Unseasonably warm winters mean insects that go dormant for the winter stay active. It means insects will breed earlier than usual, supported by accelerated life cycles; also due to warmer temperatures. Ticks, for example, are likely to start the phone ringing sooner than anyone would want due to their resiliency and a biology that supports activity in months most of us relax our tick prevention efforts. (Remember, treat your pets and your home year round for year round protection.) While we cannot control what mother nature does as she drops two-feet of snow in October, or  as you walk the dog in shorts January 14th (it was 68 degrees), you can protect your home and family from pests year round and be prepared for the unexpected twists and turns the weather is going to throw at you.

Mild winters also mean more rodent activity. Rodents that moved into structures in the fall for warmth, while happy with their new surroundings, could mean that rodent populations increase instead of decreasing as they should in colder months. More importantly, populations can quickly surge in the spring bringing ticks, fleas and other parasites that rodents carry along for the ride. Not a good scenario for pets or humans alike.

So if you’re noticing the odd fly or ants sporadically throughout the winter, or if the mouse activity you suspected suddenly ceases to make itself known, brace yourself. Spring’s true measure of pest activity now begins with winter’s puzzling display of climatic oddities.

How Mild Winters Affect Pests is a post from: deBugged - The Rentokil Blog

So why, you might ponder, is numeracy so important in the animal kingdom? It helps animals solve problems and communicate. Science Alert uses a great example of the Cowbird which chooses to eschew all type of childcare. The Cowbird prefers to dump their eggs into the nest of another bird which contains three eggs. The unwitting surrogate bird then has to bring up the Cowbird chicks too. Crows identify individuals by the number of caw sounds in their vocalisations.

The BBC broadcast Test Your Pet in 2004 to discover which was Britain’s cleverest type of pet. Over 25,000 pets and their owners undertook six pet IQ tests. The title of Britain’s Cleverest Individual Pet went to Baggio, the Cockateil from Bristol. Baggio watches his owner, tailor Jack Territo, sewing suits. So Baggio has learnt to copy Jack by using his beak, tongue and claws. He can pick up a needle and thread it through material. Impressive stuff. Based on average scores for each group of pets, dogs ranked first, followed by horses, parrots, cats and rats.

Rats are clever animals and its always not easy to get rid of rats. They are quick on their feet and cunning but more worrying they understand cause and effect, which demonstrates a deeper intelligence. It concerns me to think that a rat may be cleverer than me.

The social hierarchy of ants is impressive but are they numerical. The 2011 study Numerical competence in animals, with an insight from ants by Russian scientists Zhanna Reznikova & Boris Ryabko indicates that ants can add and subtract small numbers and use these operations for optimising their messages.

If you ask any of our bird control technicians if they think pigeons are clever, they will tell you that pigeons can be really clever, and very determined, but in other ways they have a lot to learn. Not unlike a seven year child I guess.

How Clever Are Pests? is a post from: deBugged - The Rentokil Blog

Take a look at how easy it is to access your property if you are a tiny ant or a mouse. Do you have small gaps under your doors? Are there bushes brushing the exterior or cracks in the foundations? Don’t let pests like insects and spiders invade your beautiful home, because if they can get in and find food and shelter they won’t want to leave in a hurry. Here are seven design tips on how to keep your home a pest-free sanctuary from guest blogger Ian B who writes for Design 55 Online , a website specialising in homeware. 

1. Bats About Soffits

One neglected area in the home is the soffits in the overhang. Soffits act like armpits and invite air into the attic. This air cools down hot attics in the summer, making for a cooler home. In winter, the circulating air prevents ice build up on the roofs.

Some homeowners drill one-inch holes in the overhang and then cover the holes with pieces of screen, held in place by nails or staples. These fasteners can loosen and the screen may peel back, providing an ideal place for bats to enter the attic. Homeowners must check all soffits. Manufactured soffits are easy to install and will last for years.

2. Defend the Base

The base of the house is an entry point for various critters. If the foundation has cracks, then cockroaches, spiders, fire ants, sugar ants and black ants get in. In spring, homeowners need to check the foundation for points where bugs might enter. All cracks must be sealed.

3. Creepy Cupboards

Bugs love cupboards. Cookie crumbs are a feast for ants and cockroaches. Boxes and packages of food are easy for bugs to enter. Every spring, cupboards must be emptied and cleaned. A full-strength cleaning soap suitable for wood will wipe out scent trails that ants leave for their buddies to follow.

All food should be well sealed, either in zip-lock bags or suitable jars or containers. Bugs will get into most packaging sold in the grocery store.

Look for openings between the back splash and the counter top. Insects will use these cracks as invasion routes. Seal openings with caulk.

4. Flying Through Windows

Flies love windows. Windows are probably the most vulnerable feature in man’s castle called home. The caulk around windows gets old and cracked as the weather takes its toll. Screens can develop tiny holes and tears, especially along the molding strip or the rubber channel gasket. As these parts loosen or break down from age, gaps appear and offer entry to flies, mosquitoes, hornets and wasps.

