Jefferson County Mosquito Control

How do I contact the Mosquito Control Department?

The Jefferson County Mosquito Control District offices are located at 8905 First Street, Beaumont, Texas, 77705. We can be reached during normal business hours from 8 AM to noon and 1 PM to 5 PM, Monday through Friday, at 409-719-5940. When the mosquitoes are bad, you may have to call several times in order to get through. Please be nice to our secretary when you call - remember, it's not her fault!

If you are calling to request spraying for a public gathering or special event, please give us at least a week of advance notice. This enables us to perform surveillance, see what mosquito species is present and schedule control activities if required. Please don't call us the day before or the day of an event and expect us to be able to get there immediately.

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Why does it take so long to spray?

Jefferson County has approximately 945 square miles of territory. Our recent rural and suburban population growth has dramatically increased the acreage in the aerial spray sections. The result is that with perfect weather conditions, it takes us about 7 days using 3 aircraft to cover all of the spray sections one time. Under heavy mosquito situations, we just can't keep up with the re-infestation rate. Even so, we use an average of 20,000 gallons of spray each year and cover over 1,250,000 acres each year with the aircraft alone.

We can only spray for about 2 ½ hours after dawn and for 1 hour before dusk because of thermal updrafts. These air currents are caused by the solar heating of the ground, which causes the warm air to rise upward. Spraying during these updrafts is a waste of time, money and chemical, as the spray droplets are caught in the rising column of air and never come down in Jefferson County.

What can I do to have less mosquitoes at my house?

The first line of defense is to make sure that you are not breeding mosquitoes on your own property. Walk your yard and check for anything that is holding water. Anything that can hold water for 5 days or more is a potential mosquito breeding site. Even bottle caps are capable of producing mosquitoes.

If you can, remove the container or store it where it will not fill with water. This is the best way to handle the problem. If the container is a bird bath, pet water dish, or some other container that you can not remove, then be sure to rinse it out completely every 3 days. Do NOT simply add water to the container - you must flush the mosquito larvae out onto the ground to kill them. If you collect rain water for your plants, simply place a piece of screen over the container so that the mosquitoes can't get in to lay eggs.

Remember to clean your rain gutters! Blockages can cause water to stand in them long enough to produce mosquitoes. Fill in low areas in your yard or under your house if possible. Repair all water leaks as soon as possible. Even plastic sheeting can hold water in the folds and produce large numbers of mosquitoes. Remember, if you breed mosquitoes, you will feed mosquitoes.

When mosquitoes are flying in from miles away, there is little the home owner can do. Most importantly, you do not want to attract mosquitoes to your house. Either turn off security lights or replace them with motion detector lights that come on only when needed. If you must have a security light on at all times, change the bulb from a mercury vapor to a sodium vapor bulb. The yellowish sodium vapor light is less attractive to insects than the blue-white mercury vapor light. Turn off your bug zapper - less than 2% of the bugs that you see killed are actually mosquitoes, but the light does attract them into the area.

Mosquito Trivia

• The Jefferson County Mosquito Control District was organized in 1950 after the death of several children due to mosquito transmitted encephalitis. Dr. Paul Meyer of Port Arthur was instrumental in the formation of the District.
• Mosquitoes can not transmit AIDS.
• Bug zappers are best placed in your neighbor's yard so that the mosquitoes will go next door! Turn them off if the mosquitoes are heavy. If you do have one, don't hang it right over the patio table - move it back from where you will be located.
• Purple martins and bats may eat a few mosquitoes, in fact, we count on their help, but they will not cause a noticeable drop in your mosquito population.
• Only female mosquitoes bite. Blood supplies proteins to build eggs with, rather than being a food source. Mosquitoes live on carbohydrate sources like nectar and plant sap. They have even been known to sneak a little sugar water of hummingbird feeders.
• The annual cost per Jefferson County resident for mosquito control (which also includes county roadside weed control) is $5.52 per person.

Do you still have questions?

If you need additional information or answers to any questions that are not covered here, then call the Mosquito Control office and ask for the Director, Denise Marcel. If she doesn't know the answer, she probably knows who to ask to find out.