Thyme – I read over the past week that thyme is an effective insect repellent, or the essential oil is anyway. And after having just done a little more Web searching about this, it seems that both thyme essential oil and sprigs can be used. The article in which I read about the sprigs is about using them like we can use cedar wood, which I think is from red cedar, from protecting stored clothing, linens, ….

White cedar – Definitely works for mosquitoes, though I don’t know if it would for other biting insects. Walk into a woodland and if there’re white cedars, which aren’t real cedars, just take some of the leaf, enough to fit between the palms of your hands, and it doesn’t have to be several layers thick, a little will do a lot. Rub with good pressure between the palms and then spread the oil on yourself. It has an excellent aroma and is highly effective. Many people use white cedar to decorate and border their home properties, in southeastern Quebec, Canada, anyway. But trees of white cedar are also found growing in the wild.

Pine oil – I don’t know how it’s obtained, or even if it has to be obtained for only one or a subset of species of pine, but pine oil does work when having the right one(s).

Birch tar – According to readings on the Web over the past few hours, birch tar is extracted from birch tree bark and is effective against mosquitoes, gnats, as well as gastropods (snails & slugs).

Tobacco – I read several years ago that soaking tobacco leaf in water for either several hours or maybe some days will produce a liquid that is an effective insect repellent. People would need to search to learn the details, for I don’t grow tobacco, don’t have access to tobacco leaf, and I read about this several years ago, never since then.

Deer flies :

Very nasty! According to an entomology.ifas.ufl.edu page I got the link for in the Wikipedia page for “Deer fly”, “citronella” and/or “geraniol are affective” repellents of or for deer flies, which, according to Wikipedia, are in the same family as horse flies, though the latter are more difficult to keep at bay.

Ticks :

According to some of the readings last evening, eucalyptus and peppermint oils are also effective against ticks. There’s also some information about about some rose-related oil, but like for the rest of this post, people need to do the Web searches, since I’m not going to try to provide all of the links, because websites usually refuse to accept such posts. eHow.com has quite a number of pages on repellents and some seem unacceptable to me, even goofy, but I began to get some based on another Web site’s recipes for tick repellent and the recipes at eHow for this seemed quite ok. For ticks, I’ve, so far, gathered, that essential oils from eucalyptus, peppermint, lavendar, some rose-related oil, and citrus oils are all effective. And I’ll guess that there are probably more. And one article at eHow.com says that vinegar alone can be used to ward off ticks, just that using only vinegar leaves us stinking of vinegar, so adding some herbal essential oils that have good aromas is helpful.

It’s very simple to do the Web searches. F.e., for ticks, simply using tick and repellent for search terms will turn up plenty of links.

DEET or at least permethrin are also highly effective, but very poisoness, permethrin, if not both, is harmful to both harmful/nuisance insects as well as beneficial ones and we must protect and employ the beneficial ones, and these products aren’t herbal-based, products that’re “natural”, say, anyway; and I want herbal-based deterrents. It’s how Nature has always worked and it’ll work for us as well. We just need to learn what the natural remedies for natural problems that affect us are, say. In wild nature, plants provide protections for each other and it’s one of the great benefits of non-monoculture environments. With the forest exploitation industry in Canada it was learned that the former way of doing replantings was basically disastrous, for replantings were monoculture when the exploited natural forest wasn’t monoculture. This lead to a correction by making sure that replantings were non-monoculture. Without that, problems from harmful insects and diseases can skyrocket, and it surely will happen.

“Sacred Balance” – concept of David Suzuki.

Closing:

A funny aspect, sometimes anyway, is like with the white cedar. Mosquitoes will land on these trees, but as soon as the essential oils are sensed (whatever the expression should be), then these insects take off as fast as bats trying to get out of hell (if you can imagine a bat finding itself in hell anyway). ZERO tolerance for the oil. The mosquitoes can be in very large numbers, but the second you apply this oil to yourself, you’ll wonder where all of the mosquitoes have disappeared to. Blink your eyes and you won’t have time to see them scram, at the speed that they depart. I loved that experience.

Again, the oil is essential for repulsion of insects with white cedar and apparently some other plants that have oils that repulse insects. White cedar evidently isn’t a problem for mosquitoes until they get sent of the oil, but I’ve read that some plants, whole form, while still growing, provide repellent qualities. It’s a lot of information and apparently isn’t all available at any particular website. There’s a lot of variance. Information doesn’t seem to be complete at any website I’ve read at or from, so it takes hours of searching. You’ll find some Web pages at some websites saying there’s little insect repellence quality with the white cedar, some, but little quality; but I experienced its effectiveness in a forest in Ontario, Canada, and it was very effective at least against mosquitoes, and any other flying biting insects in that woodland that we spent a day in. I saw the effect with mosquitoes, but they were gone faster than bats can try to fly out of hell, and I didn’t see another flying insect for the following hours that we were there. It might not be published information in any formal way, but I know what I experienced and that suits me fine enough.

In southeastern Quebec, Canada, anyway, a lot of people with houses, also apartment buildings, have what’s commonly called cedar hedges and I recently learned that these are actually white cedar. What the commonly called cedars are growing in Quebec forests, now that’s something I wonder about. Is it all white cedar, or are there real cedars here? According to Wikipedia, cedar is not native here. There would be trees called cedars, but not cedrus, not natively anyway.

Doesn’t matter. Many wild plants have antibacterial, antifungal, anti-insect, … properties. And that has been a great benefit to multi-culture wilderness.

How do we repel horse flies though? There’re apparently ways to repel deer flies, which are of the same biological family, but horse flies are more difficult to repel. I’ve had few encounters with them, but when they’re around, it’s nice to be someplace else. No wonder horses and cattle don’t like these flies. Deer flies are also nasty, but, and while I’ve been bothered by them more than hose flies, I prefer to deal with the deer flies. Sneaky buggers though. They land on your skin and it’s in stealth fashion. You don’t notice they were there, until they take off. Nasty. My immune system has stood up well against them, but my brother got stung, or whatever it’s called with deer flies, in an eye lid, and his eye area swelled up so much that I don’t think he could see through that eye anymore. It was massive swelling. I’ve never had that kind of extreme reaction to insect bites and have been bitten, stung, … whatever by far more than he has been, so I’ve been lucky. Still, horse flies, deer flies, mosquitoes, gnats, black flies, …, we definitely aren’t going to become friends, that’s for sure. But they won’t prevent me from outdoors even if I have no repellent, unless I was going to go to heavily infested areas. In those cases, I would definitely be using protective repellent, or else I wouldn’t be there for more than few minutes; seconds, in the very worst areas.

Ever hear of the deer fly trap? One can be fitted on top of a cap we wear on our heads, even. Doesn’t really or seriously work for horse flies, but apparently works for deer flies. Seach the Web for deer fly trap and be entertained while learning about this method of protection. There’s a page at nfrec.ifas.ufl.edu, and related, enough, info. at entomology.ifas.ufl.edu, plus the short, but related page at Wikipedia, the page for “Deer fly”.