April 12: I just came across an online conversation, which included this resource from Xerces Society for Invertebrate Conversation. I found their answers to questions about the safety of organic oils and mosquito sprays helpful and succinct so I am sharing them here.
Xerces is also offering a webinar this week, which I plan to attend and highly recommend. I have taken webinars with Aaron Anderson before. Some of the information he will be discussing comes from Decatur in summer 2023.
April 17: The webinar, whose recording is available here, was fantastic, as expected. Aaron talked about the research from the study in 2023, of three cities across the country where mosquito sprays, are prevalent, including Decatur.
He called Decatur a “rockstar” Bee City USA community, and acknowledged our “really wonderful work to reduce mosquito spraying in [our] district.” Congratulations, Beecatur and Peter Helfrich!
The study was able to gather data about types and levels of insecticides in yards that spray as well as in neighboring yards. They found high risk to pollinators in sprayed yards and some risk in others (up to 24 to 34 times, in two separate yards, the lethal dose of concentration for honey bees).
He also addressed mosquito buckets and said that he would rather everyone dump water out every 7-10 days to break the cycle. If that is possible, you disrupt the eggs since it takes about a week for mosquito eggs laid in water to hatch. Bti, according to Aaron, kills all flies so there is some risk to target insects beyond mosquitos, but much less toxic to sprays, which harm all the pollinators in the yard at time of spray and lingers for days even weeks, especially when companies include synergists, which I had never heard of that the the chemical sprays persist.
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