District News

News From Around the Districts
Bay County Mosquito Control 810 Livingston St Bay City, MI 48708	(989) 894-4555 (989) 894-0526 Fax puttt@baycounty.org Bay County Mosquito Control
Mosquito season is here and Bay County Mosquito Control is doing its best to Fight the Bite! The annual spring woodland-pool treatment program marked the beginning of BCMC’s mosquito control season. Control efforts included aerial spraying (35,256 acres) using one helicopter (Clarke Mosquito Control) and two fixed-wing aircraft (Reed’s Fly-On Farming), with the focus on areas near cities, towns and large developments. As successful as the operation was (over 95% mortality of monitored larvae), we’re still seeing spring Aedes adults (probably through mid-July) and they can be particularly troublesome in wooded areas affecting local residents. 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 already treated ditches county-wide twice in June due to two significant rain events and been back in woodlots treating Aedes vexans larvae. Catch basin treatment is also being repeated for the second time this season. The first treatment took place at the end of May. Surprisingly, the number of complaint calls hasn’t increased as expected (knock on wood)! Two 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 early May and will be with us until the end of August. Public education efforts continued with information distributed regarding artificial containers and basic homeowner control techniques. Presentations were given at Kolb Elementary School, MacGregor Elementary School, and two summer daycares – Fremont Center and Center Plaza Daycare. We continue to monitor for West Nile virus this season by testing American Crows, Blue Jays, and mosquitoes in-house using the VecTest kit and by submitting bird bloods and mosquitoes to Dr. Walker’s lab at MSU. Through June 26, we have tested four Blue Jays; all tested negative for WNV. Furthermore, we have tested nine Culex species mosquito pools for WNV and all were negative. A few other items of interest: the first of two tire drives was held June 6-7 with 2,642 tires collected; Justin has been busy this spring installing nine more GPS units in pick-ups; Jake Britton of Clarke Mosquito Control visited on May 8 to check the MMD’s of ULV machines for our entire fleet (thanks again, Jake); a new Grizzly ULV machine was purchased this year and is working out great; the County has given us the green light on jazzing up our website so changes are coming!
Midland County Mosquito Control 2180 N Meridian Rd Sanford, MI 48657	(989) 687-5044 (989) 687-7914 Fax mosquito@co.midland.mi.us Midland County Mosquito Control
It has been a busy mosquito control season thus far but the cool temperatures kept adult mosquito flight activity down somewhat during the peak of the spring Aedes emergence so we have not had too much of a nuisance problem to date. If the rains of June continue into July we could start to have problems with the summer floodwater species. So far things have been pleasantly quiet on the West Nile virus front. With the loss of federal and state support, we are seeing significant reductions in surveillance activities. We can only hope that those who are conducting surveillance will report any activity noted so the rest of us can make use of all available information. Midland County ’s transition from malathion to permethrin for ULV adulticiding seems to be going well. Field tests have shown very good efficacy for all three materials being tested against spring Aedes species in wooded areas. We will conduct caged-mosquito trials against Culex species in more open areas later this summer. Speaking of this summer, we will be asking the residents of Midland County to approve another five years of funding for our program during the primary election in August of this year. It is not too early to begin planning for the MMCA Conference 2009 in Ann Arbor . If you are working on anything new or observe anything of interest, plan to write it down and share it with us as part of the program or take a picture for the photo salon. Please contact Tom Wilmot if you have any suggestions/requests for program presentations.
Saginaw County Mosquito Abatement 211 Congress St Saginaw, MI 48602	(989) 755-5751 (989) 758-2309 Fax info@scmac.org Saginaw County Mosquito Abatement Commission
The first two months of the mosquito season have been almost ideal in keeping mosquito populations low. Predominately cool temperatures along with rainfall coming at convenient intervals has resulted in little standing water thus significantly suppressing mosquito populations in most areas except for the most rural areas of the County. The cool temperatures have also affected some of our control operations. In May and early June we had to shut down early many nights when temperatures dropped below 55 F and we didn’t begin our first treatment of catch basins by moped until 11 days later then last year. This spring we conducted a 5 week study on the efficacy of truck based ULV adulticiding in rural areas with various insecticides and documented significant reduction in mosquito populations compared to untreated areas. Once we have time to completely analyze the data we will have established some baseline information for future comparisons of insecticides and application technologies. We plan to share this information at next year’s MMCA meeting. Our Education Department will again be busy this summer by participating in the following Saginaw County Parks activities: Children’s Fun Day; Touch a Truck Day; and two Pond Life Study programs. Additional summer activities will include Birds, Bugs (that’s us), Butterflies, and Blooms at the Saginaw Children’s Zoo, St. Charles Library Bug Day, Saginaw Farmers Market, and numerous day care presentations. Our agency hosted its yearly blood drive on June 25th with approximately 30 employees signing up to donate. Our third and final tire drive of the season will be held the week of July 21st-25th; to date we have collected and disposed of 11,934 tires for the summer.
Tuscola County Mosquito Abatement 1500 Press Rd Caro, MI 48723	(989) 672-3748 (989) 672-3724 Fax mosquito@tuscolacounty.org Tuscola County Mosquito Abatement
We have been holding our breath all of May and June watching most soaking rain storms just brushing by. So far we have had about normal rainfall this past June-about 3 1/2 inches. Mosquito numbers are below normal to date. There still is quite a bit of summer left and anything could happen. We plan on at least two catch basin treatments this summer (maybe three) and we are adulticiding the urban areas about every two-three weeks to reduce Culex mosquitoes. We are quite pleased with our new purchase of an AIMS in measuring droplet size. This has saved us a lot of time and effort and is also much more accurate. Monitoring for West Nile Virus (WNV) in corvids and mosquitoes has been negative to date. We wish all a near mosquito-free, safe summer!