F.A.Q.

If daytime temperatures are consistently reaching the mid-50s and you're starting to see insects, that is the right time to start treating. In Metro Detroit, that usually means late April or early May. 

Spring rains create the standing water mosquitoes need to breed. More rain means more breeding sites, and the population surge typically arrives one to two weeks after the heaviest rainfall. 

Once applied, a professional barrier treatment is effective for about 21 days. After that, the active ingredient has degraded enough that mosquito activity begins to return and it’s time to treat again.

When mosquitoes are active, it’s a good idea to have barrier treatments done every 2–3 weeks. This keeps the treatment fresh and prevents the mosquito population from rebuilding between treatments.

Drag a light cloth through the edges of your yard and see if you find ticks. Also useful: pay attention to local wildlife and whether your pets come inside with ticks.

A single female tick can lay a couple thousand eggs at once, so it takes very few ticks to seed a large population in one season.

Ticks carry a surprising range of illnesses, and Lyme disease is only the best known of them. Depending on the species, a tick bite can also transmit anaplasmosis, babesiosis, ehrlichiosis, the rare but serious Powassan virus, and even set off a red-meat allergy. 

When the winter is mild, more ticks survive and then they get an early start in spring where they produce more often. Ticks already have ways to survive winter and even slightly warmer-than-usual seasons greatly improve their survival odds.

Many ticks are not infected, and those that are need time to transmit disease. Even when an infection does take hold, symptoms may present as mild, delayed, or absent at first.

Rocky Mountain spotted fever (RMSF) is rare in Michigan. While national spotted fever rickettsiosis reports have grown since 2000, this trend stems from broader, less-specific testing, not a rise in confirmed RMSF. 

Ticks survive Michigan winters by going dormant and sheltering under leaf litter, snow, and debris. This insulates them from the worst of the cold, and helps them live until the temperature climbs above freezing, at which point they can become active again.