When Your Outdoor Party Guests Say Your Event Was A Gas, Let’s Hope They’re Not Talking About The Proliferation Of CO2
Who doesn’t love happy hour? It marks the end of a workday, a time to unwind from the day’s stressors. If you revel in an outdoor after-work cocktail, you are not alone. Beings of the non-human sort are well-known cocktail hour party crash artists. Mosquitoes love to crash happy hour gatherings. Who knew that tipping a cocktail or two outdoors on your deck or outdoor living patio space could spell trouble for yourself and your revelers?
Mosquitoes love happy hour too!
Well, your local mosquito control expert did!
Enjoying a cold one by your fire pit, a bottle of wine on your deck, or a quick whiskey nightcap can make your great outdoors even greater. But your alcoholic beverage of choice can complicate things by welcoming mosquitoes to your outdoor haven.
Clinical Research Proves It – Mosquitoes Love The Gases We Emit
All other factors being equal, alcoholic beverages attract mosquitoes — especially if that beverage is beer. In the recent past, a study from researchers in Tokyo found that the number of mosquitoes who landed on volunteer test subjects significantly increased after beer ingestion, compared with before ingestion, showing clearly that drinking alcohol stimulates mosquito attraction.
It’s Not Your Drinking, But The After Effects That Sound The Alarm
Drinking beer attracts mosquitoes.
Mosquitoes aren’t attracted to your drinking. They’re drawn to what drinking does to your body. Body heat and carbon dioxide register like a flashing “free meal” sign to mosquitoes, who are looking for their bloodmeal. While core body temperature doesn’t increase after drinking, your skin can flush because alcohol is a vasodilator — meaning it opens up your blood vessels.
Humans exhale carbon dioxide with every breath. The faster your exhalations, the more carbon dioxide you send off. Carbon dioxide is also released from carbonated beer, which is why the mosquito beer trap (essentially a still-foaming beer left open to draw in mosquitos) is a somewhat effective mosquito mitigation tool, as long as the beer is away from you rather than in your hand.
While there’s a correlation between drinking and increased mosquito bites, it’s not the ethanol that’s drawing them in. Mosquitoes can’t get drunk as your intoxicated blood is far too diluted, and they aren’t attracted to ethanol as a food source. In fact, most mosquitoes aren’t attracted to the human body as a food source at all. Only pregnant mosquitoes suck your blood because they need the proteins for fertile eggs, while all other mosquitoes eat flower nectar and are important pollinators. Those dirty, rotten, evil, (bleep), creatures.
Reclaim Your Happy Hour with Andover Mosquito Control
Be smart and engage your local mosquito control expert to become your virtual drinking partner. Rest assured that this new partnership will turn out to be a real gas – the good kind.
Dave Macchia, Central Mass Mosquito Control Expert