The annual spring woodland pool treatment program marked the beginning of BCMC’s mosquito control season. Control efforts included aerial spraying (over 40,000 acres) using one helicopter (Clarke) and two fixed-wing aircraft (Earl’s Spraying Service, Inc.), with the focus on areas near cities, towns and large developments.

Summer has officially arrived along with a boat-load of rain that has created, as of late, mosquito numbers that are on the rise. Throw into that mix our annual influx of cattail marsh mosquitoes, Coquillettidia perturbans, and we are set up for a real bumper crop of the little pests! We’re seeing few spring Aedes adults these days (except for northern Bay County woodlots), but have shifted to the bothersome Aedes vexans and Cq. perturbans adults collected in traps both of which can be troublesome to residents and disease vectors.

Throughout the warm weather months, BCMC will be busy treating larval or adult mosquitoes originating from woodlots, floodplains, freshwater wetlands, grassy fields, wet meadows, roadside ditches, ponds, catch basins, as well as containers. We’ve treated ditches in townships that have received enough rain to trigger a mosquito hatch and been back in woodlots and floodplains treating larvae. The number of complaint calls has increased as expected in areas near floodplains and cattail marshes.

Three training sessions were held for both new and returning seasonal staff members to prepare them to test with the MDA as certified technicians. Most started working by mid May and will be with us until the end of August.

BCMC’s annual report was summarized and presented to the Bay County Board of Commissioners on Tuesday, April 12. Public education efforts continued with information distributed regarding artificial containers and basic homeowner control techniques. Presentations were given at Auburn Elementary School and Handy Middle School.

We continue to monitor for West Nile virus this season by testing American Crows, Blue Jays using the VecTest kit and by submitting mosquitoes to Michigan State University (MSU). Through June 30, we have tested no birds, but have submitted 87 mosquito pools containing 1,451 adult females to MSU; results are pending on the latter samples, but the first 40 pools tested negative.

A few other items of interest: the first of two tire drives was held May 21 with 2,258 tires collected; this first tire drive was held concurrently at the Bay County Fairgrounds and Pinconning County Park; Rob Cascioli of Clarke visited May 12 to use the AIMS machine to measure the MMD’s of ULV machines; we’ve been working diligently with the MDEQ for compliance in treating catch basins and sewage lagoons and have nearly received all Water Treatment Additive Forms from businesses giving us permission to treat their catch basins.

NPDES. I’d guess you’re getting as tired of it as I am. As you will probably read elsewhere in this newsletter there has been some progress on achieving legislative relief from the federal mandate. HR 872 has passed the U.S. House and the Senate Agriculture Committee and is now, hopefully, headed to the full Senate. Now is the time for another push. We are fairly confident of Senator Stabenow’s support but we do not know about Senator Levin. If you would like to see pesticide regulation left to FIFRA, please consider sending a letter, email and or telephone call to Senator Levin and his staff.

Over the last several years we have seen an all-too-frequent occurrence of late spring and early summer rain producing waves of floodwater mosquitoes after our initial spring treat. Record rainfall in May and near-record rain in June has been followed by, guess what, more mosquitoes. Our larviciding crews were kept even busier making up for several of our technicians that resigned for better jobs, a new baby, etc. If the next rain holds off for a short while maybe we can get the adult mosquitoes knocked down a bit and spend more time on summer habitats, disease surveillance and other fun jobs.

In addition to our regular treatment this year we will be evaluating Four-Star larvicide in catch basins and containers and Zenivex adulticide. We will keep you informed.

Have a good summer!

Our spring aerial larviciding program began on April 18th this year which is 10 days later than normal. Results for this program were excellent with a 94% reduction in mosquito larvae. April was cooler than normal with rainfall 90% above normal, with May continuing this trend of cool temperatures and rainfall 30% above normal. With all this additional rainfall it was inevitable that a large hatch of floodwater mosquitoes was on the way and they arrived the first two weeks of June. During this outbreak, we had multiple shifts working overtime in an effort to bring the mosquitoes under control. In reviewing past data, this two week period was the third worst mosquito outbreak since our program started in 1977.

Summer activities for our Education Department will include participation in the following events: Girl Scout Day Camp; Birds, Bugs (that’s us) Butterflies and Blooms at the Children’s Zoo; Saginaw Juvenile Detention Center; Consumers Energy Family Day; various summer day care programs; Truck and Bike Day, Reading in the Park, and Children’s Fun Day sponsored by Saginaw County Parks and Recreation Department.

For almost a year we have been struggling with the Michigan DEQ as they try to implement new regulatory demands on our program. The results have been mixed as now we will be required to get Water Treatment Additive authorization for all 28 sewage lagoon and MS4 catch basin facilities throughout the County. The good news is that we were successful at stopping the DEQ’s attempt to eliminate the use of temephos as a larvicide. The loss of this product would have forced our agency to use more expensive larvicides that are less effective in the larval habitats normally treated with temephos.

Our third and final tire drive of the season was held the week of July 25-29th. The hours for this drive will be 2:30pm – 7:00pm to provide the convenience of evening tire drop off. To date we have collected 9,783 tires for the year.

Our agency will also be hosting its annual blood drive on July 29th and walk-ins are encouraged.

We began Spring Treatment on April 13 (a week later than hoped). We went to two shifts on May 16, with the daytime crew continuing to larvicide, and the afternoon crew learning their routes and noting any signage issues. Since then, we have completed one round of catch basin treatment, and continue to apply larvicides to roadside ditches (there is water this season). Recently, we were given permission to add materials to the sewage lagoons; and these have received their initial "therapy". Meanwhile, the roadways are being adulticided…and priority requests are being satisfied. It has been a busy season, but manageable.

We have been collecting bids for the resurfacing of our parking lots. Our satellite tire collections (nine, to date) continue to produce large turnouts. We added two trucks to the fleet, bringing the total to seventeen equipped with ULVs. We have not seen evidence of arboviral activity, and hope that it stays that way. It’s difficult to believe that July is already here.