Nothing ruins a good happy hour on the deck like these pesky biters
Well, not yet, but they’ll be back in St. Louis before we know it.
And if you’re an outdoor-loving female, you’re the delicious target. (Did you know mosquitos love biting women more than men?) I knew there was a reason I always feel like a mosquito buffet! )
More than a few beautifully appointed St. Louis patios have been abandoned when the whether turns sticky because of hungry mosquitos.
Fight back with a new unfair advantage.
Steve and Jennifer Bickel, from Pioneer Pest, are showing off MistAway at the St. Louis Builders Home and Garden Show. This new product is a dusk-dawn misting system that spreads fear, loathing and death when mosquitos are most active.
The death potion is water-based and breaks down in heat and sunlight. There’s even a botannical version for your koi pond, a green insecticide that kills and repels adult mosquitos and then sets up a repellant barrier.
One of the cool features of the Bickel’s system is that it can operate by remote control. Stand in your house, click your remote, wait a few minutes for the spray to do its dirty deed…then go out and take back your turf.
The Bickels started their business in 2007. While visiting friends in Texas, they noticed how much they were enjoying sitting outside and not getting eaten alive by bugs (which are much hungrier in Texas than here). Their friends had a Mistaway system, and Steve didn’t think there was anything like this in St. Louis.
It seemed like a natural match: Mistaway and St. Louis summers. Mosquitos love to gather and breed near standing water like downspouts or gutters that need to be cleaned out.
Steve was an executive at Reuters, and took the year it takes to get his pest control license. Jennifer is an occupational therapist. Ready for a change from the corporate world and own their own business, they started Pioneer Pest.
Steve confirms it’s the female mosquito that does all the biting and it’s the females they love to bite. When he talks to new customers, he’s usually directed to the real decisionmaker, “The husband isn’t the one who’s getting bit, so he’ll always say, ‘don’t talk to me, talk to my wife!’”
