Silver Spring-based Bee Safe Mosquito Control sits at the forefront of the biopesticide movement. Between June and September the company will release 600,000 infected mosquitoes . The male mosquitos are infected with the gut bacteria Wolbachia. Dubbed ZAP males they don’t bite. But when a ZAP male mates with a female, she will no longer be able to produce offspring. The program targets the aggressive Asian Tiger Mosquito, one of the most common species in the D.C. area, which can transmit Dengue Fever, Zika, and Yellow Fever. The four-year-old company is the first in the DMV area to battle the mosquito population in this manner.
Owner Todd Montgomery explained the process, “We open tubes and walk the most likely areas of infestation, tapping the tubes to release them. When they mate with a female, they actually cause that female to then become infertile for the rest of her life.” The process has proven to be effective in other areas around the world. Currently only open to residential customers the service averages just over $1,000. The service for this season is completely sold out.
The ZAP males are shipped from Kentucky-based MosquitoMate, which has EPA approval to use the mosquitoes as a biopesticide. Montgomery hopes in future years, local government will get behind the program and allow for application in parks and other areas of infestation. “We would like to produce the mosquitoes here in the county and help to reduce costs and grow our inventory to help.”
“In parts of South America, they have reduced Dengue [fever] cases by over 98% using Wolbachia-infected mosquitoes,” Montgomery said. “The introduction of males in order to control the population is a technique that has been tried time and time again. And it’s worked really well against many species.” Google’s parent company Alphabet has plans to release up to 32 million Wolbachia-infected mosquitoes in California and Florida as part of its Debug program.
