One of Our Experts - David W. Boyd, Jr., PhD

Dr. Boyd is a professor in the Biology department at Bob Jones University. He was able to help confirm several of our ideas on how to battle mosquitoes and minimize the harm to bees.

"One thing you should always look at when it comes to insecticides is how they kill the targeted insect. Sometimes we call it the insecticide’s mode of action (MOA). Some pesticides directly attack the gut of a leaf-eating insect, and since mosquitoes and honey bees don’t feed on leaves, then those pesticides should not harm either type of insect. Many pesticides are what are called “broad-spectrum” pesticides and can kill just about any type of insect (or other arthropod) because the MOA targets their nervous system."

"When you ask about making a pesticide based on a mosquito’s DNA, that is not an easy question to answer. In theory, yes, but in practice it is difficult to do."

"Mosquitoes are a type of fly and a honey bee is a type of bee. That in itself indicates that they are very different from one another. Honey bees are social insects and live together to form large colonies with one queen that lays all the eggs and the female offspring does all the work. The honey bee larvae live in the cells of the honeycomb and are fed by the worker bees as the grow and develop. Mosquito females have to drink blood in order to form eggs. They lay those eggs in or near water and then the larvae develop on their own (they don’t need anyone to feed them). Both mosquitoes and honey bees feed on nectar from flowers, but bees also get pollen from the flowers to feed the larval bees (and themselves)."

"I’ve heard that people are so scared of the Zika virus that they are spraying broad spectrum pesticides to kill mosquitoes. They are not worried about the harm they might be doing to other things, like honey bees. One thing you should look at in your research is what time of day certain mosquitoes fly and see if it is during the same time that honey bees fly. If a pesticide could be developed that was sprayed only when mosquitoes were out and about (and not honey bees), then you might be on the way to finding a good solution to the problem."