Calgarians can expect mosquito season to go into effect over the course of the May long weekend, with a “low to average” number of adult populations detected so far this year. City of Calgary Integrated Pest Management Technician Alex Coker offered a forecast of what people can expect in terms of the pesky insects this summer. Speaking to reporters at a park in Hidden Valley in the city’s northwest, Coker said Calgarians will start to see mosquito populations emerging within “the next couple days,” and will be at their peak by late July and August. The good news is, Croker predicts there will be less mosquitoes compared to August of last year. It depends on the weather forecast, said Croker, explaining there are less mosquitoes in drier conditions, but if the rain keeps up, there will be more mosquitoes. Mosquito sightings will be “sporadic” and it “really depends on where in the city you are” and what the weather has been like in predicting how much bug spray to use. Croker warned mosquito populations can be hard to predict because some species, especially “floodwater species, and some of their eggs can lay dormant in the soil for five or more years.”“So even if you had five really dry years, and then one really wet year, then all those eggs are going to hatch,” she explained. .The City of Calgary conducts mosquito population control by releasing a bacteria called bacillus thuringiensis, which she said “affects mostly only mosquitos” from helicopters usually about once a season if not more, Croker told the Western Standard. “When we get a lot of rainfall, and there's quite a bit of mosquito habitat, we'll run a city wide aerial program, using helicopters, and that uses biological products that affect mostly only mosquitoes, it's not activated. And so that really reduces kind of a non-carbon target impact to other things that might be living in the water,” said Croker. She described the aerial treatment as a “granular product, kind of like corn husk grain, and it gets applied into the water, and so then the mosquito larvae would be eating that in the water.”“If anything else ate it, the product has to be specifically activated in the gut of a mosquito.” Croker’s team continues to monitor varied species of mosquitoes, including some that carry the West Nile virus, which she says is currently not a threat in Alberta. “We do through our mosquito surveillance program look specifically at those species that do spread (West Nile) and track their members along with the other mosquitoes..She warned the insects breed in small pools of water, so if people want to avoid having mosquitoes on their property, they should “reduce sources of standing water in yards”. For example, be sure to empty pots, rain barrels, wheelbarrows, and other containers where water gathers to avoid attracting mosquitos. To avoid an onslaught of mosquito bites, people can apply bug spray, wear long sleeves and pants, reduce their “outdoor activity period,” and avoid marshy locations after the rain, she said. When asked what people can expect for the patio drinks season, Croker said it varies place to place, but in the dense parts of the city, a thick mosquito population was unlikely to interfere with after-work drinks. Notably, Croker told the Western Standard, if people go out for drinks before the sun goes down they have far less chance of combating mosquitoes than if they go later in the evening when it’s dusk.
