcast Transcript: Michael Wienecke Hey. So here today on the Peskies Pest Control Podcast, we are talking about mosquitoes, I feel like spring is in the air. I woke up for the last couple of days with my nose a little snotty and sniffly, and it’s just getting hot. Travis? Travis McGowin Don’t even I’m not ready. No, I’m not I refuse to give up winter. You know, no matter how brutal it actually was at times over the last couple of weeks, I’m still holding on to hope that there’s some kind of residual that’s going to come back and, you know, actually show itself again. Because I, spring and summer are not my most favorite times of the year. Michael Wienecke I am feeling that right now. I was taking my kids to school this morning, and I just, it just feels a little humid out, a little too humid for what it what it should be. Travis McGowin For February. Yes. Michael Wienecke Yes, yes. So you said we were, I know we were talking earlier. You said you saw some mosquitoes yesterday already. Travis McGowin Right, right. I had a customer whose house I went to shortly after four o’clock yesterday afternoon. And as I was getting my products ready and my sprayers to go treat their house, yes, I had mosquitoes buzzing around my head already. And like I said, it’s only February. Michael Wienecke Well, as we’ve seen them, we’ve seen them in December. You know, I’ve been deer hunting before and seen them in a climber so, you know, right there in December, so perfect. I mean, even even in February. Let’s talk about some ways to just help customers, not get rid of them, but just stop them from from being so so bad at their property, far as you know, getting the water, you know, diverted away from their house, like all that kind of stuff. Travis McGowin Right, so, you know, for those that may or may not know, mosquitoes breed in standing, stagnant water. So they, you know, they land on top of the surface of the water surface. Tension holds them so they don’t sink, and they basically deposit their eggs onto the stagnant water. And it can be, you know, as much water as inside of a tire that’s been left there and filled up with water from rain for a while, or it can be as little water as a cap full from, you know, a soda bottle. It doesn’t take a whole lot of water for them to actually be able to reproduce and so it really takes a lot of diligence on part of the customer, a lot of effort on part of the customer to make sure that they do not have standing water sources in their yard, and you and I have both seen it before, these things can range anywhere from, like I said, tires to just trash that’s holding water. Got a lot of customers that live around the lake that cover their boats or their jet skis with tarps. Yeah, the tarps just completely hold the water, and they don’t go drain the water off after a rain, and it just collects and then leaf litter, and that leaf debris that gets in there just makes it even more attractive for them. For a stagnant source, just five gallon buckets full of rain water, rain barrels. People that have rain barrels that collect water from their gutters. Clogged gutters. That’s another big one. Leaf litter and gutters clogs it and it holds water. You know. Just think about it, if you had a gutter on the edge of your porch where you like to go and enjoy yourself and sit out in the evenings or what have you, and you’ve got standing water because it’s not draining Well, the mosquitoes are just breeding right there and then coming down and eating you alive. And that’s just the tip of the iceberg. Like you mentioned earlier, incomplete drainage in yards. Maybe it’s also an area that not only does it not drain, but it doesn’t get a lot of sunlight, so it never dries out. French drains in yards where you’ve got the drain in the ground, some of those don’t empty all the way, and you just, I mean, you just be creating the next breed of mosquitoes coming through your property. Michael Wienecke Well, that’s what I was going to talk about, hidden, hidden places that people wouldn’t think about. I mean, we’ve seen problem accounts, or, you know, what we’d consider a problem account, where they have a bunch of basins in their yard, all that water is going in there, and it’s hidden. You don’t see all the water that’s just caught in that basin, where it’s, you know, a slow drain and all that kind of stuff. I’ve never understood why they did that. I don’t know why it wouldn’t just be a faster drain, to keep it from getting clogged, I guess. Travis McGowin Yeah, there’s, there’s just so many places that water can be, water can stay and be held in people’s property, and a lot of them can be just overlooked. You know, we’ve got some storage buildings in my yard. I don’t go behind them very often. And and so if I were to stick a bucket back there, even a bucket flipped over that will hold water on the bottom of the bucket that’s sitting up in the air. I mean, that’s enough water to breed hundreds and hundreds of mosquitoes