How to Control Mosquitoes Naturally with Bats
Put down that Louisville Slugger. I’m talking about the one and only flying mammal, not an activity for the 7th inning stretch. In North America the most common bat is the aptly named Little Brown Bat. The Little Brown Bat is 3 – 4 ½ inches in length, and has a maximum wingspan of 8 inches.
Little Brown Bat
Smaller than you thought, eh?
But, don’t let its diminutive size fool you. Little Brown Bats are the fiercest natural predator of mosquitoes. A Little Brown Bat can eat half its weight in mosquitoes every night. That would be like eating 5,000 bean burritos, the aftermath of which might be considered a natural form of fumigation.
Little Brown Bats weigh about half an ounce, which means they eat up to 1,200 mosquitoes per night, at a rate of up to 600 mosquitoes per hour. That’s approximately 599 more mosquitoes per hour than the fly swatter method, and takes a whole lot less effort.
If you have a mosquito problem, chances are you also have bats in the area. The trick is encouraging a colony to form on your property. Fortunately for you, this isn’t as hard as you might think. Bats are easy. All they want is a nice warm, safe place to live. You don’t even have to feed them or clean up after them.
As an aside, bat poop, know as guano, is a fantastic fertilizer.
If You Build it, They Will Come
Enlisting the help of bats to decimate your mosquito population is easy. All you have to do is put up a bat house. You can buy a bat house or if you’re handy you can build your own bat house.
Bat House / Lookerinc.com
Bat houses are typically made of cedar or plywood and are rectangular in shape. The typical bat house is about 20 inches tall, 14 inches wide, and contains 2-3 mesh covered plates spaced ¾ apart on which the bats hang, or roost. The back plane of the house extends out at least 4 inches and is covered in mesh to form a “landing pad” that the bats will land on before they crawl into the house.
Bat houses usually arrive unpainted, but painting the houses black is recommended for maximum heat absorption. Alas, it’s not because they’re goth.
Little Brown Bats might not love the sun, but they do love the heat it provides. When placing the bat house, the three rules to remember are: location, location, location! The house must face south or southeast for maximum sun exposure, and be elevated 15 feet in the air. The height is very important, as bats can’t take flight from the ground.
Want to Know More About Bats?
For more information about bats and bat conservation, please visit The Organization for Bat Conservation. In addition, if you have any questions, or concerns about bats, please feel free to ask in the comments. I am well versed in the subject of bats, and I happen to be engaged to a beautiful biology major who is a bat rehabilitation expert.
Great post. Bats are one of nature’s most misunderstood and maligned creatures. They certainly should be a welcome sight in the twilight sky, definitely not something to be feared.
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I love this topic! I don’t have a backyard (thus, no bat house for me) but I constantly try to get the backyarded folks in my life to buy into this idea. They’re usually hesitant… not sure why, because bats seem WAY preferable to mosquitoes.
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After reading this post, I looked into building a bat house. The plans I found were for a much larger house than I expected. I assumed that bats would use a little house like a bird, but the source I found said that they prefer more space. It is still on my list of things to do; but building it, locating a suitable location and hoisting it there are going to be more work than I originally anticipated. Such is life.
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Jenn, thanks for stopping by, I’m glad your a supporter of bats :).
Chief, they’re not too big really. The houses that the Organization for Bat Conservation recommend are 23 x 14 and about 4 inches deep. The bats themselves don’t take up much space, but they move in as a colony… so that house would possibly contain 300 bats. They pack in like sardines!
Can you buy the bats?
No, bats are kind of like squirrels. They’ll come to you if the environment for them is right.