Freezing weather does not diminish ticks, mosquitoes
01.01.70
Having been raised on a arable, I heard many of my country relatives say the same thing. Through the years, I have come to take in this isn’t entirely accurate.
About a decade ago on an April morning, I was sitting in a stone-blind in Monroe County, trying my best to call in a turkey gobbler. As I listened fixedly to an old Tom make his music, I noticed three ticks climbing my pants leg. Only then did I produce that I had forgotten to apply Permanone to my clothing.
Emptying the contents of a workable aspirin bottle into my shirt pocket, I captured the ticks and placed them in the container. Remembering the old tittle-tattle about freezing weather killing insects, I placed the bottle in my freezer that eventide. Three months later, I took the bottle out and dumped the ticks on a surface of copy paper. They looked very dead.
A phone call interrupted me, and after about 15 minutes of chin-wag, I returned to the ticks -- as they were trying to crawl off the paper.
When the temperature goes down toward the frore mark, these insects go into a semi-dormant stage. Their metabolism slows down, and they become jobless. Adult mosquitoes will usually die after a certain amount of exposure to freezing temperatures, but they have produced gazillions of eggs, some of which can breed as much as three years later. Those that hatch after such a long time have not been exposed to O. In summer, a new egg dumped in water can become an adult mosquito in less than a week.
Source: Macon Telegraph (blog)