Most people don’t have the time to asses everything around their home to see if they could be doing something to be breeding pests. Pests in Alabama are just like pests anywhere except that the humid and warm environment during the summer and spring make it ideal for them to thrive.
Something as simple as a wood pile too close to your home can can create a pest problem
It’s obvious to most homeowners to not leave food debris and spills for pests to feed off of. But what about things that aren’t so obvious that you might be doing to encourage pests. In Alabama, we have more warm humid months than we do cold winter months. This makes pest season virtually year around.
So what can we do to around our homes to discourage pests from moving in with us? Here’s a short list I’ve compiled that I think will be most helpful.
1 Keep an eye on the kids (or adults that act like kids) when it comes to eating inside the home.
I have a customer in Homewood who is in a constant struggle between her four kids and her husband to not eat on the couch, in the bedrooms, living room or anywhere else food can find it’s way onto the floor or in the crack of a piece of furniture. Pests will find their way inside and if you’re feeding them, they don’t have an incentive to leave.
2 Look out for wide open spaces.
They actually don’t have to be that wide open but that’s how most pests view little cracks around doors and windows that can be a huge entry point into your home. You don’t have to do anything drastic such as replace them but you can use things such as expanding foam (use it sparingly, it will make a mess) or weather stripping. Most homeowners are under the impression that their home is sealed from the outside. Not true. There’s plenty of cracks and crevices.
3 Keep the brush back
The more vegetation that you have up against your home, the greater the likely hood of pests finding their way inside. Try to at least trim it back to keep it from touching doors and windows.
4 Be careful of what you bring into your home
Pests don’t always come from the outside on their own. They can also be hitchhikers. Ants can be brought in with potted plants. Roaches can be brought in with boxes. Indian mill moths and beetles can be brought in with food items. You can’t always tell but inspect those items regularly.
My name is Greg with ETX Pest Management. Please call or text me @ 205-223-9460 or click here to find out about our four step initial service and how we help our customers to be pest free year around of pests in Alabama. I service select areas of Jefferson and Shelby County areas such as Hoover, Homewood, Vestavia, Pelham, Helena and Alabaster.
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Sawtooth grain beetles found in rice.
Over the years I have many customers who tell me they’ve started seeing very small insects inside their pantry. They sometimes think that they may be coming from another part of the kitchen or outside.
Many times I’ve identified them as sawtooth grain beetles. These are known as stored product pests. They infest food at some point between the packaging facility and the arrival to your pantry.
You’ll find them in grain products such as rice and cereal. If it goes untreated they’ll infest other food items in your pantry that are unsealed.
I once had a customer in Hoover who had a massive infestation of sawtooth grain beetles and could not figure out where they were coming from. After I had inspected her kitchen and pantry, I was baffled myself. Sawtooth grain beetles are often found at the source which is usually in the pantry.
Her pantry had been cleaned out and her infested food items were disposed of and other food items were sealed. It turns out that behind her pantry was a closet area that was adjacent to a storage room where she had kept corn for the purposes of feeding wild life near hear home.
The corn had been stored in that location for several months and forgotten about. It turns out that there were massive amounts of sawtooth grain beetles that had multiplied because the feeding conditions and habitat were right.
They were making their way into her pantry and that was causing a greater problem in the pantry of her kitchen.
If this problem presents itself, inspect all of the packaged food items in your pantry especially those that are already opened. Dispose of those that are infested and seal up others in air tight containers.
Here’s a short video about sawtooth grain beetles that I created a while back: sawtooth grain beetles video
My name is Greg with ETX Pest Management. Please call or text me @ 205-223-9460 or click here to find out about our four step initial service and how we help our customers to be pest free year around. I service select areas of Jefferson and Shelby County areas such as Hoover, Homewood, Vestavia, Pelham, Helena and Alabaster.
