Bug Blog
How to Remove Pests from a real Christmas Trees
Christmas is coming and if you decided to purchase a real (once live) Christmas tree you should expect to bring in a few unexpected guests into your home, in the form of insects. A rough estimate puts approximately 75 percent of Canadians decorate with a Christmas tree and of those people who do, only 20 percent use real trees. By using in a real tree you are actually bringing in bugs and their rightful home. Yes, Christmas trees are home of many potential bugs including: Adelgids, aphids, bark beetles, mites, psocids, scale insects, spiders, moths, sawflies, weevils, bark lice and webworms. So how do you remove or at least minimize the number of insects on your newly purchased Christmas tree. This process of pest removal should start at the store, so have a good look over the tree of your choosing before buying. First, look around the branches to see if something is moving, if you see insects, move to the next tree. Once you buy your tree, leave in a bucket of water for a few days in the garage, if there are any bugs on it, they will die on their own because of the lack of food and change in the environment. Once you are ready to bring it inside, give it a good shake so any bug corpses can fall right off. It’s not a good idea to leave the bugs on the floor of your garage, so sweep or vacuum them up. There shouldn’t be any insects left, but if you are not convinced you can spray the tree with neem oil, or diatomaceous earth. If by chance any of the abovementioned Christmas tree pests do happen to make it into your house alive, they will not likely survive long.
gogreenpestcontrol.ca Ladner Tsawwassen Delta B.C., Randy L. Bilesky BsF CPA RPF
https://gogreenpestcontrol.ca/how-to-remove-pe…-christmas-trees/
https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/how-remove-pests-from-real-christmas-trees-randy-bilesky/?published=t
https://www.delta-optimist.com/opinion/blogs/blog-how-to-remove-pests-from-real-christmas-trees-1.23518010
A Spider that looks like an Ant suckles its young
Strange things in the world of insects often crop up but this one seemed a little stranger than most. First of all there is a spider that looks like an ant, supposedly to avoid a certain spider wasp that likes to paralyse spiders in order to lay their eggs on the spider’s body, which then acts as a living pantry for the wasps’ larvae. Next, as most of us presume, female mammals produce milk to suckle their young and that is truly the definition of a mammal. But, here are the exceptions to that rule. Pigeons produce milk like ooze in their throats, which they vomit up to feed their squabers. And also this ant looking spider, the Toxeus magnus, have offspring that hang around the nest for several months (watching Netflix?) living off of fluid (rich in nutrients and proteins) deposited from their mother’s epigastric furrow (the canal through which she lays her eggs). After about a week she suckles the spiderlings directly. The babies relied on it completely for over 3 weeks at which point they started leaving the nest to hunt on their own. The spiderlings continue to return to their mother nest until they reach maturity. It is believed that the mother continued to contribute to their well-being and survival until she changed the locks and no longer tolerated them coming back.
https://gogreenpestcontrol.ca/a-spider-that-lo…uckles-its-young/
gogreenpestcontrol.ca Ladner Tsawwassen Delta B.C., Randy L. Bilesky BsF CPA RPF
https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/spider-looks-like-ant-suckles-its-young-randy-bilesky/?published=t
Rats in Your Car?
Here is an example of a real story I hear far too often. You’re going through your work week morning routine, getting dressed and leaving for work when you see a rat running from your car when you look out your front window. This is not the way anyone wants to start their day. Of course this would set off warning signs so you check your entire car for signs of rats. To your horror, you find an entire family of rats that have set up a nest in your engine compartment. This kind of rodent infestations can be tremendously unsafe as not only do they spread diseases, they have a predisposition to chew on wires. These rats could have simply chewed through the battery cables or other electrical wires in the car, causing a glitch or fire. What’s worse, those same rats have been living in the crawl space and attic for some time. So the story doesn’t end there. It cost hundreds of dollars to have the car fixed and cleaned and the owner tried DIY methods to save money to try to kill off the rats and they didn’t go away until they called us. Engaging an expert pest control service will help to rectify the root problem, lead to cost savings, give you peace of mind and protect you and your property. Give us a call at gogreenpestcontrol.ca and we will bring an end to your pest issues.
gogreenpestcontrol.ca Ladner Tsawwassen Delta B.C., Randy Bilesky BsF CPA RPF
https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/rats-your-car-randy-bilesky/?published=t
https://www.delta-optimist.com/opinion/blogs/blog-rats-in-your-car-1.23512571
Winter Is Coming – are you prepared?
