Many harmful insects are attracted to the color yellow. It's the color of plants under stress and millions of years of evolution have taught them to head directly to yellowing plants whose defenses are probably weakened. You can find yellow sticky traps in most garden centers.
Yellow is attractive to many insects commonly found in gardens or greenhouses, including winged adult white flies, aphids (see Yellow pan traps, below), leaf miner flies, fungus gnats and thrips (which are also reportedly attracted to blue).
Bugs are naturally attracted to bright colors like white, yellow or orange. Colors like green and blue won't register as vividly when seen in the UV spectrum, deterring bugs away from these colored objects.
Bugs- shades of green and blue do not register well with birds on the UV spectrum, which causes them to avoid these colors when they see them. Mosquitoes- mosquitoes can see dark colors very easily, which is why you want to choose bright colors to repel them.
Pollen beetles, like bees, love yellow. In fact, fans of Norwich City became covered in them when the team switched to wearing a brighter yellow kit. The attractive nature of the colour is so great that scientists from Rothamsted suggest in the future fields could have borders of yellow flowers.
Bright white or bluish lights (mercury vapor, white incandescent and white florescent) are the most attractive to insects. Yellowish, pinkish, or orange (sodium vapor, halogen, dichroic yellow) are the least attractive to most insects.
Dark-colored clothing, such as black, navy, blue or red – when combined with movement and breath – make it easier for these insects to find you.
Mosquitoes
It's no surprise that mosquitoes were voted the most hated insect by 12.2% of participants. They were also voted the least popular insect in four states. Mosquitoes can cause numerous problems, from spoiling a backyard barbecue to spreading dangerous diseases like West Nile virus.
Flies. Flies are one of the only bugs that are actively affected by colors. While designing more effective fly traps, researchers from the University of Florida found that flies are attracted to blue tones and repelled by warm tones like yellow.
Previous research has suggested that some insects die from blue light exposure as it triggers the production of reactive oxygen species, which damage important cellular structure and molecules.
Certain colors repel mosquitoes. If you don't want to become a mosquito's next meal, try wearing lighter, more subdued hues. White, beige, khaki, pastel yellow, and even soft gray are good options.
The color that spiders tend to hate is light blue. People don't just paint their porches light blue for the aesthetic. Painting your porch ceiling in this shade is a pretty effective way of keeping spiders away. The color is also known to repel wasps.
Sweat: The hotter, stinkier and sweatier you are, the more likely mosquitoes will feast on you. The reason: In addition to heat, sweaty bodies produce more carbon dioxide. Pregnancy: During pregnancy, women have a much greater blood volume. Mosquitoes can sense that blood.
Although mosquitoes are attracted to light, many people find that yellow bulbs are the best choice. Since light at this wavelength is less visible to the pests, they are less successful in using it to locate a meal.
The general favorites of most insects are orange, yellow, and white for this reason. Also, the common predators of insects aren't traditionally bright-colored. Bats, frogs, toads, birds, snakes, and spiders are usually dark-colored on most of their bodies.
A new study finds that bedbugs – just like flies and other insects – have favorite colors. They really like dark red and black, and they shun dazzling white and bright yellow. Researchers placed bedbugs in Petri dishes that contained little bug-sized tents made of different colored paper.
A key to making the device effective was the discovery that flies are three times more attracted to the color blue than to yellow and that yellow actually seemed to repel flies.
Flies cannot fly off at an angle and have to fly straight upwards before being able to head off in another direction. This leaves them vulnerable for the first few inches of their flight and easier to trap. Another weakness is the fly's inability to respond when confronted with two threats at the same time.
Well studies have shown that the color yellow is the number one color that repels flies. Unfortunately you would need to completely surround your home in yellow light bulbs for it to have any real effect.
The Anopheles mosquito is far and away the deadliest of dangerous insects. The parasite injected from the bite of this tiny creature causes more deaths and illnesses than the bite or sting of any other insect.
Bonus–The Laziest Insect in the World: Zoologger
It's one thing to snooze most of the day away and only expend enough energy to feed. It's quite another to freeload at someone else's expense! That's exactly what the Zoologger beetle does, a recently discovered species native to Cambodia.
Native to desert habitats in Southern California, the diabolical ironclad beetle has an exoskeleton that's one of the toughest, most crush-resistant structures known to exist in the animal kingdom.
Can Mosquitoes See? Mosquitoes can see; however, like most other insects, they generally do not get as clear an image of things as humans and many of their other vertebrate hosts. Nevertheless, they successfully use their other senses to more than make up for their visual shortfalls.
At the end of the experiment, about twice as many bugs were attracted to the dirty clothes as to clean ones, the team reports today in Scientific Reports .
Mosquitoes are turned off by several natural scents: cinnamon, peppermint, cedar, citronella, lemongrass, patchouli, catnip, lavender, and more. Find a favorite, and use it when you want to spend time outside.