Natural Mosquito Repellant for Your Home

As tiny as they are, mosquitoes can bring huge trouble. Apart from the annoying stinging bites, mosquitoes also cause a myriad of serious deadly illnesses like malaria, filaria, dengue, brain fever, and yellow fever, among many others. Every year, mosquito borne diseases affect 300 to 500 million people worldwide, causing about one million deaths. Natural mosquito repellant is your best defense against these diseases. 

Seal the point of entry 
Keep this in mind: mosquitoes are very active in the early morning and early evening and they love areas with still air. Be sure to keep windows and doors on the side of your house opposite the breeze closed during these times.

  

Eliminate still water areas

Any stagnant water is a breeding ground for mosquitoes. Bird baths, pet’s water bowls, wading pools, and even water inside the flower vases should be replaced daily. Remove items around the house that collect water. 

Use natural mosquito repellants

Add a dash of herbs like rosemary and sage to burning coals. The scent is known to repel mosquitoes. Another effective repellant is a solution of one part garlic juice mixed with five parts water. Put this in a spray bottle and spray on the body. This can protect for up to six hours. You can also dip cotton cloth into the solution and hang in areas known to have mosquitoes like in the patio. 

It’s also a good idea to use neem oil, a natural vegetable oil that comes from the Neem tree in India. The Neem tree’s oil, leaves and seeds contain a potent mosquito repelling compound called sallanin. 

It would also help to cultivate mosquito repelling plants around like citronella, horsemint, marigold, ageratum and catnip. Citronella contains a natural mosquito repellant ingredient that comes in the form of a strong aroma that wards off pesky mosquitoes. Horsemint, also known as beebalm, also gives off a strong scent like citronella. 

Marigolds contain Pyrethrum, a compound that’s usually used as ingredient in many insect repellants. Ageratum emits a smell offensive to mosquitoes. It secretes a compound called coumarin that’s also used in commercial insect repellants. Catnip, another natural mosquito repellent, has been found to be ten times more effective than DEET, a chemical used in most commercially available insect repellants.

A Pupa in my Garden

I woke up early yesterday to clean our garden and remove the grasses that have grown there. As I was about to finish my task, I saw a pupa. It is almost an inch in length and it is very funny because whenever I touch it, it starts to move. 

I wonder what type of insect is inside that pupa. I am thinking of keeping it to see what will it become, but I realized that it will be best if I leave it to a place where I found it. So I leave it near my plants and hoping that it will hatch and become a wonderful insect.

Insect Life Cycle

Last night I saw a weird looking insect. It was big and white in color. At first I had no idea what it was because that was the first time I saw that kind of insect. I tried to look closer, and I was shocked when I was able to identify that it was a "cockroach"! Yes, a cockroach with pure white skin. I don't know why it became like that when all of the cockroaches I saw were dark in color. I wonder what is the reason behind this change.

Later that night I tried to find out the reason behind the changing of color of cockroaches. As I was researching, I have seen several articles concerning insect life cycle and found them very amusing.

Insect life cycle begin as an egg and then they hatch into a worm-like stage called larvae. Once it grown, it totally changes into a pupa, where it covers itself as it undergoes metamorphosis. After the metamorphosis is complete, the pupa hatches and the insect becomes an adult.

I also found out that there is another insect life cycle, where insect hatches into a nymph, that looks like a small adult, but it does not change into a pupa. All nymph use to shed their skin as they grow up to become adult, and this process is called molting.

Molting process is a part of nymph's life cycle, where the outer covering of its body called "exoskeleton" does not expand as they are growing that is why it has to be shed and replaced with a larger one.

After molting, their inner skin is still soft and white in color. It will took them several hours before their skin will harden and change from white to dark.

This concludes that the cockroach I saw was a nymph and it undergoes molting that is why it has a white color.

The research I made gave me additional knowledge on insect life cycle, especially cockroaches, and it is very interesting. Although most of them are disgusting and scary, knowing how they grow is fun to learn.