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Household Pests
ANTS
BEDBUGS
BEES
BIRDS
CLUSTERFLIES
COCKROACHES
FLEAS
FLIES
HOUSEFLY
MICE
WASPS
MOLES
The commonest species that invades houses is the Black Garden Ant…, which is actually very dark brown. All ants have the main divisions of the body (head, thorax, abdomen) distinctly separated by very narrow waists and have a sharp elbow joint in their antennae. They are highly organised social insects. It is the foraging worker ants that invade buildings in search of food. These are from 3 to 5 mm in length and are attracted to sweet foodstuffs which they take back to the nest to feed to the larvae and queen.
Flying ants are the reproductive males and females. These mating ants are winged and have a nuptial swarming flight during only a few days in July or August. Mating takes place in the air and the female then seeks out a nest site where she stays for the winter, laying eggs the following spring in order to start up a new colony.
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A once common pest of slum dwellings, now much reduced by improved standards of hygiene. They still occur with some regularity, particularly in multi-occupancy buildings with rapid resident turnover, for example, hostels, holiday camps and block of flats. The adult bug resembles a small brown disc, about 3.5mm long – the size of a match head. It is wingless but the legs are well developed and it can crawl up most vertical surfaces e.g. bed legs. The elongated eggs are cemented in cracks or crevices close to the hosts (which for bed-bugs are humans). There is no larval stage, the young hatch as mini-bugs or nymphs which become adult in five stages of growth. Each nymphal stage needs one full meal of blood before it proceeds to the next stage. Fully-grown bed-bugs can endure starvation for several months. Infested rooms may have bugs under wallpaper or in crevices in the furniture and joinery. They generally emerge to feed at night and their bite can cause severe local irritation. They also produce a characteristic unpleasant smell.
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Providers of honey and almost universally viewed with affection by the public, honey bees are one of the most well known insects. Many species of bee are found in the United Kingdom. Some produce honey, some do not. Some live in highly organised colonies, some on their own. Some sting, some do not. Bees rarely present problems as pests. However, feral swarms can set up home in undesirable places such as chimneys and wall cavities. Control may, therefore, be necessary. Bees are not protected and control is bet left to professional; honey bees have a barbed sting and die once they have used this. However, they will sting when provoked. Attempts to kill them will provoke them. Once the nest has been killed, efforts must be made to remove it or seal it in. The honey within it will attract bees from other hives which may then themselves be poisoned, as well as their nests, by the pesticides used. Insects and mites will also thrive on the honey and dead grubs within the nest and may cause problems. Masonry bees may occasionally cause problems. Unlike honey bees these are solitary insects. They nest in a wide range of cavities some of which they excavate themselves. The nest particles glued together with saliva. Masonry bees are normally harmless, their sting seemingly unable to penetrate human skin. On occasions though they can present a problem due to their ability to build nests by tunnelling through soft brick mortar, generally in older properties. Only rarely do large numbers occur together but due to the fact that vulnerable buildings tend to be repeatedly attacked, quite severe damage can occur over several seasons. Modern houses are not immune either, small gaps left in otherwise sound mortar may be colonised. Although this is not a problem from a structural point of view, some householders are distressed by such activity. In the long term, re-pointing with sound mortar is the only answer. This must be thorough however, as bees hunting for a nest site will soon locate areas that have been missed. Small individual holes are easily filled. treatment with insecticides is not normally necessary but where damage is serious or great distress is being caused insecticides can be used. Application of an insecticide to the entry holes will quickly kill the occupants.
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The Wildlife and Countryside Act 1981 protects all wild birds, their nests and eggs. However, specific exemptions permit certain species to be controlled by particular methods for specific reasons.
Birds can be pests. They carry disease, eat food intended for human consumption, cause noise pollution with their calls and can create a very real hazard by the accumulation of their droppings.
The need for control of certain species of birds can be seen right across the domestic, industrial and agricultural sphere. This requirement has been recognised by government and we are dedicated to the fight against pest bird species.
A flock (whether large or small) using your building to roost, perch or nest will attract other birds to use it on a regular basis. Two birds today could mean twenty birds tomorrow. Pigeon faeces are very acidic and will corrode the fabric of your building including UPVC, brickwork, guttering and metal leading to costly repairs and increased maintenance. All bird faeces are wet and, when they fall directly to the pavement outside your building’s entrance, could lead to a member of the public slipping and being seriously hurt. Unfortunately in today’s legal climate an accident could prove very costly to your business.
Lastly and most importantly, it has been proved that faeces contain a number of very harmful pathogens that can be transmitted to man. Breathing in the ‘dust’ caused by accumulated bird faeces is one of the direct routes to many chronic respiratory diseases. People who suffer from asthma and allergies can suffer especially. In addition, feathers and nesting materials contain numerous insect pests, such as flies, fleas, beetles and mites.
Control of birds through population reduction techniques is generally both less desirable and less effective than removing their foods sources or blocking off sites where they perch or roost. The latter technique, known as proofing, is now used extensively with blunt spikes, sprung wires and nets installed in buildings to keep birds off without harming them.
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These are dark greyish flies about 8mm long with yellowish hairs on the back and with overlapping wings. In autumn they congregate in large numbers in upper rooms or roof spaces of houses to hibernate. A mass of cluster flies has a characteristic smell. They are sluggish in flight and are a nuisance in the house. The larvae of one species are parasitic upon certain earthworms, so this species is more common in rural areas.
