Gizmodo:
Today in science that turns out to be totally bunk: Citronella candles warding off mosquitoes. At least, the natural “repellant” doesn’t seem to have any effect on one of the most notorious disease-spreading blood suckers on Earth.
In a new paper published in the Journal of Insect Science, scientists put several types of mosquito repellant to the test, among them spray, mosquito-repelling bracelets, and candles. Recent events, like the Zika virus outbreak, have spurred an interest in new ways of controlling mosquito populations. But it turns out some old standbys—like Citronella candles—don’t really work at all.
Just as I’ve always suspected.
Deep woods Off that sprays on dry is the stuff. Works quite well.
DEET was found to be effective in reducing attraction, so it’s very tempting to conclude (like Richard here in the comments) that Deep Woods Off is the way to go. But there was something very interesting.
“By moving the taxis cage away from the human subject, we anticipated to better mix and homogenize attractants released by the test person with the various repellents we tested. Since the wind tunnel is a closed system we don’t expect a large dilution effect between the two distances we tested. Interestingly, there was an increase in attraction with all products with the exception of the 98% DEET solution.”
The 98% DEET solution was Ben’s Tick & Insect Repellent. Deep Woods Off contains 25% DEET. The Off Clip-on did best close up but lost a lot of efficacy when the cage was moved. And most interesting to me was that Repel Sportsmen Max Formula had some of the worst (while nevertheless effective) numbers and it’s 40% DEET, so while you can look for the presence of DEET on the label to get a sense of whether it’ll be effective, you might not be able to look at the % to say which DEET product will be better than the other. Looks like Ben’s Tick & Insect Repellent is the way to go, and the Off Clip-on is good too. They don’t seem to have tested Deep Woods Off, unlike I missed it.
That means I pretty much ruined a cooler (in which I stored citronella candles) for nothing. Dang it.