Just like the notorious saying by the members of the House Stark in Game of Thrones “winter is coming”, this also a warning to homeowners because your house, townhouse, condo or apartment is likely nice and toasty warm, rodents and other nasty pests are likely to be entering your home to seek warmth. Yes, there are no more mosquitoes and wasps but house mice, rats, silverfish, fleas and ants tend to find shelter in homes as the temperature outside becomes intolerable for them. Those four legged furry rodents can cause all kinds of problems from scratching sounds to screeching and diseases to damaging your home. Other common pests to look out for during the winter season are grease ants and bed bugs. Bed bugs may find their way into a home through second hand furniture, used clothes and everything else you can find at second hand stores. Meanwhile, grease ants like to hide in kitchens, bathrooms and furnace rooms. They are more than just a nuisance, they also bite and sting. While ants rarely pose a threat, they can carry diseases and they can contaminate the food found in your home. Carpenter ants can cause serious damage to houses because they are able to bore into rotten wood, reducing integrity of the wood and cause structural destruction. Go Green Pest Control and Exterminators can help homeowners get rid of all these nasty pests and can also provide protection against the return of these pests so that homeowners can finally be ready for the winter.
gogreenpestcontrol.ca Ladner Tsawwassen Delta B.C., Randy L. Bilesky BsF CPA RPF
https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/winter-coming-you-prepared-randy-bilesky/?published=t
https://www.delta-optimist.com/opinion/blogs/blog-winter-is-coming-are-you-prepared-1.23512323
Happy Grease Ant Season
You know that the holiday’s or Christmas season is almost upon us as the grease ants start coming out. These tiny ants can stay in the walls for months but when the furnaces in homes begin to run a lot more, these food scavenging ants that both bite and sting, start coming out in full platoons. Now when I say that they bite and sting, it is usually as a defensive reaction and they are unable to bite unless they have something to push against, like a shirt collar or under your pant legs. Large numbers of these pests around kitchens, bathrooms and utility rooms can be a nuisance, especially during mating swarms. Grease ants will feed on a wide variety of foods, and like to eat many foods consumed by humans including meats, crumbs, sugar, flour, grease, as well as live and dead insects, seeds and honeydew. They forage for food for their colonies and set up trails to food sources from their nests. Reproduction occurs when winged males and females swarm, often in June, July and occasionally in mid-winter. After mating, the females search out a new nesting site and become the queen for a new colony. Attempts at killing off these ants using retail products usually ends up in spreading the problem into multiple locations as the queens will ”bud” or move away from the danger and re-establish multiple new nests.
https://gogreenpestcontrol.ca/happy-grease-ant-season/
gogreenpestcontrol.ca Ladner Tsawwassen Delta B.C., Randy L. Bilesky BsF CPA RPF
https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/happy-grease-ant-season-randy-bilesky/?published=t
https://www.delta-optimist.com/opinion/blogs/blog-happy-grease-ant-season-1.23509857
Fear changes how Rodents reproduce
Rodent females create extra offspring after smelling odors (chemo-olfactory cues) produced by scared males. Fear of being torn apart and eaten can influence the size of populations. A study showed that exposed small, highly fecund (prolific) species like rat mothers produce families with about 40-60 percent more pups compared to female that were not exposed to frightened males. It was observed that the increase in pups was second-hand evidence that there was predators around and that this was enough to escalate the number of pups. Predators can also scare the living be bejesus out of their prey and the resulting terror alters how they behave and reproduce. Also, these females may sense that their next litter may be their last and need to produce more offspring immediately. Simple physical interaction between the mating pair can regulate the litter size.
gogreenpestcontrol.ca & Exterminators Delta, Ladner Tsawwassen B.C., Randy L. Bilesky BsF CPA RPF
https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/fear-changes-how-rodents-reproduce-randy-bilesky/?published=t
https://www.delta-optimist.com/opinion/blogs/blog-fear-changes-how-rodents-reproduce-1.23506576
What are causing all these bites?