and to really cause a problem, and to really make control efforts a little more challenging, Michael Wienecke 100%. @ell, and I’m glad you said the control. So let’s talk about one way that we, you know, help with controlling the water that we can’t control. So we’re flipping over buckets. We’re moving over. You know, I always bird bass need to be changed out. I would say, you know, weekly, every two weeks, something like that, so it doesn’t build up a stagnant pool. But the control with that IGR is really key on the drains in the yard, such such as that matter of getting rid of that problem, because you can’t control that. Travis McGowin Right, And for those watching listening, IGR stands for “insect growth regulator”, so we use a mixture that has a couple of different active ingredient products in there. And what that IGR does is it is a long term game in terms of mosquito control. So picture, you have a technician come to your house. They treat your lawn and landscape areas with a liquid mosquito treatment that’s got that IGR in it. And so let’s say, after that treatment is dry, the technicians gone, the mosquito lands on the underside of leaves that has this IGR on it. Well, not only is that mosquito now contaminated with that IGR, which is going to take an effect on that mosquito and slowly mess with it to where it can’t breed anymore, but then it’s going to go land on a water source, and it’s going to contaminate that water source too, so that other mosquitoes that touch it could be contacting the IGR, and then those mosquito larva that are already in the water, it should mess with their development, so that they don’t even develop all the way into a biting mosquito as they go and continue to develop. So it’s a great product, and it’s a great addition to a mosquito control program. Michael Wienecke Oh yeah, I’d say its a must have, because if you’re not controlling that, that life cycle, if you’re just killing the adult mosquitoes as they buzz around and get under this shaded area, these trees and, you know, decks and all that, then you’re only taking care of one half of it, or not even less than one half. Travis McGowin Right, and we’re, you know, not only were we applying the IGR in our mixture that we’re using along with an adult aside that’s going to kill mosquitoes on contact as well, but we’re also going back to those stagnant water sources our technicians actively are looking for those stagnant water sources. And yes, you know, you know how it is that there’s some times where those sources can’t be drained or dumped, or, you know, the water be removed so that they’re no longer a breeding site, especially when you talk about areas of a yard that hold a lot of water, that don’t drain properly, or don’t dry. So we also use another product called a larvicide. So Michael, elaborate for the listeners, about a larvicide. Michael Wienecke Yeah, so a larvicide. So you’re going to go around the property, and you’re looking for any areas that you cannot control the water flow, you know, like we said, if you see a bucket, we’re going to can flip that over a bird bath, we can change that out, but something that we can’t, such as a drain in your backyard, front yard, we’re going to put that larvicide in there. It’s good for 30 days. So any breeding mosquitoes that breed in that water, those eggs will never develop into a lot of mosquitoes. Travis McGowin Right, and so all these things are things that can be done on your property. But Michael, as I’m sure you’ve seen before, I and I can give an example, I had a customer who we were trying to do mosquito control at, and it was okay, but it wasn’t as great as it could be. And what we discovered is that the neighbor directly behind that customer’s property, who we weren’t treating, we didn’t have any mosquito service at that customer’s property behind them, they had an old above ground swimming pool. Michael Wienecke It’s always a swimming pool. Travis McGowin It is with about maybe, I would say, a foot or so, maybe a little more of water in it. And the water was a beautiful shade of green, with all types of leaf litter and trash and debris in it. And so, I mean, it was just a haven for these mosquitoes to breed in. And, you know, unfortunately, we can’t control what it is the neighbors doing. Michael Wienecke That’s true. So in terms of control, you know, we like to say an 85 I like to say an 85% to 95% reduction of mosquitoes is a win, because you can still have some mosquitoes, but you’re going to get rid of the majority of the mosquitoes and be. Able to enjoy that backyard. I mean, Travis, you treat your house. I treat my house. We’ve we’ve got some pretty good standing water issues. I know I do. I know in some areas where it rains in your house, you get some little bowl issues in the yard. So I would not, not treat my yard in the summertime. Travis McGowin Right, my kids get torn up by mosquitoes, if I don’t. But you know, that is the good thing about our mosquito