We live in south Florida, a place known for it’s bugs. We have a ton of mosquitos, and we have tried many ways to get rid of them. We have a bug zapper, which does work, but not nearly enough. We would need about ten of them to really make the outside a comfortable place to hang out during the summer months. At about $100 a pop, plus having outlets put in around the house to run them, well, that would get expensive very quickly. We’ve tried yard sprays – and they work, for about 10 minutes, when the neighbor’s mosquitos decide to fly over. I’ve considered buying a bat house, but I’m not quite there yet.
So, when I saw this pin on Pinterest, I figured I would give it a try.
DIY Mosquito trap
Unfortunately, many of these pins were linked to spam sites, so I just Googled it and came up with this website. http://v7brown.hubpages.com…
Necessary items:
1 empty two liter bottle
1 cup boiling hot water
1 cup of sugar
2 cups cold water
1 tablespoon active yeast
black (or in my case, dark colored) paper
tape
I cut the top off the bottle, and inverted it back into the base. Then I mixed the boiling water with the sugar, stirred until it was all dissolved. Then added the cool water. It said to make sure the water was 90 degrees, but since I didn’t have a candy thermometer, I just made sure it was lukewarm. Then I added the yeast, mixed slightly. I poured the mixture into two bottles that I had set up (the recipe makes too much for just one bottle). Then I taped the lid to the top, and taped a piece of dark scrapbook paper to the outside to make it all mosquito friendly. They love a dark, humid place.
I put the bottles behind some bushes in my yard and waited a few days. Each day, I would run out to check them. And each day, I was disappointed that they weren’t working. They did seem to attract this guy though…
Isn’t he just a beauty? Ick!
He stuck around for two days. Didn’t move. Ewww… Where we live, we have tons of these guys. One lick of this bufo toad can possibly kill my dogs. Unfortunately, I haven’t found anything to get rid of them, either.
Okay, back to the mosquito trap… All that’s been caught so far are a few gnats and some grass clippings.
This is one of the bottles this morning.
I’d say this was a FAIL!
For the sake of science, I’m going to try this one more time. But, I have to say, I’m pretty disappointed in the dismal outcome.
Have you tried any new pins lately?? Were they a success? Or a big-time FAIL?
Come back soon!
Eliesa
Robin says
I missed the weight loss part of this article (confused). However my husband did try the mosquito trap twice and it didn’t work, so bummed as we get a lot of mosquitoes where we live.
Emily says
Hi! Your mosquito trap didn’t work because you must use BROWN sugar…1 cup of boiling water mixed with 1/4 cup of brown sugar stir til sugar desolves then when cool add 1 gram of yeast and do not stir…1 gram is a little under 1/4 of a tsp…the rest of the directions you followed were correct! Give this a try!:)
A Pinterest Addict says
I will try that. Thanks for the info 🙂
Fabian says
I had the same result, no mosquitos were trapped. I used white sugar too, so maybe I will try brown sugar. Let me know if you had any results!
Sam says
Hi! The problem was incorrect temperature of the water. It shouldnt be boiling hot… it should be 36-40 c depending on the yeast; 37c many says is ideal. But if it’s in a warm country you can use water in room temperature, make the “recipe” and just leave it in the sun. Ah, and i used baking yeast, worked pretty good:D sorry for my bad english :3
Siti Nur Hazirah says
u can’t place it on a bright place. need to put it at a darker place. well, so far, i didn’t found anybody posted a successful result tho
GIZZY says
Well, we just tried it…with brown sugar…but didn’t really measure anything (rarely do) and water was a mild warm…guess we’ll see!
Allen says
I’ve made 3 of these and none of them worked, besides catching a bunch of gnats (which is still good). Water does not need to be boiling, only hot enough to melt the sugar. I havent read anywhere yet that this has actually worked.
Monique P says
Tried it here in Australia – with brown sugar – but it didn’t work on mozzies. Got lots of those little flies (I think you call them gnats). I’d like to try the fan trick seen on various mozzie-zapping boards but because I live in the city, where houses are close together, I think the noise would drive my neighbours mad; not to mention the cost/environment minuses of running a fan 24/7.