Baby, It's Hot, Hot, Hot Outside

Here in the Northeast, the heat over the past few days has bordered on unbearable.  There are heat warnings and heat advisories on the radio.  The malls and pools are packed with folks looking for refuge.  As I drove home yesterday, my car thermometer hit 102 degrees F.  That’s hot!

It got me to wondering what impact all of this heat has on pests?  Sure, ants, stinging insects and flies love the heat, since they are very obviously active in the summer.  But this is more than just summer heat – this is oppressive.

I posed the question above to one of our bug experts and got some interesting information.  For instance, did you know that crickets chirp less when it’s really hot?  While this is somewhat dependent on the humidity, not even crickets want to work when it’s this hot.   Also, would you have guessed that we get an increase in customer calls for pests like milipedes, centipedes and pillbugs when it’s really hot?   The explanation, it turns out, is that pests don’t like this kind of heat any more than we do.  They’re looking for refuge and often find it in basements and crawl spaces where it’s usually cool and damp.

I guess bugs aren’t that different from us after all… they don’t always like the heat and will head off somewhere to cool down.