Yes, having professional treatment completed 24–48 hours before an outdoor event gives the product time to dry and take full effect. Your guests can expect far fewer mosquitoes and ticks.
Lakefront properties are more humid, and that makes it easier for pests to breed and survive.
When you live on the shore, you’re likely going to run into a lot of pests, including mosquitoes, ticks, biting flies, and more. A lot of this has to do with lake-effect humidity and dune vegetation that gives these pests shelter.
Lakeshore homeowners deal with more than just mosquitoes. The water and shoreline vegetation attract ticks in the dune grass and brush, biting flies and midges near the water, no-see-ums at dawn and dusk, as well as spiders, ants, and wasps.
Usually yes, because “biting gnat” is a folk term and not a true name for the insect. In West Michigan, it almost always means black flies, though some people also use it to refer to no-see-ums.
For you personally, if you apply repellent correctly and reapply as needed, it will work well. But for an event, it’s not practical since every guest would need to apply it with equal diligence.
Start by eliminating standing water, since mosquitoes need it to breed. Then eliminate resting sites by cleaning up debris and trimming vegetation. If you’re working with a professional, book a treatment before mosquitoes become a visible problem.
Use veterinarian-recommended preventive treatments year-round, check your pets after they've been outside, and reduce mosquito and tick habitat in your yard. Mosquitoes can transmit heartworm to dogs, and ticks can transmit Lyme disease, anaplasmosis, and ehrlichiosis to both dogs and cats.
DIY tools work well on a handful of mosquitoes at a time. But homes on the shoreline produce mosquitoes faster than DIY mosquito prevention is able to keep up.
\To better protect your waterfront home from mosquitoes, you’ll want to remove standing water around your property, treat the shaded resting areas in your yard, and keep a maintained barrier.
Near water you'll generally encounter more mosquitoes, and some water-associated species are aggressive, daytime biters. It's less that the water makes mosquitoes meaner and more that it produces more of them, including some of the more persistent biters.
It helps a lot because mosquitoes are weak fliers. Steady breezes above five or ten miles per hour ground most of them and scatter the carbon dioxide plume they use to track you down.
If you find a tick on yourself, remove it as soon as you can. A blacklegged tick generally needs to be attached and feeding for 36–48 hours before it can transmit the bacterium that causes Lyme disease.
Yes, wood piles and leaf litter create the moist, shaded habitat that ticks actively seek out. Cleaning up these areas is one of the most effective things you can do to reduce tick encounters on your property.
The open, sunny, sandy beach itself is low-risk for ticks, as they don't do well in hot, dry, exposed sand. The real tick habitat at the shoreline is right next to it: the dune grass, brush, tall grass, and wooded edges you cross to get there.
