4 ms·

I live in Ireland, in the countryside. The farmers here are mostly livestock so i don't think there's much insecticide use. We used to get hundreds of bugs at k

I live in Ireland, in the countryside. The farmers here are mostly livestock so i don't think there's much insecticide use. We used to get hundreds of bugs at kitchen window on summer evenings, the last two or three years there are not as many. Thing is, I've only been in this house a few years. The timescale is too short for it to be meaningful. It could be weather patterns, it could be that they don't get attracted to the LED bulbs as much as the old lighting we had when we moved in. The bird population does not appear to be suffering, they're everywhere you look around here, so there must be bugs to eat. But memory is unreliable, and anecdotes are not data

detritus 8y ago
Your thought about LED lighting is a good one, one which I'm ashamed to admit hadn't even crossed my mind. It would be worth a test - an old-style incandescent on one side of the house, a contemporary LED on the other, see which one attracts more bugs!
- freeflight 8y ago
  > It would be worth a test - an old-style incandescent on one side of the house, a contemporary LED on the other, see which one attracts more bugs! There's already a surprisingly lot of solid info on that out there [0] The gist is pretty much: Most LED don't emit UV and produce less heat, as such they are generally less attractive for flying bugs. LED ability to change color is an extra advantage, as flying bugs prefer some colors (cool white) over others (warm yellow) and some they supposedly can't even see (red). I've played around with what color of light to use in my office at night, where the window is pretty much always open due to heat and monitors tend to "collect" all the bugs. Using only red light really reduces the number of bugs coming in, but then you are sitting in red light all the time, feeling like you are hunting for Red October. [0] https://www.dodsonbros.com/led-lights-flying-insects/ https://www.dodsonbros.com/led-lights-flying-insects/

detritus 8y ago

Your thought about LED lighting is a good one, one which I'm ashamed to admit hadn't even crossed my mind. It would be worth a test - an old-style incandescent on one side of the house, a contemporary LED on the other, see which one attracts more bugs!

freeflight 8y ago
> It would be worth a test - an old-style incandescent on one side of the house, a contemporary LED on the other, see which one attracts more bugs! There's already a surprisingly lot of solid info on that out there [0] The gist is pretty much: Most LED don't emit UV and produce less heat, as such they are generally less attractive for flying bugs. LED ability to change color is an extra advantage, as flying bugs prefer some colors (cool white) over others (warm yellow) and some they supposedly can't even see (red). I've played around with what color of light to use in my office at night, where the window is pretty much always open due to heat and monitors tend to "collect" all the bugs. Using only red light really reduces the number of bugs coming in, but then you are sitting in red light all the time, feeling like you are hunting for Red October. [0] https://www.dodsonbros.com/led-lights-flying-insects/ https://www.dodsonbros.com/led-lights-flying-insects/