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Sometimes confused with black beetles from the garden, cockroaches are distinguished by their very long, whip-like antennae, flat oval bodies and rapid, jerky gait. The adult German cockroach is 10 to 15mm long. The Common or Oriental cockroach is 20 to 24 mm long. They are rarely able to survive out of doors in the British climate, but thrive around the heating ducts and boiler rooms of large centrally heated buildings e.g. hospitals, bakeries, hotel and restaurant kitchens, laundries and blocks of flats. They cluster around pipes, stoves, sinks, especially in humid areas. The German cockroach carries its egg case, a small brown purse-like capsule until the 30 or more nymphs hatch from it. The Oriental cockroach deposits its 13mm long egg capsule on packaging, sacking or in suitable dark crevices before the 16 or 18 nymphs hatch out. Cockroaches grow by stages – from ‘mini-cockroach’ nymphs to maturity in six to 12 months for the Oriental cockroach, but only as many weeks in the case of the German cockroach. Both species eat any sort of food and emerge after dark, from their inaccessible harbourages, to forage, contaminating food and food utensils, or food preparation surfaces as they go. They taint food with an obnoxious smell and may be carriers of various diseases, including serious food poisoning.
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Small (2mm) wingless insects, flattened side to side, red-brown with backwardly directed spines and legs designed for jumping. All adult fleas are parasitic on warm-blooded animals. Larval stages live in the nest of the host and feed on skin, feathers and, most importantly, the blood-rich faeces of the adult flea. When fully grown the larvae spin well camouflaged silken cocoons. When fully developed the adult waits within this until it detects the vibrations caused by a potential host. Only then does it emerge. The complete lifecycle takes about a month in the summer. Adult fleas feed on blood. Their bites can cause intense irritation around the central bright red spot. Different people react differently to a bite, both in terms of degree of reaction and time taken to react. The Cat flea is by far the commonest species of flea and readily bites humans. The Human flea and the Bird flea are next in importance. Dog fleas are rare, although other species may become temporarily attached to dogs.
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A family of two-winged polluters that is, too often, tolerated within our homes. Apart from the biting flies, all species feed by vomiting saliva on to the food surface, treading it in and sucking up the resulting liquid. In the course of doing so, the fly contaminates the food with bacteria from its gut and its feet. Thus, it may transmit food poisoning, dysentery, typhoid or cholera in countries where these occur. The eggs of parasitic worms may also be carried by flies.
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“If you followed a fly for a day, you wouldn’t eat for a week”. The Common Housefly and the Lesser Housefly are the most widespread household of flies. The adult is 7-8mm long, grey in colour with black stripes on the back, with a single pair of veined membraneous wings. The large compound eyes take up most of the head and are wider apart in the female than the male of the species.
The smaller Lesser Housefly is the one that cruises around light fittings, abruptly changing direction in mid-flight. The Housefly has a sticky pad on each of its six hairy feet, and these enable it to walk upside down on ceilings or crawl up windows. Houseflies complete their life cycle of egg, maggot, pupa, adult in a week during warm weather. The eggs are laid in batches of about 120 on rotting organic matter and the legless white maggots burrow into this food until ready to pupate in loose soil or rubbish. The answer to ‘where do flies go in the winter?’ is that some hibernate, but most pass the winter in the pupal stage. Houseflies may transmit a wide range of bacterial diseases.
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The House Mouse, and sometimes the Long-Tailed Field Mouse, seek the warmth and shelter of buildings for nesting sites and food. Their presence is usually detected from their dark-coloured droppings or damage to stored foods in the larder, packaging or woodwork. Mice become sexually mature in eight to ten weeks, and a pair may produce eight litters each of 16 young in a year. Multiply those and you arrive at a horrifying number of mice! They climb well and can squeeze through very small gaps. These nibbling nuisances have a compulsive need to gnaw in order to keep their incisor teeth worn down to a constant length. Mice may seriously damage electric cables, water and gas pipes, packaging and woodwork – many instances of electrical fires and floods have been attributed to mice. They contaminate far more food than they consume and they are capable of carrying many diseases, particularly food poisoning. The average house mouse sheds 70 droppings in 24 hours and urinates frequently to mark its territory.
Mice are erratic, sporadic feeders, nibbling at many sources of food rather than taking repeated meals from any one item. They do not need free water to drink as they normally obtain sufficient moisture from their food.
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Large, conspicuous buzzing insects with yellow and black striped, wasp-waisted bodies, 10-15 mm long. They have a sweet tooth at one end and a painful sting at the other. The queen wasp is larger (20mm) and she hibernates over winter, making a nest in the spring in which to lay her eggs. She feeds the grubs on insects until they develop into worker wasps, three to four weeks later. Workers, all sterile females, forage for over a mile in search of food. One nest may produce 30,000 wasps in a year. At their peak in August and September with the youngsters reared, the workers turn to the sweet food they prefer and become a nuisance wherever this is available. If annoyed or threatened, wasps will sting and the best remedy – after removing the sting with a clean fingernail – is to apply an anti-histamine. Some people react violently to being stung with several dying each year.
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The mole is abundant throughout mainland Britain and is found wherever there are suitable soils for tunnelling. The moles themselves are rarely seen – their unsightly molehills, however, and therefore the tunnels underneath have been known to cause tremendous problems. The tunnelling causes unevenness of the surface and instability of the ground which can result in injuries to domestic animals, particularly racehorses, but also cows and sheep. The molehills can also damage mowing machinery, and are extremely unwelcome on the expensive turf of a golf green, bowling green or a prized lawn.
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