The buzz this season: mosquitoes -- big time

State, local companies that spray for insects can't keep up with calls

If you can't live with mosquitoes, get on the first bus out of Maryland.

Mosquito control officials say the incessant spring rains across the state have produced what may well prove to be the worst mosquito season in Maryland in at least 14 years.

Populations of salt marsh and freshwater mosquitoes are zooming. On the Eastern Shore, some unbaited surveillance traps are capturing as many as 20,000 hungry mosquitoes per night. A rate of 10 or more per night is regarded as "annoying."

The mosquitoes in Somerset County are so hungry "they bring a bucket with them," said Richard Sterling, 59, an employee at the Crisfield Lumber Co. "It's terrible. I was going to work the other morning, and I was bleeding. I don't know how they got in the truck. The windows were up."

State and local spraying operations are so hard-pressed to keep up that many communities begging for spraying on the Shore, in Southern Maryland, Western Maryland and on Baltimore's doorstep are being told they're on their own this year.

"We have the makings of one of the biggest years we've had since I've been here, and I've been here 27 years," said Cyrus Lesser, chief of the state Department of Agriculture's mosquito control division.

If the rain lets up, control efforts might be able to catch up. But the water overflowing in backyard buckets and birdbaths would go down a bit, inviting a big hatch of Asian tiger mosquitoes. The aggressive daytime biters have haunted urban and suburban back yards in recent years and driven countless barbecues indoors.

Although populations of the tiger mosquitoes - relatively recent imports from overseas - have been low this year, Lesser said, "we are anticipating the tigers are going to be increasing very rapidly soon. ... We've given up hoping the tiger population would self-regulate itself out of business. They're here to stay."

But wait. This gets worse.

Another exotic import, Aedes japonicus - an efficient carrier of West Nile virus that had been limited to Frederick County - has been found as far afield as Chestertown, in Kent County on the Eastern Shore.

The only good news is that, so far, not a single person, bird, horse, or batch of mosquitoes in Maryland has tested positive for the West Nile virus this year. Nationally, only one possible human case has emerged so far, in South Carolina. But it's too soon to write the disease off.

Last year, the first West-Nile-positive birds in Maryland were reported June 17. The first positive mosquitoes in Maryland were identified July 24, and the first human case (out of 36) emerged in early August.

The rainfall this year has been impressive. Since the long drought ended in October, Baltimore-Washington International Airport has seen above-average rain in all but two months. Since Jan. 1 there has been a surplus of 9.3 inches.

The cool, cloudy weather slowed the mosquitoes' development some. But there has now been a population explosion.

Mosquito counts have been "horrible," Lesser said. An unbaited trap on Tilghman Island, in Talbot County on the Eastern Shore collected 5,000 mosquitoes this week, including several species central to the spread of West Nile fever and Eastern Equine Encephalitis.

"I've never heard of such a collection, certainly not in Maryland," he said. But a trap baited with carbon dioxide in Dorchester County caught 10,000 mosquitoes on one night near Church Creek. And another in Somerset County collected 20,000.

Still another baited trap near Fort Smallwood Road in Anne Arundel County caught 3,000 mosquitoes in a single night last week. "We're not used to seeing counts in the thousands right there outside the city," Lesser said.

Communities vexed by the bugs are crying for help. Calls for spraying in St. Mary's County are up 20 percent, Lesser said.

"If we take any more, we won't be able to provide satisfactory service to anyone," he said. So, in St. Mary's, Allegany, Washington, Montgomery, Howard and Prince George's counties, communities that aren't enrolled in the program are being told to hire private contractors.

Not everyone takes the news well. "We hear the phrase `I'm a taxpayer' a lot," Lesser said.

The state has conducted aerial spraying over 70,000 acres - more than the annual total in some years, and soon to approach the state program's 100,000-acre annual average. And if the rain continues, he said, "we will run out of money long before we run out of mosquitoes."

As if mosquitoes weren't enough, flooded nests have sent troops of ants marching into houses in search of food and a dryer place to live.

And the wet spring and the warm, humid weather that followed have boosted populations of ticks, some of which carry Lyme disease and Rocky Mountain spotted fever and other pathogens, according to John F. Carroll, research entomologist at the U. S. Department of Agricultural Research Center in Beltsville.

There is some good news. The wet weather has encouraged fungal species that prey on caterpillars, causing a collapse of the Eastern tent caterpillar population this spring, said Stanton A. Gill, an entomologist at the state Extension Service's Central Maryland Research and Education Center.

But other fungi and mildews are causing leaf spot and scab diseases on day lilies, ornamental and shade trees. Watch for their leaves to fall off.

Oh, and all that mulch you spread to protect your shrubs from the drought? It's now sprouting an "artillery" fungus that fires spores into the air.

"It sticks fungal structures on the sides of houses and cars," Gill said. "And it's very hard to get them off."