control program, especially when you really factor in the use of that insect growth regulator. Like you said, 85% to 95% reduction is great. That’s huge, especially when you deal with some of the amount of mosquitoes that I’ve seen before. I mean, when you walk outside, you’re there for less than a minute, and you’ve got, you know, six, eight, ten, mosquitoes buzzing around your ankles and your feet before you even, you know, can take in the outside that you just walked out to, but that IGR is really great, because obviously mosquitoes fly. They can kind of go wherever they want to, but if they contact that IGR and then, let’s just say that the neighbor across the street has one tire sitting against a storage shed in their yard that’s collecting water that’s become this breeding site that they haven’t addressed, well now There’s that potential that that mosquito could spread that IGR to that breeding site and hopefully render it less effective, or completely ineffective for mosquito breeding, and in that way, kind of extend that treatment over somewhere where obviously we can’t go physically apply something. So it really is kind of a nice additive to put, to have in there, to try to help control because, I mean, you know, no matter how much mosquito control you can do there at the end of the day, like we said, they fly, so they’re not very heavy, so the wind can blow them to, I mean, they can be pushed around and all that too. So I don’t think anybody can really ever promise a 100% reduction in mosquitoes just because of the way that they are. However, I think it’s definitely reasonable to think 85 to 95% reduction for most of the properties we deal with. Michael Wienecke I think that, yeah, I think that’s great. And something that a lot of people miss, too, is gutters. I mean, over in Birmingham, Montgomery, we’ve got a lot of trees, a lot of trees, and over the winter, you know, some people do. Some people don’t get all the gutters cleaned out, or don’t even know that they’re they’re clogged and all that stagnant water. There’s really not a product in the world that’s going to take care of that. Travis McGowin Well, you know, not to, not even going to try to be hypocritical here, because I have two areas with with gutters. Oh, me too, down spouts on my my own awnings on my house, three areas, actually, and it is one of my least favorite chores in the world to get up there and clean them. So much so that, I mean, we even, we even had a rainstorm come in one day, and the gutters were so clogged and the downspouts were so slow at draining that the water ended up actually gushing over the side of the gutter and like bowing it. And just because of the weight of the water, it was starting to bow one of the little beams that holds my top of my porch, or owning up. Excuse me, my owning up. And so, yeah, I hate it that much, and I’ve tried to become a little bit more diligent about it, but it is. It’s really something that you need to stay on top of to make sure that there’s no breeding site up there, because it’s just not immediately in your thought process, because it’s not immediately in your view Michael Wienecke Well, and you can go off and that leads to termite damage on a pest control, it can lead to carpenter ant damage. It can lead to a lot of other issues besides just mosquitoes. Travis McGowin Yeah, absolutely. So it’s like that old saying, an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. You know, you can, you can get a lot done by just being diligent and eliminating those water sources from around your property, you can get a lot done, and your family will thank you. Your neighbors will thank you. Don’t, don’t be that bad neighbor that’s got 25 tires with all water in them, you know, stacked up, and you’re breeding mosquitoes like, you know, be that good neighbor that’s helping the problem, because everybody wins, everybody benefits. I mean, mosquitoes are known to carry many different viruses that cause many different health hazards for you, for your pets. I mean, Zika virus, all those things you know, your pets can get heart worms. They get them from mosquito bites. So there’s just a lot of benefits from keeping these insects away from your property. Michael Wienecke Well, and didn’t we see some some? Was it encephalitis last year? Travis McGowin Yeah, I think it was going around. I mean, you know, some of the lesser known things that people you know might not be necessarily aware of, like I said, Zika virus, yellow fever, dengue, malaria, is a big one, especially in some of your overseas countries, West Nile virus, all of these things, like you said, encephalitis, and they all come from just a mosquito bite, and it’s a strong possibility that you know they could make you your family or your animals sick. Watch this video on YouTube! Click Here! Learn more about our mosquito control! Click Here! The post Mosquitoes Are Already Back in Birmingham Alabama! appeared first on Peskies Pest Control.
