Try the Mosquito Bucket of Death
I usually focus on the building science of homes, HVAC, and indoor environmental quality. Today, though, I’m going to cover a topic of outdoor environmental quality. I’ve had mosquitoes in my backyard since we bought the house in 2019. This year, however, the yard is practically uninhabitable all the time because the constant rainfall has kept the yard wet and overpopulated with mosquitoes. That’s about to change because last week, I heard about the perfect solution: the Mosquito Bucket of Death.†
So, for the past few days I’ve been setting them up and putting them out in my yard. I’ve got four out there now and may add more. I wish I had started them in April because it takes a while for them to do their thing. And their thing is using an otherwise harmless bacterium to kill the mosquito larvae after the female mosquitoes lay their eggs in the bucket. Here’s a video showing a bit about how they work and how to set them up.
There’s a lot of info online about the Mosquito Bucket of Death, and I’ve looked at a bunch of it. Here’s what I’ve distilled from those sites to help you make your make your own.
Prepare the Bucket of Death
Most of the websites say to use a 5 gallon bucket.* Some say 3 to 5 gallons. But the concept works even in small containers. The main difference is that the small containers probably need more upkeep to maintain the water level and more buckets to reduce the mosquito population. The process is the same, though, no matter what size bucket you use.
To begin, you fill the bucket about half full of water. Then you add a handful or two of decaying leaves, soil, compost, or old grass clippings.
Next, put a couple of sticks in there. Those are for two things. First, good bugs that fall in will have an escape path. Second, I’ve read that mosquitoes like something to land on near the surface of the water before they lay their eggs.
If you want to keep squirrels, chipmunks, and other small critters from getting trapped in the bucket, you also could put a piece of hardware cloth or chicken wire over the top of the bucket. To keep it in place, you can use zip ties.
Once you’ve got that set up, let it sit outdoors for a couple of days. Most of the sites I found say that’s for fermentation, although I doubt it’s true fermentation that happens. But I’m a big fan of fermentation, so I’ll go with the flow here.
Add MosquitoDunks®
Once you’ve got the buckets doing their thing in your yard, you should see some mosquito activity around them. I’ve noticed a bunch of them in and around my death buckets the past few days. After two or three days, drop in the material loaded with the mosquito larvicide bacterium. They’re called MosquitoDunks®,* and you can find them at hardware and home improvement stores or through this Amazon affiliate link.*
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?
Anyway, here’s what a lot of the posts about the Mosquito Bucket of Death get wrong, though. You don’t need a whole dunk in each bucket. If you read the instructions, you’ll see that a quarter of a dunk is more than enough for a 5 gallon bucket. Each dose you put in is supposed to last about 30 days, so it’s a pretty inexpensive mosquito control method.
The building science connection
Another thing folks say is to let the water sit for a couple of days before you start adding organic matter and dunks if you’re using chlorinated tap water. That’s because you want as much of the chlorine as possible to evaporate from the water to make it more appealing to mosquitoes.
I have a ready source of non-chlorinated water at my house. My basement has very little cooling load, especially since I remodeled the walk-out side. So I’ve been running a dehumidifier down there. I can get half a bucketful overnight, so it’s easy for me to start my Mosquito Buckets of Doom with fresh water.
How long does it take?
The life cycle of a mosquito includes four stages: egg, larva, pupa, adult. They start as an egg in a raft of eggs in stagnant water. After a few days, the mosquito bucket of death has aged and become fetid enough for the female mosquitoes. They then lay their eggs, with each female laying 100 to 200 eggs in her short lifetime.
After another few days, the eggs then hatch into mosquito larvae. You may have seen them as slender little linear creatures that hang out near the surface. Because of their motion, they’re often called wigglers. They’ll be in the larval stage from four or five days to two weeks.