I provide a quarterly pest service for a company that owns a town home in Vestavia. It’s actually used as temporary housing for employees who come into town for training with the company. I serviced it today because of a report of large black ants inside and out.
It turns out that they were carpenter ants. Many of my customers that have had problems with carpenter ants in Alabama over the years have inquired about them and how they were concerned about structural damage to their homes. Fortunately, carpenter ants don’t consume wood as termites do.
Carpenter ants don’t consume wood, they just infest water damaged wood and wood with a high moisture content
They do however, infest wood that has been water damaged and/or has a high moisture content. As far as the town home is concerned, it has both. The siding on the rear is a composite wood product and then there’s a utility room with water damage that’s destroyed the ceiling.
I also haven’t mentioned the fact that the town home gets very little sunlight because it’s shaded by numerous trees. Having all of these conditions are very conducive to carpenter ants. I suggested that my contact person notify the company about the existing problems.
If you’re seeing carpenter ants in or outside your home, be on the look out for water damaged wood near your home. It’s more common than you think and fixing those problems may save you a lot of time and money in the future.
My name is Greg with ETX Pest Management. Please call or text me @ 205-223-9460 or click here to find out about our four step initial service and how we help our customers to be pest free year around. I service select areas of Jefferson and Shelby County areas such as Hoover, Homewood, Vestavia, Pelham, Helena and Alabaster.
Of all of the pests that show up in the warmer months, I think that wasps are among the ones that I hate the most. They’re airborne which means that you don’t have to be sitting still for them to attack you and if you unknowingly get too close to their nest, they let you know that they’re unhappy about it in the harshest way.
I have a customer in the Riverchase/Hoover area that I was servicing for wasps a few years ago. He told me that there were red wasps attacking him as he walked out his back door onto his deck. When I went to inspect, I wasn’t ready to confront them when I walked up on the back deck but they sure were ready for me.
As I approached the top step, I noticed a red wasp on point guarding the nest. All of a sudden, he had swooped down and stung me on top of the head before I know what hit me. If you’ve ever noticed, a red wasp is larger in size that your common brown paper wasps in Alabama.
Wasps often feed off of nectar and other insects
They’re also more aggressive and have a nastier sting. I learned not to be so complacent that day even though I’ve been in the pest control business for many years. I’m not skiddish of wasp nests, but I should have been more cautious.
If you’ve been stung yourself, you probably know how unpleasant it is. Most homeowners freak out when they see a wasp nest anywhere near their home. The question is: Should you be concerned about a wasp nest nearby?
Wasps prefer to build nests under the eaves of your home, under decks and in other areas where they’re protected from the rain. Unfortunately, it’s sometimes in close proximity to where you enter and exit your home.
Be cautious in the summer months and inspect areas around your home where you’ve known them to be in the past including around your doors, including garage doors, under your porch/deck, eaves of your home and don’t forget about out buildings and sheds.
If your home is one story or higher and you notice them swarming very high where you’re standing, it’s not likely they’ll be a threat because they tend to be aggressive if you come near their nest. It’s also common for them to build nests in the soffit vents where they’re inaccessible. Never try to treat or remove an active wasp nest in an area where it is difficult if you need to retreat in a hurry such as in an attic or on a ladder.
Most aerosol wasp sprays are sufficient to control wasp nests and can be picked up at most discount/grocery stores. So the next time you see a wasp nest adjacent to your home, assess if it’s too close for comfort. If it isn’t, it may be fine just to leave it alone.
I have a customer in Vestavia that recently had an issue with ants invading her kitchen counter every time someone left open food packaging or food residue such as crumbs or spills. She was amazed at how quickly and effortlessly ants found their way inside like magic.
It’s not magic but biology that allows them to find a food source. Ants actually send scouts to forage for food and when they find it, they release pheromone signals that lead other members of the colony to it.
It’s obvious to say you shouldn’t leave crumbs or other food residue for ants to find. But what about those times when they show up when there’s no food to be found?
