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Old 10-09-2010, 08:12 PM
 
Location: St. Pete
149 posts, read 467,224 times
Reputation: 109

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What are these?

They are very small flying bugs but deliver quite a pinching sensation. I have quite a few little red bumps on my skin from these things tearing me up last night.
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Old 10-09-2010, 08:23 PM
 
Location: St. Pete
149 posts, read 467,224 times
Reputation: 109
Some more searching appears to have found my answer. These are sandflies, aka biting midges or no-see-ums. Some of the most annoying bugs I've ever come across!

ENY629/MG102: Biting Midges of Coastal Florida (http://if-srvv-edis.ifas.ufl.edu/mg102 - broken link)
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Old 10-10-2010, 01:09 AM
 
Location: St. Pete
149 posts, read 467,224 times
Reputation: 109
Funny story about why I posted this thread...

So I'm moving into a new apartment with a friend and trying to clean the back screened in porch last night. The previous tenant had cats and I could smell them so I filled up a bucket with dish soap and water and used a mop to saturate everything, then I took a hard deck brush and started scrubbing.

For my final step, I decided to throw some bleach around to completely sanitize things. Well, this is when the fumes overwhelmed me and I tried to get back into the house only to find that the damn sliding door locked and I was trapped Apparently it self locks if you shut it too hard and my cell phone was inside the house.

The sun is going down, the place stinks like bleach, and the porch light is on which is attracting all kinds of bugs.....what a scene it was. I had my face up to the screen trying to breath fresh air. Eventually the powerful smell dissolved and the bugs(no-see-ums) came out in full force and tore me up. I was constantly killing these things whenever I felt a pinch. Pure torture! I have experienced them before at the golf course at dusk, but I would simply spray some OFF all over me and quickly solve the problem.

I was on the verge of my breaking point(shattering the window) when finally my friend came home and freed me! I was locked in there for a little over an hour, but it felt like days
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Old 10-10-2010, 09:05 AM
 
1,500 posts, read 3,332,609 times
Reputation: 1230
Those things are nothing but teeth with wings. Flying mouths. Yikes. I'm close to the Wilderness Preserve and wondered if I'd have a problem with them but none at all to date. Even the mosquitos here are not as bad as they were in south Florida, but as I've noted elsewhere, seems we've a lot more dragon flies here to keep the biters in balance.

Be aware that if your screens are not the very fine mesh, no see ums can get inside.
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Old 10-10-2010, 09:32 AM
 
Location: Tampa
1,317 posts, read 2,308,519 times
Reputation: 508
We called them gnats in Georgia. They were much much worse there. I don't even notice them
Here. Our minor league baseball team was the savannah sand gnats- that is how much a part of life sand gnats In coastal ga are!
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Old 10-10-2010, 06:52 PM
 
2,539 posts, read 4,086,371 times
Reputation: 999
some Floridians call them "no-see-ums"!
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Old 10-10-2010, 07:40 PM
 
Location: Saint Petersburg, FL
1,881 posts, read 3,606,369 times
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Brad, that sounds terrible! Makes a funny story though, right?

I hate those things too. They bite my ankles on occasion and it always feels like I'm being attacked by an entire swarm. Ouch!
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Old 10-10-2010, 07:56 PM
 
Location: Tampa
2,119 posts, read 3,711,943 times
Reputation: 2943
Put some Cutter or Off on and that should help. Yes, those no-see-ums deliver quite a bite, don't they?
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Old 10-13-2010, 08:21 AM
 
Location: Tampa, FL
150 posts, read 474,804 times
Reputation: 111
I hate these insects. You'd never expect such small bugs to give such big bites.

When I first came to FL, I was living in an RV park in Palm Harbor with my family. Whenever any of us made a nightly trek to the bath house, we'd always come back with a bunch of bites on our legs and feet. We always thought the mosquitoes were behind the bites, but when we caught a no-see-um in action, we finally knew better. We always put caladryl on the bites to relieve the itching, and when we went out, we had leopard spots of caladryl all over our legs.

I swear...those bites take like, two weeks to go away. And they itch like crazy.
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Old 10-13-2010, 01:15 PM
 
Location: St. Pete
149 posts, read 467,224 times
Reputation: 109
I'm getting bit daily now. These are quickly becoming the most annoying bugs on the face of the earth.
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