Broken aluminum screen or hardware mesh must be replaced. The wood or metal screen frame should be inspected for gaps in the corners where the pieces are joined. The screen frame should fit tightly in the window opening. These steps will insure that no buzzing mosquito disturbs anyone’s sleep.

5. Welcome Mickey Mouse

How does Mickey Mouse get into a house? He walks through the door. Most mice, even those not named Mickey, get into houses by walking through the door. Any small gap less than 6mm in a door that doesn’t close completely is an invitation for a mouse to walk in.

A door should be plumbed by a professional carpenter to be certain no gaps exist and it hangs plumb. A plumb door closes tightly. The result is that Mickey Mouse stays in the great outdoors, and the cheese and crackers are safe.

6. Bushes Attract Pests

Bushes beside a house attract pests. Insects and mice find bushes a great place to live and an easy point to enter a house. Cut down or trim back all bushes close to a house.

7. Mildew Loves Roofs

Mildew is not a favorite aunt who drops in to admire a roof. Mildew is produced by molds that attack the roof. It’s usually green or black and forms streak on roofs. Mildew will grow on roofs shaded by trees and in areas that are damp and humid. Mildew can cause severe damage to roofs.

Mildew can be removed by filling a garden sprayer with one gallon of water and one-third of a gallon of bleach. The solution is sprayed on and allowed to set for 30 minutes. This is followed by a rinse with a garden hose.

Seven Design Tips To Minimise Pest-Risk is a post from: deBugged - The Rentokil Blog

From big fat rats, harlequin invasions, to flying ants and monster sized queen wasps hiding in the folds of my curtains I’ve had my fair share of pests invading my house in 2011. To round off the year I thought I would take a peek at the most visited blog posts of 2011.

1. Cartoon Rodents

Our top post of 2011 explored how rats and mice make great animated characters. From the happiness and joy of Mickey Mouse to the dark villainy of Megavolt, rodents make popular comic fodder. This blog explores the role mice and rats play in animation. Check out our list of rodents that have stood the test of time and still keep us laughing today. Who is your favourite cartoon rodent?

2. Giant Spider’s are Taking Over

In Texas 2007 giant communal spiders began to cast their web over swathes of Lake Tawokoni State Park. The park looked like something from a horror movie. Ever wondered how bad your house would look if you didn’t spring clean? Check out the pictures of a water treatment plant in Maryland which was covered in webbing so dense it pulled a bracket off the wall.

3. Spring Clean To Vanish Pests

This blog was written to support a #springclean twitter party. We responded to dozens of queries about how to get rid of the pests hiding in your cracks and crevices and offered advice on how to get rid of annoying household pests like fleas, moths and carpet beetles.

4. Plants which Repel Mosquitoes

If a mosquito can detect a human from 20-35 metres, they can also detect a number of plants they hate like lavender, citronella, basil and catnip. During the day mosquitoes like to rest on low lying plants like weeds because of the high humidity levels between the earth and the plant. By keeping your garden free of weeds and standing water you can help keep your garden free of mosquitoes. Planting in some of the plants mosquitoes hate can’t hurt either!

5. Bed Bugs Can’t Resist The Heat

In New York City, bedbugs now are 250 times more resistant to standard pesticides than bedbugs in Florida, researchers at the University of Massachusetts reported. This is due to changes in a gene controlling the resilience of the nerve cells targeted by the insecticide. The bad news for bed bugs is that pesticides are not necessary to eliminate the irritating blood suckers. Last year Rentokil developed an environmentally friendly product called Entotherm which not even the most armoured of bed bugs could desist. The heat treatment eliminates all insects, including bed bugs, cockroaches or textile pests as well as moulds and pathogens without the need for large quantities of insecticides.

6. Rabbits And Other Superstitions

From a sailor’s terror of fleeing rats to lucky  ladybugs and money spiders, the animal and bug kingdom is rich in superstition and folklore. There’s an old saying that stepping on ants brings rain. When ants are agitated there will be bad weather. Ants building a nest near the door to your house is a clear sign of financial security in the future (apparently).

7. Ants In My Cavity Wall

Ants to me are a real nuisance pest… mainly because of the sheer number of them. You never just see one lonely ant on its own, do you?  There is usually a whole army of them (did you know there is actually an ant called Army Ant?). Although the most common species of ant, the Black Ant, is not thought to carry diseases, it still concerns me to find them in my home, you just never know where they have been before.

8. War and the Trenches

World War I conditions were horrific and death was never far away. If the soldiers managed to survive enemy shelling and the sneaky sniper’s bullet they could just as easily be defeated by an illness such as Trench Foot or Wiel’s Disease. Fleas, lice and rodents were rife and would plague the men with disease.

9. Protecting The Water Vole

Laura Drake from The Mammal Society kindly wrote this blog for us.  One of the most endangered species is the water vole which is often confused for a rat. Laura outlines the reasons why we should all know the difference between a water vole and a rat, and the impact the invasive American Mink has had on the water vole.

10. Shooting Insects For Science

This blog was written almost two years ago but due to its huge popularity remains one of our most popular blogs ever. We interviewed David Spears, specialist cinematographer and science photographer at Clouds Hill Imaging, a company which supplies incredible microscopic film and photography for a range of clients including the BBC and Channel 4.

