There are certainly a lot of potential pest issues that could happen in your home, but where should you start and what should you prepare for first? In this post, we cover the top 5 pests in your home you need to prepare for and some tips to minimize these pest issues.
How to get rid of Mice in your home
Mice are a pretty common pest you’ll end up finding in your home. These pests tend to be more active in your home and cause problems during the fall and winter months.
Typically pests will try and enter your home as temperatures drop in order to find better food, water, and shelter sources. Unfortunately, this often makes your home the primary target.
Some simple tips you can do to prevent rodent issues are to keep your home clean and focus on exclusion, or sealing entry points. Mice can get into your home through a gap as small as a 1/4th of an inch.
Seal them out
When it comes to sealing entry points, focus on places like underneath doors, windows, fixing holes in screens, and installing screens or covers over dyer and exhaust vents. For cleanliness, be sure to keep your garages sealed so there aren’t reasons for pests like mice to hang around your home to begin with.
If you do have an issue with mice in your home, we recommend getting a pest control service involved quickly to get rid of the mice fast. Rodents like mice can breed and multiply very quickly, so one or two mice can turn into dozens within a few weeks.
How to get rid of wasps around your home
Another common pest you’ll find causing problems around your home are wasps. These pests are usually thought of as being very dangerous and aggressive, and you would be right to think that. However, these pests tend to increase in aggressiveness as the season gets closer to winter.
Wasps will start to come out of hibernation in early spring and this is when the initial queen wasp will start to build a nest. Usually, these nests will be away from people as much as possible in places like roofs, eves, sheds, high in trees, but they do often end up close enough to humans to be a problem.
Wasps build their nests out of chewed up wood pulp so you’ll usually find them near sources of wood as well. Wasps can either eat other insects or sometimes will feed on nectar and other sugary substances. Typically their larva is only feeding on other insects, so in many cases, wasps will be hunting other insects as food for their young in exchange for their sweet excretion. The adults can also be feeding on nectar or potentially your sugary summer drinks.
Don’t let them spoil the party
This is why you will often find wasps bothering you at your picnics in the summer months as you often are attracting other pests like flies with your food, but also have those sugary drinks wasps like as well.
A way to help keep wasps away from your home is to clean out debris that can collect near your home such as dirty gutters. Gutters are one area that usually become breeding grounds for other insects and pests. With a close food source in abundant supply it can attract wasps and lead them to build nests near your home.
If you do encounter a wasp issue around your home, don’t try and remove it on your own. Wasps are known to attack in swarms and become more aggressive throughout the year as their options for food sources become less and less. Reach out to a pest control service for wasp removal as they have the proper training and protective gear to safely remove the wasps.
Getting rid of ants in your home
Ants are another common pest issue in your home. They tend to become more active and cause problems throughout the spring and summer months. Ants go into hibernation throughout the winter so you won’t see much ant activity during that time.
They do, however, seek out abundant food, water, and shelter sources like most pests, and during spring and summer those often are readily available in your home.
Ants work together as a colony where each member has their own unique job, but they all work together to grow the colony as a whole. Ants will start to cause problems in your home initially by sending out scouts in search of food and other resources.
This means to help prevent ant problems in your home, you should focus on keeping your home clean and your food containers sealed. Ants can feed on the smallest things, so a counter full of crumbs, spilled drinks, or any open food source are fair game for ants.
Watch out for scouts
If you find a scout ant walking through your home on its own, be sure to redirect it outside or kill it. Once they find food and alert the other members of the colony, it could be too late. They will leave pheromone trails back to the other ants and then you can have a steady stream of ants flowing in and out of your home.
Sealing entry points and keeping your home clean and food out of reach are the ideal prevention steps for getting rid of ants in your home. Outside of that, we recommend having a pest control service put a barrier treatment around your home to help eliminate the scout ants that do get in before they make it back to the colony.
Using bait traps could be another level of protection and elimination for ants as well depending on how severe the ant issues are in your home.
How to get rid of bed bugs in your home
Bed bugs are another common trouble maker that can cause problems in your home. You might think that bed bugs only hang out in the worst of the worst hotels, but they can be found in even the nicest places.
Typically you’ll find bed bugs in beds, but they do like to live in places other than just beds. Bed bugs are master hitchhikers and they can be found on beds, furniture, luggage, clothing, planes, trains, buses, car seats, and more.
More often than not, we unknowingly bring bed bugs into our homes from traveling. Bed bugs will climb onto clothing and luggage from areas they currently infest and can come back with you to your home.
Keep a lookout
Inspection is one of the best prevention methods for bed bug issues. Carefully look though your hotel room and common areas for bed bugs when you get there. Bed bugs frequent cracks and crevices around beds and furniture, and those should be the first place you look.
After you get home, inspect your luggage and wash your close from your trip in hot water to kill off any bed bugs that may have came with you on your voyage home.
If it’s too late and you do have bed bug issues in your home we recommend reaching out to a pest control service for treatment. Bed bugs are getting increasingly resistant to pesticide treatments and the removal process can be quite complex and can require a variety of methods and treatments to fully remove the issues.
Bed bugs can live for months without feeding as well and continue to breed, so it’s essential to fully eliminate the problem or they will just come back. Another reason we recommend using a pest control service to remove bed bugs is so they don’t come back.
Getting rid of Termites in your home
Depending on what part of the country or world you live in, termites can be another of the major pests you need to prepare for. Termites typically live in warmer climates because of their need for humid environments.
Termites have a pretty thin skin and can dry out or die from the elements rather quickly when exposed to the environment if it’s not perfect conditions. For this reason, termites will build mud tubes to travel through, which keeps the environment humid enough for them to survive.
Termites feed on wood products and are often though of as silent assassins, because they can do large amounts of damage to your home before there are any major signs. You can check out a video here on the top 3 warning signs you have termites.
Reducing moisture in your home can be a great prevention method for reducing termite issues. You can do things like running dehumidifiers, fix leaky pipes, install exhaust fans in bathrooms and kitchens, and make sure your home has proper ventilation.
Inspect regularly
We recommend having your home inspected for termites every year or two. A treatment for termites can last several years, but it’s better to have your home inspected and find nothing, than to leave a termite problem unchecked for years and letting them cause thousands of dollars in damage to your home.
This is especially important to have done when you are either selling a home or buying a home. Since termite damage is often very well hidden, if the home you are selling or buying isn’t properly inspected, you could either lose the sale of you home, or end up dealing with significant repairs after buying your home.
Termite removal is another pest issue that shouldn’t be tackled on your own, so be sure to reach out to a pest control service for any termite removal needs.
Proper education and prevention are your best methods to keeping pest problems at a minimum in your home, and if that fails, be sure to reach out to a pest control service like us at Rove Pest Control, to help with your pest removal needs.
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