The wife wanted a bug zapper. There are too many bugs near the lights at the front of the house. So we Bought a Flowtron BK 15-D from Amazon.

I was worried this would just attract more bugs and it would be even worse.

Now I do think it attracts way more bugs. But they couldn’t care less about my porch light. They flock to the zapper. Just lining up to walk the green mile and ride the lightning.

I have to say I’m slightly entertained by this. A few of the really big moths get stuck and cook for a bit, making the zapper light flicker slightly.

The entertainment factor ended this morning when there were what I would assume to be the corpses of thousands upon thousands of dead bugs. Moths, green stink bugs, all sorts of everything with wings. It took five minutes with the leaf blower to get them all out of the yard, or blown down into the rock lawn.

We will have to put it up Saturday night when we hang out in the back yard. If the mosquitos leave the wife alone, I’ll keep it. If it’s only good for arc welding moths, it may go back. In reality, my opinion doesn’t matter. If my wife is happy with it, it’ll be staying.

Do any of you have a zapper? Love it, hate it? Any advice for dealing with the dead?

Yellow light bulbs don't attract bugs.

quote:

Originally posted by jimmy123x:
Yellow light bulbs don't attract bugs.

Bugs in the Commonwealth disagree, vociferously.

Get a dozen of them and hang them around the perimeter. Like a electric fence. That'll really keep em off you!

Years ago we had one of those. Over time it just got to be more trouble than it was worth. It was kind of entertaining though.

I got a Dynatrap and it's been amazing. It catches them and has reduced the population. You just empty the container once full and they die off. It's been great for mosquitoes but you also get a lot of moths.

https://www.amazon.com/DynaTra...s=lawn-garden&sr=1-2

Bug zappers are the best gift you can buy for your neighbors.

The dragonfly attack wing returned this summer, so bugs aren't a problem for us again this year!

quote:

Originally posted by jimmy123x:
Yellow light bulbs don't attract bugs.

AZ bugs must be color blind, then. They love yellow light bulbs.

My grandparents had one in Virginia when I was a kid. They had a screened front porch with the zapper mounted a few feet on the other side of the screen. All the dead bugs fell onto the verge of bushes and never needed to be cleaned up.

We spent hours sitting on that front porch watching bugs get zapped. It was social for us, a typical Southern front porch scene. There were never a shortage of bugs to provide the entertainment. Good memories.

I have an older version of this:

Mosquito Trap

Works as advertised for me. Some folks seem to have issues with theirs, mine has been flawless.

I bought a bug zapper and placed it on my garage which is about 60ft from my front door. It is awesome, as I have a inground pool and it attracts a lot of flying bugs. This year has been the first year where I don't mind spending time outside. Actually so much that I bought a smoker and grill, all prompted from a $50 item.

Put up some bat houses away from your house.
They will kill the bugs and process the remains too. Just make sure your attic is well sealed up.

LED bulbs do not emit as much of the spectrum that the bugs are attracted to. Switched and have maybe 1/8 to 1/10 collecting in our outside light.

The bugs you don't like (mosquitoes I assume) are not attracted to light at all. You are mostly killing moths and other bugs attracted to light.

I have a Dynatrap in the back yard. Works great.

quote:

Originally posted by dlc444:
LED bulbs do not emit as much of the spectrum that the bugs are attracted to. Switched and have maybe 1/8 to 1/10 collecting in our outside light.

The bugs you don't like (mosquitoes I assume) are not attracted to light at all. You are mostly killing moths and other bugs attracted to light.

I have LED bulbs. Makes zero difference.
Bugs my wife doesn’t like, well those are the ones that have legs, or wings. Doesn’t matter, she wants them gone.

Two nights, and I’m pretty happy with the results. The grasshopper that decided to venture in... Jesus. He was big. I worried the neighborhood was going to brown-out. lol. No lack of entertainment.

I have a small on the back pouch....seems to work a bit just from the sounds it makes. Think I need a bigger one, like the one my grandmother had at camp.

