Aug. 13--RICHMOND, Va. -- Donna Arpe has pretty much given up trying to pick berries from the bushes in her Henrico County backyard. The mosquitoes have taken over.
"They've been really bad," she said.
Yesterday morning, Arpe was out just a few minutes with her dog. Six or seven mosquito bites later, she'd had enough.
"They were chewing me up," Arpe said.
The weeks of hot weather may have kept the mosquito population under control for a while, but with recent rains they're back.
"Right now, the numbers are crazy," said Randy Buchanan, an environmental engineer with Henrico County Public Works.
"If you are getting bitten by mosquitoes in your yard in the daytime, 95 percent of the time you are breeding them on your property," he said.
The biting culprit in this area is usually the black and white Asian tiger mosquito. It breeds in pockets of standing water, and it's a vicious biter.
"I saw droves around my ankles," Arpe said.
Mosquito numbers are plentiful, but so far the sting and itch from getting bitten is the worst to happen.
Monitoring in Henrico hasn't turned up any mosquito batches positive for the mosquito-borne West Nile virus, Buchanan said. Also, statewide as of July 27, there hadn't been any documented human West Nile infections in Virginia.
In 2009, Virginia had five confirmed human West Nile infections. There were no deaths.
In the United States so far this year, there have been 85 human West Nile infections reported, including three deaths, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. More than half those cases and all three deaths have been in Arizona.
West Nile surfaced in North America in 1999 and quickly spread across the country.
In Virginia, Culex pipiens mosquitoes have been identified a key carrier and transmitter of West Nile virus. Culex mosquitoes like to breed in storm sewer drains, which is why Richmond's Department of Public Utilities has an ongoing spraying program to control mosquitoes.
Spokeswoman Angela Fountain said the treatments started in April and will go through October.
State public health entomologist David Gaines thinks there's evidence Richmond's spraying is having an impact and even helping neighboring localities.
"Because although the numbers [of positive mosquito pools] appear to be up in other parts of the state like Northern Virginia and the Hampton Roads area, in Henrico, which is adjacent to Richmond, they haven't seen any positives yet," Gaines said.
Buchanan said his staff is monitoring 100 mosquito traps around the county, checking them every two weeks.
"When we get a high number of Culex mosquitoes, we send out investigators to address where they are coming from," Buchanan said.
Identifying Asian tiger breeding places is simpler. Buchanan and Lane Carr, a senior environmental inspector, went through Arpe's backyard yesterday. Water samples taken from the creek behind Arpe's home, which Arpe thought was the problem, ruled out the flowing water as a breeding place.
But when Carr and Buchanan lifted corners and unfolded areas of a plastic tarp in the back yard, squiggly mosquito larvae were visible in pockets of water.
"Pick a day to fight the bite," Buchanan said.
His point: If homeowners take one day a week to go through their yards and eliminate standing water, there would be fewer mosquitoes.
Contact Tammie Smith at (804) 649-6572 or TLsmith@timesdispatch.com.
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