Blog
Summer’s Most Wanted
6/17/13
What are the insects that trouble you the most in the summer time? Is it mosquitoes, with their obnoxious little buzz in your ear as they go after the tender skin around your neck? Or maybe stinging insects like bees and wasps invade your property every summer, making BBQs on the deck a game of ducking and dodging those stinging insects? Or maybe you deal with ants that have nested on your property foraging in your home for anything sweet to eat. If you deal with any of these problems in Jacksonville and throughout Northern Florida, you’re not alone. The summer insects that plague Floridians can be fierce; that coupled with the incessant heat and you may start dreaming about moving to the Arctic!
Besides just being annoying, the insects that bother us in the summer can also be dangerous to our health. Mosquitoes are known for being vectors of many different diseases, including West Nile virus, malaria, dengue fever as well as encephalitis. Stinging insects like yellow jackets have the capability of stinging over and over again, which can be a problem for someone that irritates a whole nest and especially anyone that suffers severe allergic reactions to their stings. Ants can bite and can also enter your home and contaminate your food supply. All of these insects are a danger in their own right and getting rid of them from inside your home and on your property should be a priority.
Most Floridians are too busy in the summer to deal with these pests on their own, so contracting a pest control company to perform yearly pest control services is a good way to take care of all of these problems in one fell swoop. Many pest control companies provide annual service programs that include inspections and periodic treatments for insects like ants and stinging insects and they can also offer programs to help mitigate a mosquito problem. If these insects haven’t really become a problem for you yet, but you’re pretty sure you’ll see them soon, don’t sit around and wait for them to become a problem- implement these pest prevention tips before it’s too late!
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Check the exterior of your home to look for cracks in the siding, in the foundation or gaps in areas around windows.
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Inspect all your window screens to make sure there are no holes or rips and that screens fit securely in your window frames.
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Reduce moisture around the foundation; this can attract certain types of ants into your home. Don’t forget to check the drainage area for your A/C unit to make sure it’s not seeping into your home and that it’s not just puddling at your foundation.
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Eliminate food sources that are easily accessible. Don’t leave food on the counters and clean up crumbs and spills as soon as they occur. You also want to make sure you do your dishes regularly; dirty dishes piled up in the sink are a veritable buffet for invading ants.
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Remove areas of standing water on your property. Female mosquitoes lay their eggs on the surface of standing water and this could be a large source of your mosquito troubles. Don’t forget to check for clogged gutters, ditches that aren’t draining, holes in the ground that are collecting rainwater and even hollowed out tree stumps.
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Although flowers are pretty, they attract insects like bees and wasps, so reducing your garden blooms can help make your property less attractive to stinging insects.
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Keep trash cans located a distance from your home and make sure they have tightly fitted lids.
These prevention tips are helpful in making your property less attractive to summer’s most obnoxious insects, but they can’t do everything. For example, you may spend hours searching for and eliminating areas of standing water on your property. You may this this is enough to finally get rid of those annoying mosquitoes that plague you every evening in your yard. But you will find that mosquitoes can travel a great distance for a blood meal, so all you need to have is one neighbor with a kiddie pool full of stagnant water and the mosquitoes could still be attacking you on your own property. Prevention is really just one puzzle piece in the overall program that is required to eliminate pests from your Florida property. For the other pieces to this puzzle, contact a Florida pest control operator and you will finally get to spend your summer relaxing, without having to swat at mosquitoes, dodge stinging insects and squish those foraging ants!
For more information on Florida pest control, contact the professionals at McCall Service to help take care of pest problems in your Florida home.