Jeanne Girmus, age 9, of Ohiowa, Nebr, Dorohy Markle, age 11, of Lancaster, Penna.,
Where are flies and mosquitoes in the winter?
A host of insects swarms through the warm, summer air. Our favorite picnic spots and camping spots are pestered with ants, flies and mosquitoes and they even try to come through the open windows and doors of our homes. In winter, the outdoors is too cold for picnics and also too cold for the insects, for the swarming hordes disappear before the first snows.
A few insects, such as the honeybee and the silkworm, can be rated as our friends. Most of the teeming horde are neither our friends nor enemies, though they provide a food supply for the charming frogs and toads, bats and birds that make our world so wonderful. A few insect are rated among our dangerous enemies and high on this list are the flies and mosquitoes. The public health authorities are very down on them and we should do all we can to destroy them.
Both flies and mosquitoes seem to come to life only during the summer and die out during the winter. This is because we notice only the winged adults and during the winter there are very few of these grown‑ups around, There are, however, teeming nurseries of infants, waiting to grow up and take to the air with the first days of spring,
Flies and mosquitoes belong in the insect order Diptera and they follow somewhat the same life cycle. The winged adult lays countless .small eggs near a suitable food supply. The eggs hatch into hungry grubs or larvae. The larvae turn into sleeping pupae, wrapped in leathery crysalises. On some warm, summer day, the leathery coats break open and the winged adults take to the air,
Most winged insects are fragile creatures, unable to cope with the cold.
The eggs, pupae and in some cases the larvae are tough enough to survive the winter. During the summer months, a brood of insects may develop from eggs to adults in a few weeks. But the fall broods of flies and mosquitoes spend the long winter months in the egg, larvae or pupae stage of their lives.
Mrs. Fly lays her eggs in a pile of manure or rotting garbage, and there the larvae maggots hatch and feed. They turn into crysalises, but they do not leave home until the pupae hatch into winged flies. Right now, next summerts flies are the eggs, maggots and pupae thriving in countless piles of rotting debris.
Mrs. Mosquito lays her eggs on marshes or stagnant creeks, for her infants are water babies. They hatch into wormy wrigglers that feed on floating debris and come to the surface only to breathe. Later, they turn into floating crysalises waiting for the warm weather to hatch into winged adults.
Flies and mosquitoes carry germs which attack both our food and our bodies. We fight off the winged adults during the summer, but winter is also a good time to attack these enemy insects. We can destroy many of next yearts flies and mosquitoes by applying insect‑killing chemicals to piles of garbage and swampy waterways.