I swear it was like 1000KW, when a moth hit that bad boy the camp lights would flutter

Cheap entertainment for us kids

They Blinded Me with Science!

Link

This Is The Type of Light Bulb to Use if You Want to Avoid Attracting Insects

FIONA MACDONALD
22 FEBRUARY 2016

If you've ever dined outside during summer, you'll know that it's a constant balancing act if you leave the porch lights on, you risk attracting every insect within a 200-metre radius to share your dinner, but without lights, you'll spend half the meal trying to guess what's on your fork.

But the type of light bulb you choose could change that, new research suggests. An ecologist has just announced the results of a summer-long experiment, and has shown that there's a difference between the insect attractiveness of six of the most common store-bought light bulbs.

According to the results, by far the worst option for outdoor lighting was traditional incandescent bulbs, while the best (and least appealing to insects) was a warm coloured LED light - those are the LEDs that produce a yellow/orange hue, rather than cool blue light.

Impressively, the yellow-hued LEDs turned out to be even better than 'bug lights' - bulbs on the market that claim to avoid attracting insects.

The results were presented at the American Association for the Advancement of Science conference last week by ecologist Michael Justice, who has a PhD from the University of North Carolina, Greenboro.

And although most of us want to avoid attracting insects to our light bulbs for mostly selfish reasons (insects = annoying), Justice's motivations were a little more ecological.

"This is the first study to directly compare all the major types of bulbs designed for exterior residential use," he wrote in his conference paper. "A widespread shift to LED lamps could greatly reduce the impact of light pollution on insects."

To figure this out, Justice and his team set up a funnel trap outside with a single light bulb inside. They rotated one of the six different light bulbs in the trap each night, and every morning counted the number and type of insects that had fallen in.

To ensure the brightness of the Moon wouldn't interfere with the results, they mapped the stages of the Moon across the three-month period, and made sure each type of bulb would be exposed to the same share of moonlight.

They also did their best to control for the weather, Justice explained to Esther Inglis-Arkell over at Gizmodo.

"If the weather during insect trapping with one bulb were substantially different than the weather with another that would confound the results," he said. "Luckily we were able to minimise that by studying weather forecasts and crafty scheduling of which bulb was used on what nights."

By the end of the summer, he'd captured a total of 8,887 bugs in the light trap. And it was clear that some bulbs had proven much more attractive than others.

Overall, incandescent light bulbs pulled in the highest number of insects, followed by CFL, halogen globes, and cool-coloured LEDs. The second best light was the 'bug light', and the winner, with the least amount of insects attracted, was the warm LED bulb.

Although most of the results weren't surprising, Justice was shocked that the bug light didn't perform better, seeing as it was advertised as being specially designed to reduce insect attractiveness.

It was also the only bulb that drew certain types of insects in unequal numbers - the bug light pulled a significantly larger number of insects from the order Hemiptera, which includes stink bugs, and Dermaptera, which includes earwigs.

"The only thing we could hypothesise in advance is that the yellow ‘bug’ light would catch the fewest insects," said Justice. "We were very surprised when not only was that not the case, but the yellow bulb attracted a lot of earwigs, which can be a household pest."

To be clear, the research hasn't been peer-reviewed or published in a journal as yet, so it needs to be taken with a grain of salt. But the results did convince the organisers at one of the world's most reputable conferences that they were worthy of presenting, which is no easy feat.

So for now, stick to warm-coloured LED bulbs to light your garden or porch this summer. Not only will it reduce the amount of insects hanging around, it's also a lot better for the environment than traditional globes. Win/win.

I have Dynatrap and a Flowtron, both work great. When the Dynatrap fills up I give all the bugs to my chickens, they don't complain.

The problem with these traps that work on propane is that the propane has to be clean. You can't use the stuff you buy for barbecue.

The best source is gas supply companies that provide welding gas. Generally, you'll get clean propane from these sources.

V.