It's mosquito season!

When I think of summer, I think of sunshine, backyard BBQs, hanging out at the beach, camping and unfortunately, those pesky mosquitos!  The mosquitos can annoy the heck out of you while playing golf, especially if you're like me and spend a lot of time in the rough or near the ponds.  When they are as annoying as they are right now, we typically get asked, "What are you doing about the mosquitos?"

The truth is, there is nothing more we can do to effectively reduce the mosquito population than what we are already doing.  We used to spend lots of $$$ spraying our ponds with larvicide to help reduce their population, but these treatments were not very effective.  Furthermore, unless the City of Richmond completes the same treatments along the dyke and in and around the ditches surrounding our property, mosquitos from the immediate surrounds of the Club will hunt down our golfers for their precious blood.

We have installed a couple of bat houses on the course over the past few years as bats can consume up to 1200 mosquitos per hour and each of the bat houses accommodates up to 300 bats.  That’s up to 720,000 mosquitos being consumed on the property per hour with the two bat houses we have!  We do hope to continue to add more bat houses to the course soon. For now, I’ll have a word with our bats to ensure that they’re continuing to do their part.  

What you can do to keep the pesky blood suckers from ruining your round of golf is apply bug repellent.  That being said, PLEASE ONLY APPLY BUG REPELLENT ON PATHS.  As you can see below, bug repellents damage turf:

Here is another photo taken yesterday from our lower putting green where someone applied bug repellent right in the middle of the green:

The green footprints you see in the photos indicate where the golfer was standing while applying the bug repellent.  The turf underneath the golfer's feet was shielded from the spray.  As you can see, the turf that did come in contact with the spray was damaged by it.  It typically only takes about 24 hours for the damage to show up.