Try the Mosquito Bucket of Death • Hacker News Board

Re: Try the Mosquito Bucket of Death

#151

Post by stronglikedan » Wed, Jul 30, 2025, 4:18 PM UTC

diggan wrote: post #8

> The dunks contain an unhealthy—for the mosquito larvae—dose of the bacterium, Bacillus thuringiensis, or BT. Don’t worry about your dog, Moonpie, or your cat, French Fry. They can drink straight from the bucket and be perfectly fine. Hey, it’s probably better than when they drink from your toilet, right? Here I was under the impression that the water in the toilet is the same water as go into the taps, potable wate…

Porcelain isn't zero percent porous. It's just the least porous material that can also support the weight of two people when fashioned into the shape of a toilet. There's a reason toilet cleaners still contain bleach.

Re: Try the Mosquito Bucket of Death

#152

Post by beala » Wed, Jul 30, 2025, 4:18 PM UTC

tqwhite wrote: post #22

siliconc0w wrote: post #10

You can also try a simple fan blowing over the sitting areas, mosquitos (and other bugs) have difficulty flying in the breeze. I sometimes bring a small fan camping since the breeze is nice and I hate applying deet.

I love DEET. It is absolutely the perfect way to avoid mosquitos and ticks. At home though, I use Thermacell. It's the only thing I have ever used that makes a measurable difference. Of course, you need to have one ever four or five feet unless the air is perfectly still but that's a small price.

DEET is super effective, especially if you go to an outdoors store like REI and get the extremely concentrated 95% DEET they make for backpackers. Will it give me cancer on 20 years? Who knows. But it does work.

Re: Try the Mosquito Bucket of Death

#153

Post by maxbaines » Wed, Jul 30, 2025, 4:18 PM UTC

dpassens wrote: post #107

maxbaines wrote: post #44

Yeah lets just kill all the bugs, good move.

You have read the part where the sticks provide "good bugs that fall in [...] an escape path", right?

good bugs lol

Re: Try the Mosquito Bucket of Death

#154

Post by supermatt » Wed, Jul 30, 2025, 4:19 PM UTC

pavel_lishin wrote: post #129

One question - how does this prevent mosquitos from breeding in other bits of standing water that I can't locate? I have no idea where ours are coming from; I suspect they hatch somewhere, and then migrate to the shaded areas of my yard, which is where I typically get bit. Adding a bucket will prevent some mosquitoes from laying eggs elsewhere, but not all, right? Or is the bucket so attractive to mosquitoes that the…

They don't. The basic idea is to put many of them up, so the chances of them using one instead of a puddle, etc are greater. I have about 20 smaller ovitraps up around my property.

Re: Try the Mosquito Bucket of Death

#155

Post by forty » Wed, Jul 30, 2025, 4:23 PM UTC

pavel_lishin wrote: post #129

One question - how does this prevent mosquitos from breeding in other bits of standing water that I can't locate? I have no idea where ours are coming from; I suspect they hatch somewhere, and then migrate to the shaded areas of my yard, which is where I typically get bit. Adding a bucket will prevent some mosquitoes from laying eggs elsewhere, but not all, right? Or is the bucket so attractive to mosquitoes that the…

Keep in mind that many mosquito species don't fly far too far from where they are born (in particular the very annoying tiger mosquito does'nt fly more than 100m) so treating your own garden might somewhat be effective (depending of housing density where you live).

treating your own garden means not leaving stagnant waters (including in water pots etc). then you can consider trap. also try to convince your close neighbours to do the same.

Re: Try the Mosquito Bucket of Death

#156

Post by whichquestion » Wed, Jul 30, 2025, 4:28 PM UTC

Something to consider is that BTI kills many species of Diptera, not just mosquitoes.

Re: Try the Mosquito Bucket of Death

#157

Post by Footkerchief » Wed, Jul 30, 2025, 4:30 PM UTC

TLDR: you can put tablets of mosquito-killing bacteria in buckets.

Re: Try the Mosquito Bucket of Death

#158

Post by beala » Wed, Jul 30, 2025, 4:31 PM UTC

A bit of a tangent, but BT is also great for getting rid of tomato hornworms. The bacteria is harmless to humans, but fatal to the hornworms. A single application saved my tomato plants last year.

That said, the more I garden, the more I find the entire process a bit horrifying. Waging biological warfare on the critters is not what I thought I was signing up for.

Re: Try the Mosquito Bucket of Death

#159

Post by mmh0000 » Wed, Jul 30, 2025, 4:31 PM UTC

brianjlogan wrote: post #124

Interesting. I am a native of Florida and happen to have a really horrendous backyard for mosquitoes. I've had county officials out to examine the area and can't find sources of water causing them. I'd like to know how to empirically measure a population of mosquitoes to be able to evaluate the over time effectiveness of the treatments I've used as nothing seems to help. Mosquito tubes with pesticide placed around th…

I live in an area with a large number of mosquitoes. After a lot of trial-and-error, here's what I've found works.

Don't use a bug zapper. The zapper does kill things, but... the zapper also attracts bugs from far away into your area. If you have a large property, a zapper placed far away at the boundary can pull bugs away from the living area.

You can pay a company to come spray your yard frequently, but it gets expensive over time. I bought a gas-powered fogger (https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0746S92WW) and the chemicals: Insecticide and Insect Growth Regulator (https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00RW197XG and https://www.amazon.com/dp/B005CT9IDO)

Spray everything once a week initially, then you can try dropping down to every other week. Very few mosquitoes remain.

Further, look into repellents: https://www.nytimes.com/wirecutter/reviews/best-bug-repellen...

Mosquitoes are weak flyers; if you want to defend a static area, like a picnic table, a large fan can be used to keep a breeze up over the area and keep mosquitoes out.

Re: Try the Mosquito Bucket of Death

#160

Post by Cerium » Wed, Jul 30, 2025, 4:35 PM UTC

ethagknight wrote: post #19

diggan wrote: post #8

> The dunks contain an unhealthy—for the mosquito larvae—dose of the bacterium, Bacillus thuringiensis, or BT. Don’t worry about your dog, Moonpie, or your cat, French Fry. They can drink straight from the bucket and be perfectly fine. Hey, it’s probably better than when they drink from your toilet, right? Here I was under the impression that the water in the toilet is the same water as go into the taps, potable wate…

author was just making a joke here. Yes it's all the same water in the US although some towns in actually have greywater distribution systems, mostly for irrigation and fire hydrants.

Large new buildings in the Bay Area will use recycled water for toilets as well as irrigation. There are signs above every toilet telling you the water in the toilet is not fit for drinking.