HikeArizona.COM

I'm more obsessed than most with bug bites - for years I've been locked in a battle of wits with aedes aegypti who come in the cat door and bite my ankles. I think they get in 3 bites for every one I take out with my electric tennis racket.

For this reason I take special notice of this weekend's interaction with gnats. They were swarming during my Saturday hike but didn't really bother me much other than the constant deep dives into my ears. At one point it occurred to me that if there were mosquitoes in this cloud I'd be bitten to death.

Anyway Sunday afternoon I started scratching. At first I thought it was my usual foe but then I noticed the bites were different...long lasting (still today!) and very itchy and particularly in my ears. Gnats! With a time delay! Sheesh.

No see ums aka chiggers. Did they raise a little pimple and if so it could last a week. This is that window of the year where all those little buggers were born, but now are thirsty. Monsoon will slow them down. I find them most annoying at the zone between high desert and the pines. Like along the General Crook in the junipers and cedars.

Funny Alston, maybe 10 yrs ago I claimed chiggers were leaving bites like you describe at my sock line. I never read another word about AZ chiggers. This time there's one bite at sock line, 4 or 5 at my tee shirt line (back of my arms) and well I can't see in my ears but they itch a lot. The bites are pretty similar to what you describe but these have to be from flying things don't they?

Yeah they are flying. Deb and i stopped our truck once by 13 Mile butte and were attacked all over in just a couple of minutes and never saw anything.

No-see-ums and chigger are different animals. Chiggers are mite larvae (relatives of spiders and scorpions, not insects) that hang around in grass and crawl onto you when you walk by, like ticks. They like to nestle into tight places, so they often end up under your socks. For me at least, they are amazingly itchy, and the bites last a long time. Chiggers are so small that they're mostly invisible to the human eye. They don't fly.

No seeums are tiny flies in the biting midge family. They do fly and bite all over. I've actually never encountered these in any numbers, but they can supposedly be bad in some places. I believe that they have aquatic larvae, so they're only found near-ish to water.

I have no idea if either of these critters are in Arizona--I've only seen (well, felt) chiggers in the South and in Central America. I think that no-see-ums are most common in watery places like Minnesota and New England.

Look this is from Yavapai County
https://cals.arizona.edu/yavapai/anr/ho ... s2011.html

Great...the eggs in my ears will hatch tomorrow.

@Hansenaz
In that case, I would consider cleaning the wet mud out of your ears sooner rather than later.

@Hansenaz
I always do a total flush of my body, preferably with tequila.

Hansenaz wrote:Great...the eggs in my ears will hatch tomorrow.

It could be a lot worse...have you seen Star Trek 2?

forget which
May 3rd 2014 https://hikearizona.com/trip=103025
Jul 26th 2014 https://hikearizona.com/trip=106016

We lunched under the pines along the berm in the southern end of Reavis Valley. The joys of shade and soft pine needles was pure torture due some tiny biting bugs. Itching started quick and lasted for days like poison ivy. To this day I'm terrified of relaxing near a pine tree.

Joe, May is probably a better match for this current hatch. I'm just sort of curious whether biting gnats, no-see-ums, and gnats are 3 different things and how to know whether an encounter with little flying bugs will cause itching the next day. At least with a rattlesnake there's no suspense.

@joebartels
I checked my triplog, It was the May 2014 hike. Those bites lasted forever.

I was raised in Minnesota and we had no no see ums. Minnesota mosquito's are huge and fly in great swarms to the extent that they blot out the sun and altogether can pick you up and carry you away. Your only defense is to carry semiautomatic shotguns with cartridge drums. ' Just sayin....

Africanized gnats.. I hate gnats. They're my nemesis. 5,000 feet (+/-) in May/June seems to be the worst. My worst experience with gnats was a few years back above Salt River Canyon near Philips Mine FR473 in May. The elevation was about 4,800 feet. I got out of my car to take a piss. The moisture in the air put them on the attack. I was wearing shorts. I felt a weird sensation on my legs so I looked down. My legs were literally covered with them. The next stage was relentless biting. The air around me was filled with thousands more just waiting there turn. Ha! I couldn't get to the car fast enough. I still had to finish taking a piss! I could hardly brush them off before opening the door. It was hand to hand combat once in the car. I finally killed all of the little evil monsters. I had little red spots all over me for a week. Alston is right.. Only a heavy monsoon season kills them. They drown during heavy storms. Thank God.

As you can imagine, I wont go near that area now in May. Moments like that tend to stick in your mind. I completely avoid the 4,000-6,000 foot elevation range all together until well into monsoon season. For some reason hiking along creeks seems to be the exception. Nasty little monsters.

Africanized gnats.

I'm still not sure we all talk about the same things. The altitude and time of year that everyone mentions is the same so probably they are (and are they officially no-see-ums?). But the insidious thing to me that I don't see mentioned in the other posts is the time-delay....24hrs or so before I started itching.

There's an easy solution to the biting fly problem: stay away from water in the warmer months. Almost all of the biting flies, including mosquitoes of course, have aquatic larvae, so they never get too far from water. Arizona has like a zillion acres that don't have water, yet every hiker in the state flocks to the water like...uh...ducks to water?

But maybe that's just me. I lived in the East a long time, and if someone told me I could never hike along a stream or river again, I would say "meh." Arizona hikers seem kind of obsessed with water.

@Hansenaz
Deet makes me sick. When I'm forced to coexist with them I've had good luck with Repel Lemon Eucalyptus Insect Repellent. It can be purchased at REI. It smells weird but it actually works on gnats. They'll swarm around you but they wont land.

Regarding the time delay I would say that 24 hours sounds about right on itching. First the red welts and then the itching.

flagscott wrote: Arizona has like a zillion acres

#scientific

Believe it or not, Johnson & Johnson Aloe Vera & Vitamin E Baby Oil Lotion works surprisingly well at keeping most bugs away. I almost never use anything with DEET on myself or my kids, and this lotion is usually good enough.