Tag Archives: mosquitoes

Spring is in the air, and so are the mosquitoes. As temperatures begin to warm up and you start to transition your wardrobe from fuzzy sweaters to raincoats, we want to make sure you’ve got some helpful tips for preparing your yard for some outdoor (itch-free) fun with your friends and family. Once temperatures stay consistently above 50 degrees we’ll begin to see some increased mosquito activity. Who would’ve thought that preparing your yard for the spring season could also prepare you for the arrival of mosquitoes?

Mosquitoes lay eggs in standing water, so it’s best to empty bird baths, ponds, planters, toys or anywhere else water may gather. Drilling holes in tire swings, trash cans and recycle bins allows water to drain out easily. Repair any leaky outdoor faucets to avoid water pooling underneath them. Finally, keep your grass and shrubs cut short. Mosquitoes are shrub hoppers and gather to rest in shady, cool areas which is why it’s best to keep your yard weed-free and avoid any overgrown vegetation.

With over 3,500 species of mosquitoes out there laying 100-300 eggs at a time, they just can’t wait to start bugging us!

Once your yard is ready, get outside and enjoy some fun spring activities:

• Have a picnic with your favorite snacks
• Plant your favorite spring flowers
• Get a box of colorful chalk and turn your sidewalks into a mural
• Take a walk around your neighborhood
• Fly a kite on a breezy day
• Play catch, throw a football back and forth or kick a soccer ball around
• Blow bubbles with the young (and young at heart) kids in your life

Have you pre-paid for your 2020 season yet? There may still be time to save in your area. Contact your local Mosquito Joe to get a free quote for professional, ongoing defense in your yard. Treatments are tailored to your property and our products are applied by certified and trained technicians.

Don’t forget about ticks! Mosquito Joe rids your yard of ticks too so your family and pets can enjoy outside. Visit our Tick Control page for some background on ticks, the diseases they carry and some helpful tips for keeping your property ahead of tick issues.

It may come as a surprise to most of us that this week is National Clean Out Your Inbox Week! An entire week has been dedicated to helping us organize our email inbox and increase our productivity. Many of us are guilty of hanging onto too many emails that we just don’t need in our inbox anymore, making it difficult to find the ones that we actually do need. Below are a few tips and hints we’ve compiled here at the Corporate office to help your inbox stay clean and your mind become refreshed.

• Organize your email account into folders or categories – The quickest way to organize an inbox is to set up folders based on categories, topics, projects, collaborators, or things you deal with on a regular basis. Most platforms allow you to customize titles, statuses, and colors.

• Implement automatic rules/filing – Creating rules within your inbox is a great way to ensure tasks are happening automatically, which saves you time. These rules will ensure that certain emails are filed automatically based on their sender or subject matter. You can even create rules that send “junk mail” right to a folder to be checked later.

• Take advantage of the search function – Once your emails are filed in their special category, you may need a little help finding them. This is where your search function comes in to help. You can search emails by contacts, attachment title, subjects, or even keywords that you know are mentioned in the body of the email.

• Take action to every email – Try to deal with every email as it arrives. Flag it, respond to it, file it, or delete it.

• Sync your mobile email to your main account – We spend a lot of time on our smartphones, so making sure your email account is synced is critical to getting your emails taken care of on the go.

• Unsubscribe – Don’t be afraid to unsubscribe. If it no longer pertains to you, it’s ok to move on. It’s also a good idea to have an alternate email address to use for coupon deals, promotional pitches or subscriptions to keep your regular account less cluttered.

We believe in you and your ability to conquer your email inbox this week! Whether it’s personal, business, or for fun, it’s important to stay organized to better improve your productivity.Your local Mosquito Joe may not be able to help you organize your inbox, but they can definitely help you get your yard itch-free and get your family spending more time outside this year!

Ribbons, candles, bows and edible traditions. Whether you’re making your menorah shine bright this Hanukkah or trimming your Christmas tree with nostalgic ornaments, December is upon us which means the warm celebration of the holidays is quickly approaching. Here at Mosquito Joe, we value our relationship with each and every one of our customers and appreciate the business that continues year after year.

