Don’t let the midges bug you
As Southerners grumble about the occasional mosquito bites that are the price to be paid for hot weather, spare a thought for those hardy souls heading to Scotland for the Glorious Twelfth. Blood will most certainly be shed – but it has nothing to do with the grouse.
At this time of year, the hunter invariably becomes the hunted, as millions upon millions of biting midges rise in an ominous swarm through the air and surround their human prey, tiny jaws at the ready.
Tory leader David Cameron and his family will know from sojourns at their holiday home in Jura that swarms of these little fiends can cause havoc – not least because they are highly selective about their victims, singling out particular individuals for their gruesome attentions.
According to Edinburgh University’s Centre for Tropical Medicine, midges respond to the combination of chemicals – including lactic acid – present in the sweat of certain people, which they detect via their highly sensitive antennae.
Research is focusing on the development of a repellent that can block receptor sites on midge antennae, but until such a product becomes available, those of us who are vulnerable must find other ways to manage the midges.
When a midge bites, it uses its pinking-shear-like mouth parts to cut a hole in its victim’s skin and injects an anticoagulant to stop the blood from clotting so that it can feast on the resulting pool. The anticoagulant induces an immune – or allergic – response which in some people causes the area to swell and itch. The lucky ones experience an irritation that subsides within minutes.
“The proportion of people who suffer very bad reactions is incredibly small,” says Alison Blackwell of Edinburgh University, who has spent the past 16 years researching how to combat midges.
“For children, being bitten can be very upsetting, but very often it’s the fact the midges tend to swarm around faces and bodies that people find most distressing.”
When they’ve identified a food source, midges emit pheromones to call others to join them – hence the swarming. This means that victims are seldom bitten just once.
Midges adore the warm, damp conditions of high summer and thrive in bogs and wet grassland, with their population peaking between mid-July and September. Warmer temperatures in the past decade have seen their numbers rise in places such as Cornwall and Pembrokeshire, but the Scottish midge still reigns supreme.
There are 37 species of midge in Scotland, but 90 per cent of bites come from one type, Culicoides impunctatus. Scientists estimate that 24 million midge larvae can develop on one hectare – and as the west coast of Scotland covers four million hectares, the numbers involved are mind-boggling.
The good news is that it’s only the pregnant females, on the hunt for protein, who bite. They prefer the blood of cattle to humans, but holidaymakers who venture into their habitat become nutritious targets, too.
It is estimated that midges cost the Scottish tourist industry up to £268 million a year in lost revenue, because many avoid visits during midge season. A forestry study carried out in the mid-1980s also suggested that 20 percent of working days were lost because clouds of biting midges make timber felling and tree planting nigh impossible.
To help humans in their battle not to be bitten, QM has created a midge forecast service at http://mbox-qm.com that gives safety predictions of midge movements around the world. It has also helped develop a trap, the MBOX, which is made for indoor use we have specifically tailored it and designed it to be user friendly and harmless for your family.
“The problem with insect repellents is that they stop the midges from biting the skin but not from swarming around you,” says Blackwell.
“Midges detect people and animals by the carbon dioxide on their breath. The MBOX gives out carbon dioxide, which is warmed slightly and combined with chemicals, including what is effectively ‘essence of cow’. The midges fly into it and are held there until they die.”
Mosquitoes and midges are very hard to exterminate but there are ways to prevent it. Humans are most vulnerable when sleeping and it is exactly at these moments that mosquitoes are the most active, since mosquitoes are nocturnal creatures. So the most effective way is to prevent the mosquitoes from being near humans when we are sleeping. There are various ways like using a mosquito catcher indoors or outdoors.
So selecting the most effective catcher and using it at the right places is important. Even more important is having a safe product that does not bring any other extra hazards into your house. Using our newest knowledge on how mosquitos locate their prey we developed a new way of catching mosquito’s without any hazardous dangers for humans. Mosquitos trace Co2 to their host; use heat vision to locate the blood veins. MBOX mosquito trap is specifically designed to tailor these primal sensors of the mosquito. Once close enough the mosquito will be sucked in and dried out, calculated technology.
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Prevention is always better than healing and some diseases cannot be healed. Get a MBOX mosquito trap now.