Here you can find thorough instructions on how to deal with the various pests you might see at nighttime around your porch light, especially in the spring and summer.
We all know there are bugs everywhere, but they tend to be worse near porch lights. The hordes of bothersome insects that are attracted by a porch light are its worst feature. There are ways to keep pests out of your home, even though dealing with them can be extremely frustrating.
Thankfully, there are natural solutions that work well in your battle against bugs on your porch and are fully recommended by experts.
Keep Your Porch Clean
One of the simplest preventative steps you can take to stop bugs from congregating is to keep your porch or patio area clean. Make sure to sweep any food residues or fallen foliage as this can be attractants for flying pests and others like ants, which can quickly make their way inside your home. At the same time, liquids like sodas are magnets for pests like wasps and bees.
Remove plant and food waste with a broom and dispose of it in an outdoor trash can that is a few feet from the foundation of your house and busy areas. On your porch, try to stay away from empty pots, planters, and buckets. Otherwise, it can be used to store standing water sources when it rains. Mosquito breeding grounds like this are abundant.
An insect growth regulator, such as BTI Mosquito Dunk, can be used to treat objects collecting water that are difficult to tip over. The floating larvicide BTI Mosquito Dunk stops mosquito larvae from maturing and eliminates existing aquatic pests.
In order to use this product, you must first calculate the water’s surface area. To do this, multiply the length by the width in feet (length X width = square footage). Use one BTI Mosquito Dunk per 25 to 100 square feet. ft. of surface area. Apply 1–5 sq. of dunks to smaller areas by cutting them into quarters. ft. of standing water surface areas.
Replace Bulbs
When navigating to find food, many flying insects, including mosquitoes, rely on light. As a result, at night, insects may congregate near porch lights and other outdoor light sources.
But not all lights are created equal when it comes to luring insects. It is possible to infer which lights are the most seductive based on their wavelengths, colors, and electromagnetic emissions.
Consider switching to a warm yellow or orange LED light bulb to keep insects away from your porch light at night. The reason for this is that insects’ eyesight is capable of detecting wavelengths in the ultraviolet spectrum, which is between 650 and 300 nanometers, among others. In other words, while humans can see red, yellow, and orange, insects cannot.
Because of how these pests perceive color, they will pass by or disregard yellow or orange LED light bulbs in porch lights. Most fly traps and zappers use blue or purple lighting because these pests see cooler tones better.
Create Insecticide Perimeter
We advise using a perimeter treatment for a residual insecticide to keep pests away from your porch and house. A broad-spectrum insecticide called Supreme IT is approved to treat more than 70 different types of pests, including mosquitoes, flies, and moths. This suspended concentrate will effectively keep pests away from your home once it has dried and will continue to kill them for up to 90 days.
In order to prevent pests from entering your home or harboring in these places, you should also consider spraying the underside of eaves, soffits, doors, windows, and around entry points.
Switch Out Your Porch Light
The best way to keep bugs away from them is to change the porch light. Incandescent bulbs, which produce a lot of heat and draw insects, are commonly used.
Consider replacing your porch light with LEDs, which still look great while producing less heat. Bugs around your house will be lessened thanks to LED lights!
Burn the Bugs Away With Bug Zapper
Utilizing a bug zapper like this one is another efficient method of preventing insects from landing near outdoor lighting. These “zappers” are a highly successful technique for attracting and controlling insects.
However, as appealing as this may seem, there are a few disadvantages since you’ll be left with a lot of dead insects lying beneath the bug zapper as well as a lingering smell of burnt bugs.
Install a Ceiling Fan
One or more fans might be exactly what you need if your home has a wraparound porch with an overhang.
They’ll literally blow away airborne pests, which will not only help decrease their number, but they’ll also keep your surroundings cooler and friendlier during the sweltering summer.
Don’t Leave Standing Water Around Your Home
The ideal breeding ground for insects like mosquitos is standing water. You should identify and eliminate the source of the bugs in order to prevent them from swarming your porch.
Since mosquitoes specifically lay their eggs in and around standing water, removing standing water from the area around your home will help to reduce the mosquito population there. Standing water, which is defined as water that isn’t moving or flowing, is frequently found in birdbaths, ponds, and rain barrels.
Clean With Vinegar
When attempting to get rid of bugs, keeping your porch clean is crucial. Fewer bugs will be drawn to this area if it is cleaned frequently. Any spills should be cleaned up as soon as possible, and the porch should also be swept.
This area should be cleaned with a cleaning solution that contains vinegar to help keep some bugs away. Vinegar will keep insects away, including ants, mosquitoes, and fruit flies claims Medicine Net.
Vinegar can be used as a cleaner by combining it 1:1 with water in a spray bottle. Spray it around your porch lights or wherever you see a lot of bugs to clean surfaces.
Burn Citronella Candles
Another method to keep bugs away from any outdoor space you want to spend time in is to burn citronella candles. According to Today, it’s a temporary fix that only lasts for a few hours, but when combined with other bug-repelling techniques, it can be helpful.
By disguising the smell of people in the area so that mosquitoes aren’t attracted to it, citronella candles work to repel mosquitoes.
Plant Insect-repelling Plants
You can lessen the number of bugs around your home by planting specific kinds of plants in your garden or on your porch. If you don’t want to devote a lot of time or money to maintain a garden or unattractive landscaping, choosing to create a small herb garden on your porch can even help repel bugs.
According to Maggie’s Farm, herbs like oregano, basil, fennel, parsley, rosemary, and thyme will keep insects away. The ability to repel mosquitoes and house flies is a specialty of these herbs. They can be grown in little pots, will require weekly irrigation, and need lots of sunlight.
The benefit of this method is that you will have fresh herbs to cook with in addition to keeping bugs away.