One of the (very) few downsides to Italian summers are mosquitoes - until you develop resistance, you look like a plague victim, and seem to spend all night either scratching or paranoid about the high-pitched buzzing sound. Does anyone have any fool-proof way of deterring them? Interestingly, it is only the females that bite - the males don't have the proboscis, and only drink nectar.

yes it's a fact that only females bite as they need the nutrients in the blood for developing embryos also some people attract mosquitoes more than others (don't know why though), I think I read it somewhere that either lemon juice or venigar ( can't remember which) when put on the skin helps to push mosquitoes away, so it's your choice either to be covered in sticky lemon juice or itchy mosquito bites

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"you can't please all people, but you can please yourself" the great philosopher NOURAN

I have been told that some people are acidic and some are not and that is why some of us dont get bothered too much by these pesky bugs. A few points in my handy hints book say that an

orange cut in half and rubbed on your skin will help
also they dont like the smell of oil of pennyroyal or tea tree oil.

Why, aren't there mosquitos in other countries?
I'm so used to them I just never thought about some nation without them.

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Also Vitamin B1 which as an enzyme Thamicin (not sure of spelling) is said to ward of the mozzies. It's suppose to emit a pheromones that they hate.

And citronella oil rubbed on the skin is suppose to work well!

I'm going to Italy at the end of July and don't want to be attacked like I was last year! Yesh, plague victim is right and I had a bad reaction to the bites.

Not this year!!!!

I doubt that there is an entire nation without them but dry areas pretty much excape them. We live in Reno, Nevada and seldom see a mosquito since Reno is on the edge of a desert. Where there is standing water you're in for mosquitoes because that's where they breed. Thus, the Maremma suffered hugely from them. Since the drainage has been improved the problem is reduced.

Southeast Kansas where I was born gets 37 inches of rain a year. It rains in the summer time. You get eaten alive by mosquitos li.
Actually Florida and the whole southern United States has mosquitos.

How about garlic? Garlic will keep those blood suckers away and everybody else anche.

Was just told that they're having a heat wave in Norther Italy.
I'll be there in a few days. So it will be mosquitos and heat. What a combo.

Oh, in Kansas and the entire southern U.S. they have an insect called chiggers, or harvest mites that are microscopic,
reddish arachnids that usually cannot be seen with the naked eye. The larvae (babies) hatch in grass and foliage
and attach themselves to anyone who gets close enough for them to climb onto. After finding a suitable host, the
larvae attaches itself to a pore or hair follicle and injects digestive enzymes into the hole that promptly dissolve
the surrounding skin cells which are then used for nourishment by the growing chigger. Once they've eaten their fill
they release from their hosts, grow into adults and feed on plant matter on which they lay more eggs.

The bites themselves usually progress into super-itchy, raised red welts that can take up to two weeks to heal.
They get on your testicles too.

We have the full arsenal of WMD (Weapons of Mosquito Destruction) - tablets for the rainwater collection system, zanzariere on all windows, bits of copper in the plant pot saucers and rain drains, bug zappers, plug in vapour heaters and even a plug in ultrasonic thingy that's supposed to scare them off. The only things that seem work even remotely well though are the cheap little coils that you light and let smoke - a euro or so for a pack of 5 from the local supermarket.

Steve, thanks for the explanation!
I guess there's no such thing as a dry area in Italy, we're surrounded by the sea, we have many lakes, rivers, and no desert at all. Therefore wherever I've gone in Italy I met them!

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We have them in England too, but they don't bite as much. No surprise there though - have you ever tasted English food????