Low-Cost Mosquito Traps That Work

Build the best outdoor mosquito trap with simple ingredients and materials right at home. One of the low-cost mosquito traps that work, this will help control the mosquito population around your home.

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by AdobeStock/Victoria

Build the best outdoor mosquito trap with simple ingredients and materials right at home. One of the low-cost mosquito traps that work, this will help control the mosquito population around your home.

Modern technology has brought us many benefits, including mosquito traps that cost hundreds of dollars, but sometimes we overlook simple solutions to difficult challenges such as mosquito control. When it comes to controlling pests, research tends to focus on chemicals or concepts that can be patented. Unless someone can make a profit from an idea, the public may never become aware of it.

Such could be the case with the simple, homemade mosquito trap developed with funding from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. Tests in Israel and Africa have found that simple traps baited with fermented fruit juice and a toxin can be highly effective in reducing mosquito levels. Mosquitoes are attracted to the scent from the fruit juice because they feed on nectar and other sugar sources.

The researchers point out that the DIY mosquito trap they tested “may be suitable for the control of subterranean mosquito populations … suitable areas may include underground storm drains systems … with stable microclimatic conditions…”

The Israeli researchers tested their traps in cisterns. Most of us don’t have cisterns, but around our homes mosquitoes tend to seek similar locations as resting sites. Buckets, trash cans, old tires and other sheltered sites containing water often harbor mosquitoes. Why not create such sites and then place the baited traps in them? (To be sure mosquitoes can’t breed in the sites, you can add some Bt “mosquito dunks” to the water, to kill any larvae that might hatch.)

  • Updated on May 22, 2023
  • Originally Published on May 7, 2012
Tagged with: mosquito traps, natural mosquito repellent
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