Has anybody successfully raised dragonflies for mosquito control?

Any tips or pointers?

I didn't look up the exact numbers but I believe that dragon flies spend aprox 1-2 years in underwater and that is when they are eating mosquitoes. Then when we see them as adult dragon flies they are in thier last few months of life.

For that reason I do not ever completely clean out my water features. One is 40 gallons the other about 400 gallons. I just over flow them occasionally and after the last leaf drop I scoop out leaves making sure to leave quite a fair number of old leaves and debris. This is where the dragonfly larvae and frog/toad eggs are hanging out.

We now have loads of dragonflies and this year there were somewhere over 1000 tadpoles divided into about 3 different hatches.

I have to admit - we still have killer mostquitoes here though. I walked outside to let out the chickens and pick greens and had probably 10 bites in less then 10 minutes. I be in long pants and long sleeve shirt before I go out again shortly.

Jeanine Gurley wrote:I didn't look up the exact numbers but I believe that dragon flies spend aprox 1-2 years in underwater and that is when they are eating mosquitoes.

Adult dragonflies are known in some parts as mosquito hawks, and are voracious predators of flying mosquitoes. I have had several of them flying around me outside, providing a zone of protection and even plucking some mosquitoes right off my skin. The crunching sound I heard was quite satisfying. Hornets are also big mosquito eaters.

Apparently it's best to avoid putting fish in the dragonfly pond, because the young dragonflies are likely to be eaten.

But fish also eat skeeters...

Yep, it's a conundrum....

Well not sure if this topic is still relevant.
But yes, there was a large successful case of dragonfly breeding to reduce mosquito population, hundreds of years ago and still now.
Dragonflies in Korea prey on mosquitoes their entire life, dragonfly larvae on mosquito larvae, and the fully grown dragonflies still prey on the mosquitoes.
kyong-ju is known as a city of water, for there are numerous artificial ponds, water ways, streams and so on. Korean scholars seonbe-it also means gentleman "person with modesty, wisdom"- used to use these water ways as places of entertainments, and built outdoor tea drink places etc.
The only problem was that with such large amount of water bodies, it meant it was also crawling with mosquitoes. There were many attempts to artificially eliminate mosquitoes, but all failed. Later, they have discovered a larger more voracious specie of dragonflies- one with red tail, they used to call it "pepper-fly" Gochu-jam-ja-ri, that was particularly good at preying on mosquitoes. As a result, these dragonflies were transported to Kyong-ju and everything worked out as hoped.

There are a lot of dragonflies flying around in Kyongju, especially now in summer, I used to go around with my net catching them. Now I kinda feel bad about that having my sleeps interrupted by these damn blood suckers.

Here in Fairbanks we have had an unbelievably severe mosquito infestation this year. I went to a friend's place back in the bush a few weeks ago, and there were literally thousands of dragonflies cruising around. Didn't get bit even once up there.

I notice that the dragonflies really like vegetation that is sticking up out of the water. Lily pads, rushes, etc. We've had tons on the pond this year, since there is more vegetation than before.
Beautiful little creatures.

Around here we have the adult dragonflies come out early morning before it's too hot, and late afternoon. On the three acres of farm we have around 500 dragonflies eating flying insects ( a lot of which are mosquitoes.) they go until the sun sets then the bats take over. In mid day it's too hot for Mosquitos to be out and bothering you.

The good thing is the dragonflies eat massive amounts of "pest" insects. Though there not pests to me really.

I’ve had an interesting day searching and researching this topic as I try to form a grant proposal to reinstate bats, swallows (“day bats”), diving beetles (if in our area in dropped #’s), dragonflies, whose larvae eat mosquito larvae and an adult dragonfly eats adult mosquitos. And who knows who else, in a balance, of course, to offset our healthy mosquito population. I’ve still to consult our local experts/scientists et al.

Our community just defeated a single choice referendum, whether or not to accept their spray program. It was originally sold to us as a natural  substance BTI that, in a town hall meeting, we learned also kills other larvae of similar that form the base or foundational links in the food chain. We had noticed that our wooden swallow nests were getting colonized by wood loving wasps. So a relative neighbour said his swallow nests were made out of clay for that reason. So a grant to pay potters to make nesting “boxes” and work out bat accommodation that may have better circulation or whatever to help them vs. the white nose syndrome prob i think is fungal. If anyone here can point me to more interesting info relevant to this endeavour, much thanks. And PSSST!!! This idea is but one example of a type of arrangement can be made under a Green New Deal being discussed in US right now. Would be nice and desperately needed up here in Canada too.  All that guano would be great for the gardens as another motivator

Dragonflies need emergent vegetation to creep up when they metamorphosize from aquatic nymph to adult flyer.
I have lots coming out of a backyard pond, and mosquitoes are much lower than when the pond was a pool.

We typically have a horrible time with blackflies and mosquitoes in June, tapering off through July, and tolerable in August. This year, it seems like our pond has been pumping out a lot of Dragonflies. I've stopped trying to count, but it is common to see 20 or so in an area of about 100 square feet, suggesting a population of thousands in our 1 acre area of regular activity. Unfortunately, they are fair weather warriors, so when it's cool and cloudy they tend to take the day off. On a sunny, breezy day they are feasting and knocking down the mosquito population like superheroes.

Now, I'd like to encourage bats to handle the night shift. I have 4 small bat houses up and 1 "bat nursery" to assemble, paint and install. My son was just recently doing a bat survey north of us in an abandoned railway building. The building is ready to fall down and is slated for demolition, but it is a prolific bat nursery so they are trying to install alternative housing for the bats. His count was roughly 700 bats coming out of just one of many exits on the structure, suggestive of several thousand in total. That's a little more than the scale I'd like to see here.

For Father's Day, he brought me a gallon and a half of guano. What a great kid.