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Surprising places mosquitoes hide around your home

Here's how you can get rid of their breeding grounds.

LARGO, Fla. — A typical Florida home can be surrounded by lush landscaping, while some have palm trees and tropical flowers.

Maybe there's a fish pond or even kids' toys scattered around.

All of these things hold water and are the perfect place for mosquitoes to hide and breed.

Mike Feliciano with Bee Green Lawn Care walked 10News around a home to show us what to look for.

 At the front of a home: "We start here at the front of this home for example. So they have this little pond over here. You would think with the water circulation coming out of there, that'd be enough to keep the mosquitoes from breeding. It actually isn't. One of the things we recommend they do on their own is there's a product at Home Depot and Lowes called Mosquito Bits or mosquito dunks."

Downspouts: "Downspouts. Just this little low spot in the downspout and the gutters creates a habitat for mosquitoes. If it's just holding a little bit of water. A bottle cap is really all you need in order to breed mosquitoes."

Backyards: "So now we're going to go to the backyard here. You know one of the things you need to look for too is, the mosquito problem may not just be in your yard, it may be in your neighbor's yard and actually from plants. So behind this fence here, we have a huge planting of bromeliads and what people don't realize with those is the center part where the flower comes out is like a cup, so it retains water."

Kids' playsets: "This is breeding ground 101 for mosquitoes. Right here again, we have another one of these kids' playsets. Water sitting on the top of it."

Trees and palms: "Over here they pruned this tree and these palms tend to be hollow on the inside, but you would never think these little hollow holes that are left would be enough to cause mosquito issues, and they actually are."

Mosquito eggs: "One female mosquito can lay up to a hundred eggs, and it will travel a couple of miles."

Air conditioning drain tube: "Your drain tube from your air conditioning constantly has water dripping out of it. That water if it's laying like here. It's real wet in this spot, and it's a low spot."

How to get rid of mosquitoes: "You want to repel them, you want to target the adults, you want to target the larvae and you actually want to target their reproduction. So that way they don't reproduce, which is huge. That way you get the whole spectrum of them."

More tips: "We look at it as teamwork. We do our part, we're on property every three weeks during the rainy season basically and during the winter once a month. And in between that, you just do what we just did now. You walk around the property, use the Mosquito Bits, use the mosquito dunks and help prevent what we're trying to help prevent. "

You can also check with your county to see if they give away mosquito fish that can be put in small ponds around your home. They eat the mosquito larvae. 

If you see dragonflies around your home, don't hurt them or try to kill them. They eat mosquitoes.

The following mosquito-borne illness advisories have already been issued this year.

  • In Sumter County, there was a confirmed human case of West Nile
  • In Bay County, there was a confirmed case of EEE in two horses within a two-week period
  • In Calhoun County, there was a confirmed case of EEE in two horses
  • In Walton County, several sentinel chickens tested positive for EEE
  • In Holmes County, several horses tested positive for EEE
  • In Orange County, several sentinel chickens in the same flock tested positive for EEE
  • In Miami-Dade County, there was a confirmed locally-acquired case of Dengue
  • In Indian River County, several sentinel chickens tested positive for West Nile
  • In Citrus County, several sentinel chicken flocks tested positive for West Nile 

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