Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

I did sort of a ridiculous amount of research before buying this thing, and I’m very happy with it. But, my research not only led me to select a mosquito trap, but also to modify my thinking in what to expect from a mosquito trap. There are also some drawbacks, and claims made in this ad that I wouldn’t support. Still, it is pretty terrific, and a solid purchase. 1) It says indoor/outdoor. I wouldn’t agree with that. This would be complete overkill for indoor and probably not that effective. It is not silent. It has a fan that’s always going. This creates a low-key fan noise. It’s not loud, but I wouldn’t want to listen to it all the time. Also, while it attracts mosquitoes, it does not attract mosquitos better than you do. That leads me to my next point. 2) This is not a human protection device. This is a mosquito population reduction device. You can’t think of it as an instant fix. It’s not like “I’m throwing a party, let me get the trap out”. That would probably attract more mosquitos to the party. If you stand next to the trap, the mosquitos will attack you rather than going in the trap. But, while humans are not around, the trap will eliminate dozens of them a night. So, this is in no way a quick fix for mosquitoes. It is, however, a very effective part of a solution. Mosquitoes, as evil as they are, have a weakness: they are not strong fliers. They are optimized for stealth, and don’t travel very far or very quickly. If you think of a mosquito population as a bucket filled with water, this puts a leak in the bucket. Day by day, little by little, there will be less and less water in the bucket. My trap has been up for only a few days, and it’s killed around 50 mosquitos. When I go outside, there are still mosquitos, but 50 less than there would have been. Over time, I imagine that there will be fewer and fewer. Probably never “none” but a whole lot less than there would have been. I’ll report again in a few months to see if this has occurred as expected, but it has certainly killed a large number of mosquitos. 3) Also, it kills moths. Probably 1 moth for every 3 mosquitos. The packaging tries to get around this by saying moths are bad, but I like moths. I’m willing to kill them to protect my kids from mosquitos, but I do feel bad for them. I think it’s acceptable collateral damage, but I would be happy to kill a few less mosquitoes to save some moth lives. Maybe they could design a new model with a finer grating to protect larger insects. Also, I live in Northern California. In my research I discovered that there are dozens of species of mosquitos, so I can’t confirm that the trap will be effective in all ecosystems, but it seems to work well for the ones we have locally. Updated with a photo. About 10 days of trap. I couldn’t be bothered to count them, but probably around 200, and far more mosquitos than any other type of insect. Update #2. This is the second year with the trap(s), and I had to do an update because the results are so dramatic. I left it on until the rainy season started, and turned them back on when the rainy season was ending. I bought new bulbs which it recommended after 4 months, but I’d gone 12, and finally emptied the traps which I’d been neglecting. Hol-e-mol-e. There were thousands of mosquitos in there. I should have added another picture, but I doubted the slightly moldy black mass would photograph well. It was like the biomass of a large rat. THOUSANDS. I didn’t expect it since most of the time it was running was not peak mosquito season, and I was shocked. But, more importantly, mosquito season hasn’t happened this year. Usually, in April, they’re out in force... but there have been basically none. I see one once in a while, but it’s like seeing a butterfly or something. None of this 4 attacking at once stuff I’d become accustomed to. Not seeing any outside, I though, maybe it’s a drought year and there aren’t too many, but when I look into the trap, it seems to be catching 10-20 a night. So it’s really working. Our mosquito problem is basically solved. We have two traps on 3/4 of an acre, and mosquitos are simply not a problem so far this year, where every other year they’re starting to get pretty bad by this part of the season. We just had an outdoor-only get together with half a dozen kids, and I literally didn’t see a mosquito for the duration of the party, where in previous years I’d routinely be dousing the kids in repellent and have been constantly preoccupied swatting and clapping them. It’s just a shocking transformation. For some reason I guess I assumed that the mosquito populations would sort of reset every season , but it seems the effects of the trap are at least partially cumulative from year to year. I’ll update again if the mosquitos rebound in May or June, but for now, pretty much the only mosquitos I see are the ones riding in the trap.