Mosquito Treatment
So you don't like those pesky mosquitoes. Here's a tip that was given at a recent gardening forum. Â Put some water in a white dinner plate and add a couple drops of Lemon Fresh Joy dish detergent. Set the dish on your porch, patio, picnic table, park bench, or other outdoor area.
Not sure what attracts them, the lemon smell, the white plate colour, or what, BUT ... mosquitoes flock to it, and drop dead shortly after drinking the Lemon Fresh Joy/water mixture, and usually within about 10 feet of the plate.
TRY IT---it works just super! It may seem trivial, but it may also help to control mosquitoes around your home, (especially in areas where the West Nile virus is reaching epidemic proportions in mosquitoes, birds, and humans).
posted by Natcire at 1:22 AM
2 Comments:
Hey, it turns out to be a hoax.
Quoted from http://www.lisashea.com/birding/mosquito/lemonfreshjoy.html:
According to an internet email rumor, a simple dish of Lemon Fresh Joy is all you need to keep your world mosquito free. Unfortunately, this is an urban legend.
First off, the product is "Lemon Joy". If you're going to make wild claims about products, you should at least get the product name correct. The story is that putting a white bowl with water and a few drops of this dishwashing liquid will keep a 10' radius around it clear of mosquitoes. Their dead bodies will fall all around the bowl.
This technique is used for FLEAS and only when you have the buggers in your fingers. As you're, say, picking them off your dog, you drop them into the mixture. The dishwashing liquid breaks the surface tension of the water so the bugs you drop into the liquid drown instead of hanging out on the water's surface.
Female mosquitoes - the ones that bite - are drawn by the carbon dioxide in your breath and the smell of sweet perfume. They do NOT find lemon a pleasant smell. In fact gardeners sometimes use a mixture of Lemon Joy to drive AWAY bugs from their plants. Not mosquitoes though - mosquitoes don't care either way about the aroma of lemon.
Yes, if a female mosquito that was ambling around the area HAPPENED to land exactly in the center of that dish for some unknown reason, they would drown. But the likelihood of that happening is slim. The likelihood of it happening to more than one is next to nil. Save your table space, and use a repellent that actually has some repelling action to it.
Thanks..at least now we know it is not effective..
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