This may be the ringed winter mosquito, a fairly large mosquito that – the name says it all – can remain active in the winter. “If it is too cold, the winter mosquito does not fly, because it is a cold-blooded animal,” says Van Vliet. “But when the conditions are right, they go looking for blood.”
Mosquitoes also caused last winter nuisance. After a call from Wageningen University, almost 6000 mosquitoes that had been beaten to death were sent for research. In more than half of the cases it turned out to be the winter mosquito, 44 percent of the mosquitoes sent in were the house mosquito.
crawl spaces
We will probably see one of the variants of the house mosquito more and more in the winter, says Van Vliet. This so-called ‘molestus variant’ does not go into rest in the winter, like the ‘normal’ house mosquito. Instead, the bug resides in underground breeding grounds, such as crawl spaces that contain a little water.
“Our assumption is that we get more and more of those molestus mosquitoes in the Netherlands, also in winter, because of the rising temperatures.” But studies are still ongoing. In any case, it is known that the molestus variant is more common in cities than in less densely populated areas. This may explain why, according to Mosquito Radar, relatively many mosquitoes are now reported in the Randstad.
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