This is basically what I was coming here to say. Finnish mosquitos have a habit of getting in your house no matter what you do. I can hear that horrible, whiny buzzing in my ear whenever I think of mosquitos. Gah, I hate them!

The best way to get rid of them is to keep them out. Even cheap screens stapled to your windows will help a bit, and you can always hunt down any stragglers by hand before you go to sleep. Citronella works a bit, or so I've heard. At our summer cottage in the Northern Finnish woody swamps, we have a horrible mosquito problem every summer. One thing that helped was spraying all rims of the windows and doors with bug spray once a day. You could do that with a citronella extract or garlic or something, if all bug sprays irritate your skin and/or are bad for your bird.

Hunting mosquitos is very gratifying. Last summer, I kept count of all the mosquitos I killed and made it a competition with a few of my friends. 3 458! Needless to say, there weren't a lot of those little buggers around inside our homes.

Take lots of vitamin B complex pills. You'll start to smell slightly of vitamin B, and it's an amazingly good mosquito repellent. My mom figured it out when she was given some heavy vitamin B shots once, and then I tried getting it to work via pills, and it worked perfectly. They just hover over you and don't land. But if you put your nose up to your arm and sniff or something, you will notice the smell. It's not necessarily a bad smell though.

That is a remedy that some endorse, though scientific studies have failed to prove its effectivness. I suggest to stop drinking soda, sugary blood = mosquito heaven.

Here's some ideas, not sure how effective they will be for you:
1) Set up a blacklight out in your backyard. It attracts mosquitoes and moths, and then they go ZAP and die.
2) Buy a Mosquito Magnet. It is super effective (no joke).
3) mosquito netting/a mesh over your window, with small enough holes that a mosquito cannot fit through.

And generally make sure there are no gaps or openings around your window for an insect to crawl through. Make sure there's no standing water in your yard (old tires, stagnant puddles, buckets with water, etc) - lady mosquitoes love to lay their eggs there. Have more dragonflies!

Mosquito net? They are 10 dollars (Canadian) so if its that big of a problem for you I'm sure you can dish it out this once, especially since you can probably find one that's cheaper. They just hang over your bed and as long as you keep it closed 24/7 they cant get in. Not the best thing if you have women coming over I guess but.... :shrug:

are you sure you not thinking of that stuff they used to spray for malaria that got banned. i know lots of people that have been using repellants with deet forever. ive tried looking for less aggressive repellants simply cause i HATE using repellant because of the smell and the weird oily feel you get on your skin. i was unsuccessful although there was an OFF that was a cream instead of a spray that came in an orange bottle and it was good enough for basic mosquitie repelling although its not very good during the evening or night when they come out in force.

Yeah, I am. However I'd like to point out that no-one else in the house gets bitten. They probably aren't an issue for anyone else but me, heh. Maybe they don't like all the shaking down that end of NZ.



I'd thought about it, but is it ok to use stuff like that around pets? I've thought about it, many a time. I also really like candles. And live in a house made of logs O_o



I'll try this. I wonder if eating a lot of bananas would do the trick. I can make lots of banana smoothies, yum. Also, smelling funny isn't a problem, I'm recently single and basically a hermit. I can smell all I want!



I'll have to try convince my parents about this. See, I'm living in my parent's home while I'm on holiday, and it's an extremely nice house. They waited 17 years to build it, it's their dream home, so I'd probably get in trouble for stapling screens on >_< I don't even have curtains, which probably doesn't help. And before you tell me to get curtains, it's cause I'm not allowed them. I've asked many a time for screens over my windows, but they're expensive and I can't afford to do it myself, and my parents have thus far refused to get any for my room. Before I got the bird, I did actually try spraying the windows with bug spray, and it didn't work. Sigh. It just gave me a headache and a fuzzy feeling throat.
I love killing mossies. I usually feel bad killing even flies, but I have no sympathy for mossies. My wall is covered in black smears I really need to clean of...I did have a spider, which did catch a fair few of the damn things, as he was right above my bed near the light, which they were attracted to. He disappeared though 3458 is an impressive number, did you actually have time to do anything else or were you just killing mosquitos??

I think I'll give the garlic a go. I just have to find some way to make it bearable...I'm not much of a sugary foods type person so I can't really cut down on that much more, and I guess I'll find out if citronella is ok for animals. I guess if it comes from a plant, it should be fine.

