Various pests strive to live next to humans: these are cockroaches, bedbugs, moths, and ants. This list can also include midges - small insects of the Diptera family. Science knows more than 1000 varieties of midges. There are black and green midges, whiteflies, and thrips. The flower midge is a pest of indoor plants; there is also a species that annoys animals; house flies living in apartments bite, spreading dangerous infections, especially when biting in the eye. And given the fact that, unlike mosquitoes, they swarm in a whole cloud, an insect attack can have very negative consequences.
Midges that can bite, and which ones are safe for people and animals
The question of which midges bite and which do not cannot be answered unambiguously. In huge populations of these insects, when there are many adult individuals and there is no longer enough food for everyone, even midges that usually do not bite people can quite attack a person.
There is also a separate group of representatives of this family - bloodsuckers, which feeds exclusively on the blood of mammals.
Small biting midges prefer damp places in a house or apartment, so a cluster of adult individuals can be found in the drain holes of sinks in the kitchen or bathroom, in the soil of indoor plants, among carelessly abandoned and forgotten fruits and vegetables that are already beginning to rot, etc. They can enter the room through a window, cracks or ventilation system.
Among the pests that bite humans, we most often have to deal with black midges. They are much larger than fruit flies, up to 6 mm long, look very similar to flies, and can be both house flies and earth flies.
The insect does not dig into the skin with its sting, but gnaws out a piece of flesh, leaving a small wound on the human body. When attacking, the black midge injects an anesthetic liquid into the bite site, so a person begins to feel the pain from the bite only after some time.
Black midge
How to Make a Fruit Midge Trap: 3 Best Homemade Traps
Homemade homemade fruit gnat traps are very different from traps for sewer flies, mosquitoes or large flies. We already said that duct tape is a bad option against these creatures. You need to catch them in special ways.
Below we will tell you about the three most popular homemade traps. They all work on a similar principle: insects are attracted to the structure by an attractant, and then they cannot fly out.
1. “Banana trap” for fruit flies. Fruit midge is very similar to minions :). They are also small, yellowish and love bananas very much. This similarity should be taken advantage of. Place banana peels in an empty plastic bottle or even a bag. Poke holes in the container with a toothpick or a small needle, and then place it closer to the insects’ habitat. In a day or two, a significant part of their population will fly there. But they won’t be able to fly out - in their chaotic flight they simply won’t find any holes. After all, midges fly to the smell of an attractant, but they do not know how to track sources of “fresh air”. A caught midge can be killed or released into the street.
2. Liquid trap. There are several recipes for traps using liquid on the Internet. In the simplest cases, the authors of these developments recommend simply pouring a mixture of syrup and honey, or beer, wine and juices into a deep plate. Very often, just wine vinegar is poured there. Like, insects will land on the “water” and drown in it. But we advise readers to complicate this construction. Pour a mixture of white wine and coriander seeds into a bowl (or just wine or balsamic vinegar). Place the peeled fruit there. And cover the top with cellophane film. All that remains is to make holes in it with a fork or toothpick... and the liquid trap is ready. Flies will drown faster with such a transparent “ceiling”.
3. “Cone trap.” First, find an empty glass jar, and then put something “appetizing” in it. For example, a piece of rotten fruit or an orange loved by a midge. Place a sharp paper cone into the neck of the jar. As a result, the insects will again be able to fly into the jar, but will not be able to fly out. The number of catches and its behavior can be monitored visually.
Causes of biting midges
Biting midges can easily live in a waste bin, among unwashed dishes, or in dirty pet cages. A few insects that have settled in an apartment can lay the foundation for an entire colony of midges that happily settles next to people.
Uninvited guests can also be brought into the house from the street - on clothes, animal hair, fruit from the store. As a rule, this is how insect eggs enter a person’s home, and some time later they successfully turn into adults.
Midges can end up in an apartment by entering through open ventilation hatches or sewers. Thus, unsanitary conditions and the lack of barriers to entry into the home become the reasons for the appearance of biting pests in human housing.
Control measures
Fighting midges is a whole complex of measures. It includes the use of various natural and synthetic agents to kill and repel, methods of pain relief for received bites, as well as preventive actions to eliminate the causes of these unpleasant insects.
Repellent
Since bloodsuckers are a nuisance mainly in the open air, it is rather pointless to fight them by destroying them. New ones will immediately fly in to replace the dead specimens, since insects are the most numerous living creatures on the planet. It is simply impossible to destroy all swarms of midges in the area of your site - in such a situation, repelling seems to be the most appropriate.
To do this, different means and methods are used:
Vanilla and vanilla
The strong-smelling substance not only masks the odor of the human body - it is strongly distasteful to the blood-sucking vile.
In order to obtain a homemade preparation, vanilla pods are infused with vodka or alcohol, and then rubbed with the resulting composition on bare skin or sprayed from a spray bottle. True, natural vanilla is too expensive - crystalline vanillin is used much more often. It dissolves well in water, costs a penny and is suitable for everyone.
You can use a neutral baby cream as a base. Thanks to this, the product will be applied to the skin evenly, and the scent will last longer.
