Why do I get bitten in daylight?

Daytime biting points to container breeders, particularly the yellow fever mosquito and the Asian tiger mosquito, both of which are established here. They are black with white markings, they bite low around the ankles, and they rarely travel more than a few hundred feet from where they hatched. That means the source is on your property or next door.

Does the county not handle this?

Hillsborough County Mosquito Management Services works on county wide nuisance and disease control, mostly targeting marsh and floodwater species and responding to service requests. What it cannot do is empty the bromeliads in your back garden. Container breeding on private property is the part a homeowner or a pest control company deals with.

What months are worst in Tampa?

June through September is the peak, running with the daily storms, and pressure usually starts in April and holds into November. Winters are mild enough that a wet, warm December can keep some activity going. Yards with permanent shade, a pond or heavy bromeliad planting stay productive nearly year round.

Mosquitoes in Tampa: Where They Breed

The mosquito biting you in the afternoon almost certainly hatched in your own yard, in a container holding water. Bromeliad cups, plant saucers, bird baths and blocked gutters are the main sources in Tampa, and a summer storm refills all of them by evening. Treating adults alone buys a few days. Handling the water is what changes the yard.

How to identify the problem

Start with when you are being bitten and where. Daytime bites around the ankles on a patio point to container breeders that hatched nearby. Dusk and dawn biting over a wider area, especially after heavy rain or a tidal push, points to floodwater and marsh species that have flown in from a long way off.

Where they breed in a Florida yard

Bromeliads are the big one in Tampa. The cup at the base of the leaves holds water by design, refills with every rain, and sits in shade. A single bed of bromeliads can out-produce everything else in the yard combined.

After that: plant saucers under potted palms, bird baths, the sagging low point in a pool or boat cover, wheelbarrows, buckets, upturned bin lids, irrigation valve boxes that fill and stay full, a gutter length that stopped draining, downspout extensions holding a pocket of water, tarps, kids toys and play set frames. On the older low lying blocks in South Tampa and Seminole Heights, add french drains and yard depressions that hold rainwater for days.

A mosquito needs about a teaspoon of water and roughly a week. That is the whole story.

What works, and what does not

Two parts, together. Treat the shaded resting sites where adults spend daylight hours: hedge interiors, the underside of low branches, palm boots, dense planting on the shaded side of the house. Then handle the water. Flush bromeliads with a hose, tip out every container, clear the gutters, and use a larvicide rated for the purpose on water you want to keep, such as bromeliads, ponds and valve boxes, applied according to its label.

In this climate the residual on an adult treatment runs about three to four weeks, so monthly visits through the wet season keep pace with the hatch cycle.

What does not work: citronella candles beyond a couple of feet, bug zappers, which kill mostly harmless insects, ultrasonic apps and repellent plants. Fogging the yard while the bromeliads keep producing is the expensive version of the same mistake.