And that’s the part of their life cycle we’re most interested in. As the little wigglers begin their journey to adulthood, they eat the organic matter they find. That includes particles from the MosquitoDunks you add to the bucket. Some time after ingesting the BT, they die. Which means they never become adult mosquitoes, preying on your unprotected skin.
The mosquito larvae started showing up in my death buckets on day five. Now that they’re eating, they’re starting to die. Meanwhile, the current adult population of mosquitoes in my yard will continue until they die. Males, which don’t bite people, live about a week. Females, which need a blood meal to develop their eggs, can live up to six weeks.
The answer to the question, then, is that if your Mosquito Bucket of Death is really effective, you should see a reduction in the mosquito population in about a month.
For your outdoor enjoyment, your wallet, and the planet
The Mosquito Bucket of Death is a far better way to reduce your mosquito problem than hiring a pest control company to come in a spray your yard. According to Forbes, spraying for mosquitoes costs from $75 to $400 per visit. Worse, it’s not that effective. I’ve read that having a company spray your yard kills only about 10 percent of the adult mosquitoes.
Worst of all, though, is that spraying insecticides indiscriminately comes with a lot of collateral damage. It also kills butterflies, bees, lightning bugs, and other insects that are good for your yard. Here’s a thorough article on the safety of mosquito sprays.
The path to a yard with a lot fewer mosquitoes is clear. Avoid the expense, ineffectiveness, and collateral damage of chemical sprays. Set up your Mosquito Buckets of Death and start enjoying your yard again in a few weeks.
If you have mosquitoes in your yard, you should be heading to the store to buy buckets and MosquitoDunks right now. Also check out the resources below for more information.
Allison A. Bailes III, PhD is a speaker, writer, building science consultant, and the founder of Energy Vanguard in Decatur, Georgia. He has a doctorate in physics and is the author of a bestselling book on building science. He also writes the Energy Vanguard Blog. For more updates, you can follow Allison on LinkedIn and subscribe to Energy Vanguard’s weekly newsletter and YouTube channel.
† These things also are called the Mosquito Bucket of Doom. I learned about them at the Atlanta BS & Beer meeting, where Tres Crow of GreenBox Homes mentioned them in his presentation on sustainable landscapes.
* This is an Amazon Associate link. You pay the same price you would pay normally, but Energy Vanguard may make a small commission if you buy after using the link.
External Resources
Wikipedia page on the mosquito
Try the ‘bucket of doom’ to eliminate mosquitoes without harmful pesticides
Effects of mosquito sprays on humans, pets, and wildlife
Tips for killing and repelling mosquitoes
BTi for Mosquito Control, US EPA
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Here in Oklahoma, oddly enough, we don’t have mosquitos. However, I am surrounded by cattle and bison herds so the “house” flies are terrible outdoors. I have tried fly traps that use bait, but the smell is worse than the flies. Any body have a solution for flies?
Roy: I don’t know of a good fly control method. We get only a few indoors, and I use the fly swatter on them. But be happy they’re just house flies. Horse flies are far worse because they bite.
Allison, your post is perfectly timed. We’re being eaten alive in our backyard right now.
As far as we can tell from your previous posts, you actually have at least three sources of chlorine-free condensation water: the HVAC system, the dehumidifier, and the HP water heater!
I have a few doubts. Female mosquitoes have a range of a couple kilometers, so what about the puddle in the yard two houses down, and the old wheelbarrow in the bushes four houses away?
A female mosquito can lay eggs a few times in her lifetime. Will it be the bucket of doom every time?
Paul: Those are all good questions about what the potential effectiveness of the Mosquito Bucket of Death. My first response is just try it and find out.
Yes, mosquitoes can come from neighboring yards. So talk to your neighbors and see if you can get them to put some out, too.
One our HVAC designers has had about 5 death buckets out for a few months now and still has a lot of mosquitoes. But his house is right on a pond.
