Mosquito Control does more than spraying

BAYOU GEORGE — Don’t tell Bay County Mosquito Control director Fred Wakefield it’s the off-season.

“People think all we do in the winter is sit around drinking coffee; that’s not the case,” he said.

Tearing down, cleaning, repairing and testing one sprayer alone is a weeklong process. Then there are all the traps that need to be rebuilt and research that needs to be analyzed, Wakefield said.

Making sure everything is in good, working order will be crucial when spring starts and the annoying biting insects come back to torment Floridians in their warm, moist climate. Bay County alone has 42 species of mosquitoes, entomology technician Ivan Griffin said.

“And different ones carry different diseases. You can’t just kill them all because some of them just pollinate plants,” Wakefield said.

Mosquitoes are common carriers of diseases, including West Nile virus, equine encephalitis and other unpleasant maladies that affect humans and animals, Griffin said. Research for the last fiscal year shows one of the most common species of mosquitoes in Bay County is also a species known as a vector, or one that carries diseases.

Bay County Mosquito Control is one of only a handful of mosquito districts in the state that has sophisticated equipment allowing them to quickly test if a particular mosquito carries the West Nile virus.

“We’re a little more high-tech than some of the other districts,” Wakefield said.

Though mosquitoes are present year-round, most of the ones that survive the winter aren’t vectors, so spraying stops, Wakefield said.

In February, Mosquito Control will begin setting traps to get an early reading on what to expect for the mosquito season this year and plan their spraying and larvacide treatments for the warm, sticky months.

A growing facet of Mosquito Control is minnow hatching. Bay County Mosquito Control has developed a program used to contain the mosquito population resulting from abandoned pools that uses gambusia minnows that eat mosquito larva. As the economy has forced the foreclosure rate higher, the number of abandoned pools also has increased. There are about 70 to 80 homes in Bay County that are home to mosquito-eating gambusia, said Kirt Winters, who coordinates the minnow program, and the number increases each day.

 “For what I get out of it with the pools, it’s well worth it,” Winters said. “I go back about once a month and check on them and the calls are nothing like they were.”

Hard work and innovation are part of the effort to provide service in a cost-efficient manner, Wakefield said.

“You try to do anything you can to help the community,” he said.