Nobody puts the black flies in the brochure. Here they are.
The window
In the eastern Upper Peninsula, black fly and mosquito pressure runs from late May into early July. At the peak it is not an annoyance, it is the main event. You cannot teach someone to terminate a connector while they’re swatting, and a week of that will be what they remember regardless of how good the curriculum was.
What it does to the calendar
The reliable outdoor working season here is roughly late June through early October. The front edge of that window is set by insects, not by temperature.
So for the first year, no paid session is scheduled before the third week of June. That gives up two or three otherwise workable weeks. It’s the right trade. We would rather run fewer sessions than have the first reviews be about bugs.
What we’re doing about it
- Bti on standing water in the program area, starting in May. Bti is a bacterial larvicide that targets mosquito and black fly larvae in the water where they develop.
- Measuring. The third-week-of-June line is a starting assumption, not data. We’ll record pressure through the first season and move the line if the numbers say to.
- Drainage. Some of the standing water in the program area is a drainage problem, and the Water session exists partly to fix it.
What you should do about it
From July on: repellent, long sleeves and long pants for the evening fire, and you’ll be fine. What we measure will be posted here.