As for where the females lay their eggs, you want to have enough of the buckets of death in your yard that the mosquitoes find them more readily than the other potential places. I know mine have already attracted the egg layers, and the BT in the buckets has already killed a bunch of them. That’s hundreds of potential mosquitoes that won’t be buzzing around my backyard in a couple of weeks.
Of course, a comprehensive mosquito control plan includes more than just the Mosquito Bucket of Death. See the following article, which I included in the list of external resources above. I think their box fan method is really clever!
Tips for killing and repelling mosquitoes
I think I am agreeing with Paul on this one. When I lived in upstate New York, I had a bad problem with Japanese Beetles eating the leaves on my trees and shrubs. I put up some of the traps from Home Depot and they sure caught a lot of beetles. However, it didn’t cut down on the damage to my plants. I concluded that these traps just attracted the beetles from my neighbors yard and they fed on my plants before they got to the traps. So I was only helping my neighbors.
Roy: Trapping adults is different from killing larvae. Also, I haven’t found any real studies of the Mosquito Bucket of Death yet, but I do know people who said they’ve worked in their yards.
Allison, my parallel with the Japanese beetles is that in both cases you are attracting the pests to your yard. I am guessing that the mosquitos snack on you before they lay their eggs just like the beetles snacked on my plants before entering the trap. I agree that you have little to lose and possibly a lot to gain. Now if you can get the whole state to do this, it might work 😉
Roy, you make some good points, but I am not sure if there is anything to agree with regarding what I mentioned earlier. Those were just my doubts, unsubstantiated by research or empirical evidence which I am going to gather promptly employing several buckets of doom in our backyard. What do I have to lose?
Unfortunately, it looks like the Bacillus thuringiensis israelensis do not multiply in the water, bummer, that’s why we need to keep buying those dunks!
Paul: At maybe 25 cents per month per bucket, it’s hard to complain about the cost of the dunks.
Allison: yeah, sure, but it would be nice. I also have a puddling detention pond to treat, and a nearby retention pond. The latter gave me some hope recently, because I noticed dragonflies setting up camp. Encouraging their habitat (however that is done) should be mentioned as another good mosquito strategy.
You made an excellent point about foregoing spraying insecticides which kills pollinators and probably all the insects we don’t yet know that are good, not to mention whatever unintended effects those agents have on humans.
We have been using these for the past 6 weeks and it has made a HUGE difference! It did take a few weeks to start working and we have four buckets around our yard, but significant improvements for sure! Not to mention we just realized we have 101 bats living in our gable end vent! We have a sealed attic so not getting inside but def an Ohh Sh!t moment when we realized it.
For the flys, I strongly recommend the Bug-a-salt guns. Got my kid one for xmas and they are sooo much more effective for indoor fly’s than anything else! And fun and satisfying too lol.
Mark: Thanks for your confirmation about the effectiveness of this method. I found out about it last week at the Atlanta BS & Beer meeting. We had a speaker on sustainable landscapes, and he mentioned them. One attendee also confirmed they did wonders in his yard, so I went home and started preparing buckets of death for my yard. Earlier today, I had hundreds of larvae wiggling around in each bucket. In a few weeks, our adult mosquito population should be greatly reduced.
This reminds me of xkcd’s surreal take on air quality control:
https://xkcd.com/2753/
😀
Did this at our shop and the difference was quick! Very pleased with this tip! Thanks.
I’ve got 3 buckets around our rollup warehouse doors, one by our gate, and one at our picnic table (we do get breaks occasionally!)
Happy Monday Yall
Excellent piece, Allison. We’re not personally plagued, but I’ll be saving this post to pass along.
Would you call this IPM?
Meantime, our city water is treated with chloramine (chlorine and ammonia). If correct, that chlorine does not evaporate out. So, good to know about the dehumidifier.
Cities may want to know about this method– they already urge resident to eliminate any standing water outdoors.
Distilled water for as low as $1/gallon, or free from your rain barrel. Put them out of sight behind bushes, or white buckets for $5, or even cheaper at Good Will.