Mosquito Control in Union City, NJ

Which Mosquito Is Biting You — and Why It Matters

Two species account for nearly all the complaints in older, denser towns, and they breed, bite and get controlled in different ways.

Asian tiger mosquito (Aedes albopictus). Small, black, white-banded legs, one white stripe down the back. It bites in daylight and goes for ankles, and it breeds in containers — saucers, buckets, tarps, blocked gutters, tyres, a bottle cap of water. It rarely flies more than a couple of hundred metres, which is the most useful fact about it: if tiger mosquitoes are biting you, they almost certainly hatched on your property or the one next door.

Northern house mosquito (Culex pipiens). Plain brown, bites from dusk through the night — the one you hear in the bedroom. It breeds in organic water: storm-drain catch basins, clogged drains, neglected pools. Because it feeds on birds as well as people, it is the main carrier of West Nile virus in the north-east. Mated females overwinter in sheltered spaces, which is why one can turn up in a cellar in January.

Salt-marsh mosquitoes (Aedes sollicitans) are the exception to the short-range rule. They emerge in large broods from tidal marsh after high tides and heavy rain, fly several miles, and bite hard at dusk and in shade. Towns close to the Hackensack Meadowlands or other tidal marsh can get them in bursts. When they are the problem, no single yard can fix it — that is county marsh work.

Egg to biting adult takes about a week in summer heat. Aedes eggs sit dry on the inside wall of a container, hatch when rain refills it, and survive the winter that way. The week-long cycle is why tipping out standing water once a week works: it breaks the cycle before any larva becomes an adult.

Where They Breed in Dense Housing

In attached housing there is very little lawn and a great deal of hard surface, and almost all of it can hold water. The breeding sites we find most often:

• Storm-drain catch basins on the block and yard drains in the back. A catch basin with a clogged outlet holds warm, organic water all summer — ideal Culex habitat, a few metres from bedroom windows.
• Flat roofs and roof drains. Ponding on a tar roof, a blocked scupper or a gutter full of grit from the street will produce mosquitoes three storeys up.
• The rear yard: buckets, plant saucers, recycling bins without lids, a tarp over a grill or a woodpile, children's toys, a wheelbarrow left upright.
• Air-conditioner condensate dripping into a container or a low spot below a window unit.
• Vacant lots and dumped tyres. A single tyre holds water for months and is one of the most productive breeding sites there is.

Yards are small and close together, so the neighbour matters as much as you do: still being bitten at midday after clearing your own yard means a source within a couple of hundred metres.

What Works, in What Order

In a dense block the job is overwhelmingly source work, with spraying in a supporting role.

Source reduction comes first, and it is the only step that lasts. Every container tipped, gutter cleared and drain unblocked removes a generation that would otherwise emerge next week.

Larviciding is for water that cannot be drained. Bti (Bacillus thuringiensis israelensis) is a bacterial larvicide that kills mosquito larvae and very little else; methoprene is a growth regulator that stops larvae becoming adults. Both come as granules for small water and as slow-release briquets for catch basins, fishless ponds, rain barrels and drains, lasting weeks per placement.

Catch basins on private property get a slow-release briquet; those on the street belong to the municipality or county and are reported rather than treated.

Adult barrier treatment, and its limits. By day adults rest in shade — under leaves in dense shrubs, ivy and ground cover, under decks, along a woodland edge. A barrier treatment puts a residual pyrethroid such as bifenthrin or lambda-cyhalothrin on those surfaces. Before booking one, know that:

• It needs repeating, typically every three to four weeks through the season, as residue weathers and new growth appears.
• It does nothing about the source. Without source reduction, new adults arrive within days.
• Pollinators. Pyrethroids are toxic to bees, so flowering plants are left untreated and applications are made when bees are not foraging.
• Water. They are highly toxic to fish and aquatic insects, so ponds and streams get a buffer and nothing is applied before heavy rain.

Repellents. The CDC and EPA point to registered products using DEET, picaridin, IR3535 or oil of lemon eucalyptus (not for children under three), with permethrin for clothing only. Ultrasonic devices and apps do not repel mosquitoes, and bug zappers mostly kill moths and beetles.

Who Handles What — the County, the Owner and You

In New Jersey, mosquito control is a public service first. Every county runs a mosquito control agency — some a commission, some a county division — coordinated statewide by the NJDEP Office of Mosquito Control Coordination, with the Rutgers Center for Vector Biology providing the science. They trap and monitor, test samples for West Nile virus, larvicide public water and marshland, and take calls from residents.

Call the county first about anything beyond your own lot: a green, neglected pool next door, a flooded vacant lot, a blocked street catch basin, a stormwater basin that holds water for weeks. It costs nothing, and the county has authority under state law over breeding sites that no private contractor has.

What the county will not do is work through the containers, gutters and shrub beds on your own property. That part is ours, or yours.

If you rent, the gutters, roof and yard drains of a multi-family house are the owner's to maintain. Put a breeding site you cannot fix to the landlord in writing and keep the copy.

Standing water is the property owner's to deal with. Many New Jersey municipalities adopt a property maintenance code requiring premises to be kept free of stagnant water and pools to be kept sanitary, so a persistent source next door is also a matter for your town's code enforcement. Ask any applicator for a written record of what was applied, where, and when children and pets can go back out.

The disease question, in proportion. West Nile virus turns up in mosquito samples across this region every summer, peaking from late July into September. Most infections cause no symptoms and serious illness is uncommon, mostly in people over fifty. Eastern equine encephalitis is rare but has been recorded in New Jersey. The response to both is the same: fewer breeding sites, repellent at dusk, screens without holes.

General information about the rules as written, not legal advice about your situation. Confirm current requirements with the agency named before relying on them.

Mosquito Control — Common Questions