Stop mosquitoes before they're born.

Yes, but you can’t just spray and pray. The real trick is eliminating or treating standing water before temperatures hit 50°F consistently.

Mosquitoes don’t spontaneously appear. They hatch from eggs laid in still water, and that includes puddles, clogged gutters, birdbaths, and even bottle caps. If you drain those sources or treat them with mosquito dunks (Bti bacteria that kills larvae but not your pets or plants), you stop the next generation before they bite.

Skip the foggers and bug zappers — they kill adults for an evening but don’t solve the root problem. Focus on water. Walk your yard, tip over anything that holds rain, scrub out birdbaths weekly, and add dunks to rain barrels or ponds.

Do this once in early spring and you’ll have way fewer mosquitoes all summer. Your neighbors will thank you, too.