The familiar buzzing of mosquitos has been more frequent this year in the Queen City.
Russell Erich, the manager of open space services with the City of Regina, said they had seen almost four times the number of mosquitos.
“We average 167 mosquitos per trap, per night. We are about our average of about 43 mosquitos per night,” he said. “This is not unexpected. We’ve had a fair bit of rain throughout the latter period of July, and we saw some rainstorms kind of move through into early August.”
Despite the above-average numbers, Erich said they are far off from the record of 1,179 mosquitos per trap set in 1993 and the 350 mosquitos per trap that the City was averaging in 2019.
Erich said that he expects those numbers to only decrease as the 167 per trap should be peaking.
“The vast majority are the Aedes mosquitos, which are the ones that really support bothersome to people,” he said. “The Culex are the ones that can carry West Nile, but I don’t think that they’ve (Saskatchewan Health Authority) had any positives for that.”
“I think right now you are seeing the peak, we’ve seen an increase for the past two weeks continuing, and so I expect probably see a bit of decline.”
As mosquito numbers are set to decline, Erich said that the familiar buzz of wasps would replace them.
“They will increase more in activity as we get closer to Labour Day, and then they will peak right up until that killing frost comes.”
He added that they have seen a ‘normal’ normal of wasps this year in the City.
