Methoprene vs. Aedes excrucians and Aedes vexans

Minnesota's mosquito season starts when the lakes are still covered with ice, because the mosquito larva can develop in snowmelt.  They have evolved adaptations that allow them to thrive up in the Canadian tundra, and thus are quite at home in Minnesota's climate.

The helicopters dropped pellets of methoprene, which prevents mosquito larvae from becoming flying, biting, breeding adults while leaving them available as a food source to other aquatic creatures, McLean said.

The targeted species — which carry the incriminating names Aedes excrucians, Aedes abserratus and Aedes stimulans — can grow into large, aggressive adults that can live one long generation, into late June or early July, McLean said. That’s when they’re usually succeeded by the daintier but more numerous and annoying Aedes vexans, a warmer-season floodwater-breeder.

MMCD workers actually attack mosquitoes through the winter, placing anti-mosquito materials by hand on top of ice in cattail areas. That stymies a species that lays its eggs on the water and develops while attached to the roots of cattails through the winter.

And, if that's not enough, "McLean said deer ticks, which carry Lyme disease, are already out and “on the move” in thick underbrush and wooded areas."