Essential oils and extracts
Since all these substances are strongly odorous, they help repel pesky bloodsuckers. It is worth applying oily products at those points where they will give the maximum effect: behind the ears, in the neck area, on the wrists and elbows, under the knees and around the ankles. Coniferous extracts, eucalyptus oils, cloves, and anise are best suited.
Branches and leaves of plants
Many crops are natural midge repellents. For example, from the steppe herbs wormwood or wheatgrass, you should take the roots and boil them, and lubricate the exposed areas of the body with the resulting decoction. Scented tomato shoots or elderberry branches will help drive insects out of the room, but also minimize their irritating effect outdoors.
Valerian solution in alcohol
A well-known sedative can be successfully used against midges when sprayed over the surface of the body.
Expert opinion
Mityuk Stefania Bogdanovna
If you are preparing barbecue or grilled dishes at your dacha, you can throw pine branches into the fire. Juniper gives the strongest effect.
Electrical and heating devices
Technological progress has not remained aloof from the fight against flying parasites.
Compact and convenient electrical appliances come to the aid of summer residents. This device is based on a luminous tube that emits rays in ultraviolet light, which attracts insects. The housing in which the lamp is located is covered with a special mesh to which electric current is supplied.
When insects fall on the mesh, they are literally charred, although the voltage and current parameters are absolutely safe for humans and pets.
Hanged near the table at which a picnic is arranged, this device will successfully distract and kill not only midges, but also other unpleasant arthropods. The only drawback is the need for periodic cleaning.
Another direction is fumigators - heating devices that bring a special liquid to a temperature where it begins to emit vapors that kill or drive away annoying insects.
If electricity is not at hand, special spirals are used, which, while smoldering, saturate the air around with volatile compounds. The most famous brands in the market are Mosquitall, Raid, Raptor, Fumitox, Vape and others.
Chemical substances
On sale you can find a variety of products that are intended for treating premises, local areas, and garden plots, helping to destroy midges, their larvae and eggs, and also prevent them from reproducing.
Most often, these ready-made formulations are based on certain active ingredients:
- Diethyltoluamide (DEET) is a composition that has both a repellent (repellent) and insecticidal (destructive) effect. It is used in various forms: ointments, creams, sprays, liquids and much more.
- Cypermethrin - does not penetrate into plants, but remains on treated surfaces for 20 - 30 days (if there is no rain). Destroys many types of harmful insects, including blood-sucking midges, as well as pests such as white and black midges (melons). Available in the form of a concentrate, it is used to treat the entire area using a garden sprayer.
Bites and their consequences
Many house flies bite, sometimes quite painfully. Practice shows that it is not so much the bite of a small flying predator in itself that is scary, but its possible complications and health consequences.
Midge bites can cause a serious infection. This leads to an inflammatory process and an allergic reaction. The infected bite site may become inflamed and fester. It is very dangerous for the infection to spread to neighboring tissues.
Attention! The most serious complication is sepsis, or blood poisoning. In this case, immediate medical intervention is necessary, since sepsis can be fatal if left untreated.
The most severe form of an allergic reaction to a midge bite is angioedema. The danger of this form of edema is that death from suffocation may occur. Full recovery of the victim is possible only with the timely provision of competent first aid and professional medical care. The duration of treatment directly depends on the cause of the development of edema and many hereditary factors.
Sometimes after a bite, as a result of a violation of the integrity of the skin and penetration of infection inside, a purulent wound may appear. As a rule, in addition to external infection, this is associated with a decrease in a person’s immunity.
Consequences
The purulent-inflammatory process in the wound can be accompanied by the development of anaerobic infection and, in the absence of professional treatment, lead to the appearance of erysipelas (popular name for gangrene).
Another possible consequence of a midge bite is an enlargement of the lymph nodes, which are designed to protect the body from the penetration and spread of infections. This is how the body reacts to an introduced bacterial infection or toxins.
Perhaps the most harmless consequence after a midge bite is local tissue swelling.
How long does a midge bite take to heal?
Each person who has been bitten by a midge has their own individual bite healing time. It is related to age and health status, general immunity, location of bites and their number.
On average, swelling disappears after 2–4 days, and redness, swelling and other symptoms disappear after 7–9 days. It is clear that we are talking about standard situations when the bite is not accompanied by any serious complications.
Bites
Getting rid of fungus gnats in indoor plants
If you notice small midges in pots with indoor plants, then most likely they are fungus gnats. Here are a few steps to get rid of such pests:
- Stop watering your plants —fungus gnat eggs and larvae can only live and develop in moist soil.
- Use chemical or biological insecticides to treat potting soil. You can use chemicals based on bifenthrin, cyfluthrin, permethrin and lambda-cyhalothrin, or natural ones - nematode worms or a special strain of live bacteria Bti (Bacillus thuringiensis ssp. israelensis). The latter can be purchased in the form of loose granules or pressed discs.
- Purchase sticky leaf traps for adult flying fungus gnats.
- Adjust the watering schedule to prevent the soil from becoming waterlogged . Otherwise, this is a direct road to the return of mosquitoes!
