Prevention
The autumn close-out: five steps that end the mosquito season well
The season does not end when the calendar says so, it ends when the household says so. Cases of West Nile virus in Europe are typically reported into the autumn, tiger mosquito eggs are already waiting on the rims of forgotten containers, and the equipment that kept the summer livable is about to be stored for six months. This is the order of work that closes the season without leaving next spring a head start.
Read →A home-built laser aimed at mosquitoes, and why the simpler measures still work
A robotics and computer-vision engineer in Cambridge spent the spring of 2026 building a machine in his living room: a DSLR, a thermal camera, a deep-learning detector, an aluminium gimbal, and a laser aimed at a mosquito in flight. The engineering is real, and the safety camera that cuts the beam near people is the cleverest part. For almost every home, the practical answer is still the simpler one.
Read →An upgraded bednet prevented 13 million malaria cases and saved 24,600 lives
The most effective malaria prevention tool of recent years is not a vaccine, a gene drive or an app. It is an upgraded bednet. Interceptor G2 adds a second insecticide, chlorfenapyr, that stops the pyrethroid-resistant mosquitoes ordinary nets no longer affect. In field trials across Benin and Mozambique it cut malaria roughly in half, and between 2019 and 2022 it is credited with preventing 13 million cases and saving 24,600 lives. The strongest intervention is often the proven one, improved, not the newest one, unproven.
Read →A hot spoon won't cure your mosquito bite, but it can burn you
A hot spoon is a circulating home remedy for mosquito bites, and it may seem to work. Heat can calm a bite when a device holds it at a controlled temperature. A spoon dipped in hot water has no such control, and it can burn your skin. A cold compress, an antihistamine and a little hydrocortisone remain the reliable options.
Read →Avon's famous mosquito repellent isn't a repellent. Its real one sits on the same shelf.
TikTok's shop-bought repellent legends, Avon Skin So Soft, the £1 citronella wristband, a bottle of homemade cinnamon spray, feel more trustworthy than the kitchen-cupboard hacks because they carry barcodes. Sorted by the evidence, all three fall short: the beloved bath oil held off bites for 9.6 minutes against 302 for DEET, the wristbands emit far too little to matter, and cinnamon is a real larvicide aimed at the wrong life stage. The twist is that Avon already sells a genuine, EPA-registered repellent, its Bug Guard line, on the very same shelf. The dull winner stays the same: a physical barrier plus a repellent that has actually been timed against a mosquito.
Read →What the evidence says about the "bucket of doom", vanilla extract and coffee grounds
Three mosquito hacks are circulating this summer: a bucket of standing water treated with a Bti dunk, a dab of vanilla extract, and a smouldering tin of coffee grounds. The evidence supports one of them. Bti is an EPA-registered larvicide whose spores act only on mosquito larvae. Vanilla extract does not repel insects, and imitation vanilla can attract them. Burning coffee grounds to repel adults is unregistered and inconsistent. The practical steps are to empty standing water, treat what cannot be emptied with Bti, and use a physical barrier against bites.
Read →You can make a mosquito explode, but not by flexing, and that is the whole point
A viral TikTok clip claims you can pop a feeding mosquito by flexing the limb it has landed on. The footage does not match how a mosquito feeds, but the real science is stranger: a late-1960s experiment really did make mosquitoes drink until they burst, by cutting the nerve that tells them to stop. We sort three summer trends, the exploding-mosquito myth, the very real "Skeeter Syndrome," and the DIY repellent hacks, and point back to the protection that actually holds: a physical barrier first, an EPA-registered repellent for the skin it cannot cover.
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