And to Defaulted, I'm not that much of a pansy about my eczema, I just don't exactly want to make it worse. Looking like a leper is bad enough. If it flares up badly, it tends to for some reason, break out on my face as well, and this is something I'd rather avoid. I am prone to a little vanity every now and again, so I don't want to aggravate my eczema.

Hm. This is a huge post.

yep right on the money, if you have good hygiene the bugs will bite. Don't take a shower for a couple weeks, problem solved, no jk :yucky:

Simply eat a raw Garlic and I guarantee they wont bite.
........Or you can eat something spicy hot for dinner.

To those that have recommended UV "Zappers":



Not to mention the incredible devastation they wreak on the beneficial populations.


As far as repellents are concerned, I swear by Cutter Advanced with Picaridin, not DEET. It's oil free, doesn't harm clothing, and has an extremely low toxicity.

You are thinking of DDT, not DEET.

To the OP
Just because a product comes from a plant doesn't mean it isn't toxic. Many plants contain chemicals deadly or irritating to mammals.
My mother swore by Avon's Skin So Soft as a bug repellant. There are many non-toxic mosquito repellants on the market.
As for sugary blood, I am a diabetic and I still don't get bitten.

Just sleep with a more attractive target

Kind of like bears, go with someone slower than you

If your home doesn't have screens on the windows and no air conditioning I don't think there's anything you can do other than finding some way to engineer mosquito netting over your bed that will work with your ceiling and survive your thrashing around.

Yeah, I'd avoid the zappers, we get some sort of very large, very native and possibly protected/endagered/something like that moth in these parts. Probably wouldn't be a good idea to start killing off the native moth population. I had read that the zappers weren't too effective on mossies. The size of the bugs we get here would also make it fairly noisy. Some of them are like small birds. I'll see if that Cutter Advanced stuff is sold here. Being NZ, it probably isn't.



HA! I like this. I could put an ad in the local paper- "single woman looking for bed partner. Must be extremely prone to mosquito bites."



I probably could do this. I just have an extreeeemely low, I think it's called a vaulted ceiling, angles upwards. I get bruises on my knees all the time from bashing them on the wooden beam. I could probably pick up some sort of material on clearance or something, only problem is I'd need several meters of it.

I'm going to eat a lot of garlic and bananas tonight. Though, now that I think of it, I didn't get bitten last night.....strange...

Fire tends to work pretty well against mosquitoes.
Try some tiki torches, perhaps? I use them whenever I'm outside at night, and they seem to work pretty well. Just make sure the smoke gets spread around enough.
I suppose you could set one outside your window, sure the extra heat won't be any fun, but they seem pretty effective to me.

[img]http://www.sitrafurniturerental.com/images/misc/Tiki-Torch.jpg[/img]

Also, if I recall they're pretty cheap.

I close my windows before it gets dark even if i feel like i'm going to die because of the heat and bugs never get in

There used to be this product from Avon I think, it was called "skin so soft" and it is just like a baby oil type product, but it is super effective against mosquitos. Again I'm not sure if it is still made or if you can get ahold of AVON products, but it's worth a shot, stuff is a skin product, no ill effects and the skeeters hate it. and it really doesn't smell bad at all

Use citronella essential oil, it's a repellent. I also know that mosquitoes don't like eucalyptus trees. You can also burn some of these mosquito coils. Generally, mosquitoes don't like smoke. Maybe incense could work.

Mosquito Bars
Those kind of nets work well, but must reach the floor or be tucked in. Also, they're generallyonly a "cot" wide, but a godsend. Cheap, and are easy to rig.
http://www.google.com/search?q=mosquito+bar&sourceid=ie7&rls=com.microsoft:en-us:IE-SearchBox&ie=&oe=#q=mosquito+bar&hl=en&safe=off&rls=com.microsoft:en-us:IE-SearchBox&prmd=ivns&source=univ&tbs=shop:1&tbo=u&ei=FhAtTa_VBoL_8Abw35CaCg&sa=X&oi=product_result_group&ct=title&resnum=3&ved=0CDAQrQQwAg&biw=1087&bih=553&fp=7b989c6c17f79c85