Often the first thing people think when they get itchy bites on their legs, arms or torso is I’ve been bitten by bed bugs. If you’re concerned about the potential of bedbugs, knowing what sorts of things you might be confusing for signs of bed bugs is definitely important. Though you might think that finding bugs in other part of your house, particularly small dark coloured insects, might mean that you are dealing with bed bugs; it often doesn’t necessarily mean that you have bed bugs. Cockroach nymphs are often confused with bed bugs, bat bugs and swallow bugs are also often confused with the appearance of bedbugs. Bites just around the ankle are probably fleas. If the bugs spotted have wings, then again you don’t have bed bugs because bed bugs don’t have wings. Carpet and pantry beetles are often confused for bed bugs and may be found in the bedroom, but they have distinct wings and their larvae look like caterpillars. Some people are allergic carpet beetles and cloth moths. Bed bugs leave behind tiny blood stains and small brown-black spots (feces) in the seams of your mattress and box spring, and on your sheets. There are tons of things that could cause itchiness beyond bed bugs, you may want to consider things like detergents, clothes softeners, mites, mosquitoes, spiders, medications you may be taking, allergy issues, and more because these may be causing the itchiness. If the bites are at the contact points where your body meets the bed throughout the night and they are in large clusters then you most likely have bed bugs. When in doubt, call in a pro, but if the insects aren’t found in your bedroom or near a couch, it might be something else.
Packrat aka Bushy-tailed Woodrat
The bushy tailed woodrat is the only native rat found in B.C. and has been spotted here in Delta. It is a large squirrel-like rodent with long dense fur and a bushy tail. Like all our local rats- the Norway and roof rats, the packrat are active all year and nocturnal (busy in the night). These “want to be” squirrels also are primarily vegetarian, eating leaves, seeds and fruit but are classified as omnivorous as they will eat insects, small amphibians, and road kill. The packrat requires habitat that has good security cover where they like to build their rather large (1 to 1.8 m in height) stick houses. The stick houses are made of woody debris, vegetation, and other objects including any shiny objects that they can steal from us humans. Their stick houses are not actual houses, as they don’t live in them rather they function more as a storage dump. Their actual nests are quite small cup shaped dens, made of shredded bark and other soft materials.
gogreenpestcontrol.ca Ladner Tsawwassen Delta B.C., Randy L. Bilesky BsF CPA RPF
https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/packrat-aka-bushy-tailed-woodrat-randy-bilesky/?published=t
Shape shifting Fire Ants
Fire ants are legendary for their skill to swarm together and self-assemble bridges, ladders, and even floating boats. Scientists have now learned the statistical rubrics that rule how fire ants form these assemblies, and this may help researchers in building swarming, miniature shape-changing automatons or robot swarms that might be able to slim down and access cracks and crevices. Fire ants show group intelligence and they’re also small which makes them relatively easy to observe and study. Scientists have measured how fire ant clusters flow under strain and have begun to understand their communication directions. Fire ant colonies keep flexible in their maneuvers by attaching and shifting their feet to the ants next to them, then latching onto a different ant every fraction of a second. So when force on an ant increases, the latching process moves quicker. And when the force on an ant’s leg reaches a critical point, the ant shifts its foot position to reduce the load. The ant clusters in this way can flow like a fluid or stiffen up to become solid.
gogreenpestcontrol.ca & Exterminators Tsawwassen Ladner Delta B.C., Randy L. Bilesky BsF CPA RPF
https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/shape-shifting-fire-ants-randy-bilesky/?published=t
https://www.delta-optimist.com/opinion/blogs/blog-shape-shifting-fire-ants-1.23502813
Can Cayenne pepper get rid of rodents?
Keeping your home clean by getting rid of things that attract rats and mice is the best way to deter them. Rodents are always looking for food, so make sure nothing has been spilled or made available for a hungry critter, especially under cabinets and places that are easy to hide in. Always clean up leftover food as soon as possible and sweep up crumbs on the floor. So now your house is clean and the rodents are still around, will the chemical capsicum in hot peppers deter mice and rats? First of all, capsaicin is the chemical in chili peppers that makes them spicy. Specifically, capsaicin occurs in the fruits of plants in the Capsicum family, including bell peppers, jalapeño peppers, cayenne peppers and other chili peppers. The hottest of all peppers is the Reaper chilli that is more than 850 times hotter than a jalapeno pepper. The Carolina Reaper pepper has a heat rating of 2.2 million Scoville heat units. Researcher recently added the Carolina reaper (which can bring a grown man to tears) to a mixture of bird seeds. To their surprise, the rats and mice gobbled it all up, peppers and all. So no, hot peppers do not deter rodents.
gogreenpestcontrol.ca & Exterminators Tsawwassen Ladner Delta B.C., Randy L. Bilesky BsF CPA RPF
https://gogreenpestcontrol.ca/can-cayenne-pepp…t-rid-of-rodents/
https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/can-cayenne-pepper-get-rid-rodents-randy-bilesky/?published=t
https://www.delta-optimist.com/opinion/blogs/blog-can-cayenne-pepper-get-rid-of-rodents-1.23500643
