USVI-On-Line

We have experienced the intense rain and skeeter season on 2 of our 3 trips to St John. It was so bad in 2007, including inside our villa, that I was almost ready to come home. This year's trip (May), I got over 100 bites (I stopped counting at 100).We were so disappointed we couldn't sit outside on our villa deck, nor on Maho and Francis due to the skeeter attacks, even with Deet on. (I was the bug magnet in our group.)

So, my question is this. Why does St John have this type of heavy mosquito population? Is it due to so much of the land being parkland? Is there something different about St John from other islands?

The reason I ask is because we have traveled to the Caribbean for 20+ years and have been to 16 islands. We have hiked in woods, mountains and rainforests on multiple islands, and the only place we experienced mosquitos similar to St John was in Honduras. We have been blessed with wonderful weather on almost all those trips as well as on our first trip to STJ.

St John is so special and we love it there. Just curious if anyone has any insight into this.

I am not going to try to answer your question in relation to STJ as I don't know all the facts, but I will say that once in our 10+ years travels to the USVI have we been hit with such a mosquito attack that I thought that it would be my last visit to the island. It was after a week of extremely rainly and HOT weather in October a few years ago. It was during that trip we also decided to venture out and try our snorkeling luck at Salt Pond, which was a horrid nightmare as it was filled with skeeters, noseeums and some other biting creatures. I and my husband were covered head to foot and only came back to STJ because we usually travel in April and while I'm still attracting the bugs, they're only about a 1/10th as mean at that time. I do know that a few times after we left towards the end of April, the islands have been hit hard with lots of rain, which is followed by lots of skeeters. Luckily our DD isn't a magnet like her parents.

We traveled to Aruba which is normally, sunny, hot, dry and arid in October a year or so ago. It was rainy, hot, buggy and muggy due to the way the storms were surging through the lower Caribbean. Not typical and weather/water patterns affected the island negatively. We were surprised and not pleasantly!

Antigua we visited about 4 years or so in November, stayed at Galley Bay. They have a pond and Bird santcuary. (no spraying) The mosquitos there carried us a way. I was thankful we were only there three nights. Beautiful property and island, but lush green and tropical and buggy.

Onto our home state, we once lived adajacent to a Pond (nice word for BOG here!) and had the worst mosquito problem you could imagine.(bought the house in the winter) My husband said theyre worst than the Allagash, known for their vicious natures.

Right it's skeeter and black fly time here too, dawn and dusk is worst, I presently have a skeeter bite on the palm of my right hand that has robbed me of hours of sleep every night for at least the last week. Hopefully if we don't get too much more monsoon rain, it'll begin to dry out and not be a bad summer. There's not a lot of outdoor living done here at night.

So for us if we go to the USVI we're gonna stick to early Spring which works best time wise and bug wise so far.

We've had varying problems with mosquitos on STJ over the years and after the deluge in April and a trip in May, I decided to do some research on the little buggers. Mosquitos need 2 things to live and breed: water to lay eggs and nourishment (we all know what that is!)They go dormant if they can't find both. Since there is usually always a chance of rain on STJ, and those occasional downpours, skeeters have it made. As soon as rain falls the females go crazy and start biting and laying eggs in any water they can find. The cycle continues until the water dries up. At least there's that 10 day advance warning for the extreme mosquito fests. I tried mint and lemon hair conditioner, eucalyptus and mint body lotion, peppermint breath mints, and herbal repellant during our last trip. It worked okay for mild attacks but for the mosquito clouds, only 100% deet worked. I did find that the citronella incense sticks worked well on the decks to keep the buggers away in the evening. There are also patches out there with concentrations of a B vitamin but I haven't tried that yet. Be aware of any perfume or moisturizer scent that might attract skeeters. Oh, and the zapper raquets are great and fun too.

Thanks for the responses khud and Berlingirl. Its interesting that you had bug problems on Aruba and Antigua. We visited Bonaire (near Aruba) and Antigua. Both of those islands were so dry and hardly a living green thing. No bug issues at all. The water on Bonaire was some of the clearest and longest visibility we've experienced. The snorkeling was fabulous, however they've had some bad storms over the years with some damage to their reefs, so I don't know how it is now.

With that said, I was looking at a Bonaire forum and I was surprised to see someone complain about the mosquitos, so I guess it has the wet weather sometimes, even though it was literally like a desert when we were three. Some of the islands we visited were experiencing drought when we visited. We always commented about how we would love to visit them in the rainy season to see them lush and green. We had no idea what we were saying until we experienced the extreme bugs after rain on STJ. Up until recent years, we almost always went to the islands in the 3rd week of April, as soon as the rates changed. Perhaps that is closer to the dry season so we didn't experience the bugs much until we moved our trips to May. Although the worst bug situation was April 2007 on STJ.

One of the first things we did on STJ this year was go to STJ Spice to buy the yellow bug zapper. My husband loves using it and it does work if you're a good shot. We live in Virginia and have a good share of mosquitos in the back yard. We love our screened porch so we can be outside without getting eaten.

Oh well, I was hoping there was some secret to when to go to STJ and not have the bugs.