If you’re looking for a last-minute gift and want to share the satisfaction of mosquito, flea and tick treatments, give your family and friends a Mosquito Joe Gift Certificate. They make perfect stocking stuffers and are great for that hard-to-buy-for person on your list. If it’s the golfer who has every club and tee, the gardener with an arsenal of tools or the busy mom with 3 kids and a dog, a Mosquito Joe gift certificate is the perfect way to give the gift of outdoor fun to anyone on your list who just like us, prefers the great outdoors. And if they don’t love being outside, we can only imagine it is because they’ve never experienced a mosquito-free yard. Be the one to give it to them!

Looking for something that benefits you, too? Our Share the MoJo Referral Program is the best way to give your friends an itch-free yard while getting an account credit for your own future treatment.

Contact your local Mosquito Joe to inquire about Gift Certificates and our Share the MoJo Referral Program.

Happy Holidays from all of us a Mosquito Joe!

Yesterday morning in Virginia Beach we woke up to frigid temperatures and a lot of snow and ice. I then looked at the forecast and saw we’re still getting some record low temps over the next week. The same goes for many parts of the United States as we dig our way out of snow! So what does all this snow and cold weather mean for the 2015 mosquito forecast?

Mosquitoes are very resilient. Their eggs (and some adults when sufficiently protected) can survive through freezing temperatures. All this cold weather will only postpone the influx of mosquitoes and could actually increase the number come spring. Mosquitoes are generally active when the temperature stays above 55 degrees, so you probably won’t notice a lot of activity from mosquitoes until the overnight freezes (or snow storms!) become less common. This may occur later in the season than it normally does but when it does happen, it could make for an especially tough mosquito season. That’s because the one thing mosquitoes need to breed is standing water. So far, this year has had a lot of precipitation with rain and snowfall. The rain, along with melting snow and ice will result in a lot of standing water, which could mean a lot of mosquitoes. Not only is standing water necessary for mosquito production, but it’s also their lifeline once they are mature. Mosquitoes don’t venture far from the area where they matured, so if you take care of the standing water on your property, you are instantly decreasing your mosquito population.

Depending on where you live, you may not be thinking about warm weather, mosquitoes or how to treat them if you’re shoveling snow out of your driveway, but don’t let your guard down. Remove all standing water once that snow starts to melt! And a lot of Mosquito Joe locations have specials going on for the beginning of the season, so give them a call to make sure your yard doesn’t have an influx of mosquitoes come spring. Our barrier treatment is the ultimate step in avoiding the bites this season. Stay warm!

Halloween is this weekend and it sure snuck up on us (perhaps because of the almost 80 degree temperatures in Virginia Beach), but that coffee drink menu and everyone’s Pinterest boards tell me the pumpkin has arrived! Yes, Fall is here and bringing with it the end of the mosquito treatment season for many (though not all) of our locations. That said, until you’ve had your first frost and temperatures consistently stay below 55, you may still see those pesky mosquitoes buzzing around.

Those are who lucky enough to still be enjoying this warmth and sunshine should still rely on Mosquito Joe services to keep your yard itch free, but if you’ve already switched from A/C to heat and you’re putting on your jacket in the morning, mosquitoes are probably fading from your mind. What you may not know is that there’s still some precautions to take in the fall and winter months to maintain a mosquito-free yard, even after your last spray. Here’s what you should know:

In the autumn months after mating, male mosquitoes die. But did you know female mosquitoes actually hibernate? That’s right, they can actually survive the winter months. In the spring when the weather warms up, they seek blood to feed on so they can lay their eggs. All mosquito larvae (eggs) require water, even in winter, and mosquito larvae can last years. As the water temperature drops, it basically creates a dormant stage in the mosquito larvae called diapause, which stops further development. Development resumes when the water warms again. They’re just full of tricks, aren’t they?

So as you’re outside this weekend trick-or-treating, raking leaves, or just enjoying some cooler temperates, remove all standing water from your yard and remove objects like toys or flower pots that can collect rainwater. This will ensure that come springtime, you don’t have an early hatching.

And for all those customers who have seen the yellow MoJo van for the last time this season, we say THANK YOU. We love making outside fun again and you give us the opportunity to do that. Happy Halloween from all of us at Mosquito Joe! We hope it is full of lots of treats, no tricks and definitely no mosquitoes!