The tube leads to the outside, where the bees can go out and forage for the day. You can see this in action if you go over to the white fence and plexiglass to the right as you exit DVEC. You will notice a brown bee hive and if you follow that to the wall you will see the hole where our indoor hive exits.

Here we host presentations and demonstrations for educating the public and hosting events. These presentations can be booked in our visit page. You can also join in on our daily programs and activities found in our events page.

We have daily activities, in person scavenger hunts, fun events, and so much more to offer at the Disease Vector Education Center. All daily activities, outside scheduled and programs events, are paused from 12 PM – 2 PM. Daily programs are also paused scheduled Sunday Fundays, be sure to check our calendar. More details can be found in our events page.

No, but it is local raw organic honey by Diane Spoden. A master beekeeper, who has been a great help to us in learning to keep bees.

She is a bit longer than the workers and is painted with a dot to see her better. If our queen lacks the painted dot, it is likely her workers have cleaned it off. Ask one of the staff members for assistance. It is also likely she is hiding between the frames.

Carbon dioxide is one of the main things that attracts mosquitoes. This means that mosquitoes are attracted to your breath. They can sense carbon dioxide form up to 35 meters (114 feet) away. Once mosquitoes get closer to their target, mosquitoes start to pick up on other things like body odor and body heat. Are you the person that mosquitoes seem to flock to even if there are other people around? This means that you might smell like a tastier meal than other people. Mosquitoes can have preferences when it comes to whom they bite.

Larviciding is controlling mosquitoes in their larval stage. Larvicides are applied directly to water sources that hold mosquito eggs and larva. Control of larval mosquitoes is the backbone of AMCD’s program. By focusing on killing mosquitoes during their larval stage, they will never emerge into adults and bite people. Thus, never transmitting mosquito-borne diseases. AMCD mainly uses a biological control for larviciding, called BTI. For more information check our AMCD website.

Adulticiding is controlling mosquitoes in their adult stage. Adulticides are products that rapidly reduce adult mosquito populations. This can become necessary when larval control measures are insufficient or not feasible. Adulticiding may be initiated when there is evidence of significant populations of mosquitoes in a region, or if there is evidence of mosquito-borne disease transmission in St. Johns County. The most common method of adulticiding is ultra-low volume (ULV) spraying. ULV spraying is the process of putting very small amounts of liquid into the air as a fine mist of droplets. These droplets float on the air currents and quickly eliminate mosquitoes that come into contact with them. ULV adulticides are applied when mosquitoes are most active, typically early evening or pre-dawn. The ULV spray machines are mounted in aircraft, on truck beds, or as stand-alone equipment such as backpack sprayers or handler sprayers.

We try to target only mosquitoes the best we can, from using specialized equipment like ULV and treating only when needed in specified locations. Our team is very careful and advocates prevention first. Larvaciding is also the first line of defense before adulticiding.

AMCD does not spray on a set schedule. We only spray when mosquito populations in an area meet the State guidelines for treatment. AMCD conducts several on-going types of surveillance to quantify mosquito populations. When mosquito populations get too high, then we will spray. We ULV spray at night or early morning. Learn more about ULV spaying on our AMCD website. When we schedule a fog mission, AMCD will post to their online events page.

AMCD maintains a notification list. If you are put on this list, we will let you know when we are spraying, and we will do our best to turn off our machines when passing by your property.