Brush that’s too close to doors and windows can be a major avenue for ants.
You have to keep in mind that ants can find the most miniscule quantity of food and they also have the exceptional ability to sense food that’s sealed in packages and containers. I’ve had customers think that ants in Alabama have this exclusive talent but they’re like that everywhere.
I’ve even seen on rare occasions when they have chewed through plastic packaging to access starchy foods such as potato chips. I’ve also on many occasions seen them invade closets where they can feed off of dead skin cells, starches, and dead insects among other things.
A quick solution: You can use a small mixture of bleach and water (2 to 3 parts water and 1 part bleach) to wipe off your counters to break the pheromone trail and stop them from invading. This is usually temporary but minimizes the problem and sometimes will stop them altogether.
My name is Greg with ETX Pest Management. Please call or text me @ 205-223-9460 or click here to find out about our four step initial service and how we help our customers to be pest free year around. I service select areas of Jefferson and Shelby County areas such as Hoover, Homewood, Vestavia, Pelham, Helena and Alabaster.
It’s not really what you think. A customer of mine relayed a story that a friend of hers told her had happened over the weekend. She was having lunch and watching tv in her living room when she looked to her left and noticed a large spider had crawled up on the arm rest of the chair she was sitting in.
She immediately freaked out, screamed and jumped up out of the chair without any regard to the hot soup, ice tea, sandwich and chips that occupied the tray sitting in her lap. She immediately grabbed the first weapon she could find, which was unfortunately an iron fireplace poker and swung it at the chair with reckless abandon.
To the spiders good fortune, she missed it with every swing and all she managed to do was burn her foot with hot soup, make a huge mess on the floor and put a small tear in her recliner. Although not a pleasant site, the bite of a wolfe spider is not highly toxic or a medical threat to humans.
A Common wolfe spider found around central Alabama
Spiders fall into the occasional invader category when comes to entering your home. They’re not even classified as an insect. They’re actually arachnids (eight legs as opposed to an insects six legs).
They feed off of insects and small animals. If they don’t find a food source and moisture they can’t survive. The best way to control them in your home is to minimize insect activity and seal up cracks in your home which are often around doors and windows.
I suppose if my customer’s friend would have just known these few facts, she could have saved herself a lot of hassle.
My name is Greg with ETX Pest Management. Please call or text me @ 205-223-9460 or click here to find out about our four step initial service and how we help our customers to be pest free year around. I service select areas of Jefferson and Shelby County areas such as Hoover, Homewood, Vestavia, Pelham, Helena and Alabaster.
If you live in Hoover, Homewood, Vestavia and other surrounding areas, you’ve probably noticed mid to large size roaches in your home during warmer months or even when we have a spike of warm weather during the winter time. I’ve often been asked by my customers if these are the type of roaches in Alabama that establish large infestations inside the home and are difficult to eliminate.
The short answer to that question is no because what we’re dealing with here is outdoor roaches and not the “hitchhiker” (also known as German cockroaches) that are mostly found in restaurants and storage facilities. The two most common types of roaches are smokybrown and palmetto roaches. They’re similar in appearance and size. The fall more into the occasional invader category because when come inside your home, they’re looking for food and moisture.
Smokybrown cockroaches found in Hoover, Homewood and surrounding areas
They prefer dark and damp areas which are often crawl spaces and basements. The most common entry points are doors and windows. Mulch areas and heavy brush too close to your home are often the causes of them coming inside. To minimize this you want to keep brush trimmed enough so that they’re not so overgrown that they touching windows and doors. It’s also better to have much areas farther away from your home as opposed to being right up against the foundation wall.
My name is Greg with ETX Pest Management. Please call or text me @ 205-223-9460 or click here to find out about our four step initial service and how we help our customers to be pest free year around. I service select areas of Jefferson and Shelby County areas such as Hoover, Homewood, Vestavia, Pelham, Helena and Alabaster.