So many thanks, Happy New Year, and if you want to write a guest blog or have a pest control issue please do let me know…

Top 10 Blogs of 2011 is a post from: deBugged - The Rentokil Blog

Gary Day-Ellison is a Creative Director with a keen eye for style and beauty. He could even find something stylistic about an ant. Gary has worked for a number of clients including designing book covers for the BBC and Doug Adams,and a stunning Lord of the Rings calendar and diary. He shares a personal encounter here about the importance of pest control when there’s a ripe Stilton about the house.

I have been honoured by the invitation to contribute a guest post. Trouble is I am an innocent abroad when it comes to such matters.

That said, I could tell you why, from painful personal experience, you would be ill-advised to keep a Stilton in the cellar. Even for a few days. However cold it seems. Especially if you value your guests and friends. But I won’t since you may be eating your tea as you read this blog. And we don’t want to see it on the screen do we?

I considered an attempt to bluff my way through the topic of domestic pests. I would research a demonstration of my scholarship and in-depth investigations in this important aspect of cleanliness and disease prevention. My formula for faux-expertise was this. Google + a lot of earnest frowning in a white coat.

Maybe not.

But something interesting did occur to me – and it is this. We think of vermin as low-life, nasty little critters. Well, they are mostly. But they have always popped up in popular culture. As children we read about The Pied-Piper . . .  Mickey Mouse?

And what about classic international literature? Try Günter Grass’ The Rat. Or Albert Camus’ La Pest. Good game? How about Art? Try Damien Hirst’s Flies. And then, in the middle-ground Salvador Dali’s ants which frequently appear in his paintings?

But I don’t want to spoil the game. What examples of pests can you think of, in any of the Arts? (Excluding Christopher Biggins – Ed.)

If you want to read more about design, check out Gary’s Design Works blog.

The Art Of Pest Control is a post from: deBugged - The Rentokil Blog

In this part of Italy, the countryside is awash with olive groves, as was the grounds of our villa. Here, fig trees grow like weeds and the standard of Italian driving is even more questionable than in the much larger and more northern cities of Milan and Rome.

As has been mentioned in numerous earlier blogs, you are never far from pests, even on holiday. All four of us received numerous bug bites throughout the day and never figured out the cause. Thankfully, we did not have problems with mosquitoes (we were prepared with sprays and plug-in devices), though my husband claims to have squashed two in our bathroom during the early hours of one morning. All the windows had a fine mesh on the outside to deter flying insects and we kept the doors closed throughout the day to keep our trulli cool and to keep out the bugs.

There were lots of ants though on the lovely paving surrounding the pool, benefiting from all the crumbs we dropped on the floor during our snacks. The ants looked distinctively different in Italy, they seemed to have a longer body. On the other hand, some of the flies were really quite tiny.

Yellow jackets were a problem every time we had food or drinks outdoors. Most lunch times we ate outside under a large canopy overlooking our pool. The one wasp, which was the cause of much frustration seemed to be attracted to salami more than anything else, and in particular to the fat on the prosciutto.

Puglia was as beautiful as I had expected. Thankfully this part of Italy is not overflowing with tourists and retains its traditional charm and it means I didn’t have to complain about tourists getting in the way of my photographs.

If you are interested in diving, the town of Polignano a Mare, where we stopped for lunch on our first day, is right on the Adriatic coast, and hosts the Cliff Diving Championships- where crazy people dive of sheer rock faces into the crystal clear turquoise colour of the Adriatic. Its well worth a visit!

Olive Groves, Fig Trees and Bug Bites! is a post from: deBugged - The Rentokil Blog

Some worker ants will high-five the other ants by tapping antennae’s and sharing their goodies. Other ants will want a share of the booty themselves and will dash back down the pheromone trail to grab what they can.

Ants can be carnivorous, herbivorous or omnivorous, but in a lot of species their favourite food is honeydew. The sugary substance is milked from those annoying plant-destroying Aphids.

If you are unsure how ants are getting into your home try these tips.

Make A Trap For Ants

• It’s easy to lure ants to sugar. Make a trap by adding a couple of teaspoons of sugar to 240ml water. Moisten a few paper towels or cloths and set in spots where you may have spotted ants. Leave overnight and check first thing in the morning. If they are crawling repeat until no more ants are left.
• Squirt areas you think ants might be coming in from with equal part of white wine vinegar and water.
• Put down double-sided sticky tape in possible areas of access to trap them.

Create An Ant Trap is a post from: deBugged - The Rentokil Blog

There were lots of questions about ants too. A couple of weeks ago we reported that this year has been a bumper year for ants and flying ants and they really have been proving to be a pest, particularly when they invade your home.

Here’s some wasp and ant questions answered:

Q. I’m pretty sure we have a wasps’ nest under our house in an airbrick, as there are a lot of them coming and going. They aren’t in a place where they bother us, and I am pretty averse to killing things unnecessarily. I like the fact that they kill other insects and we’re not allergic to stings. So, is there any reason why it’s a bad idea to just leave it alone, as long as we’re careful, given that they won’t use it again?

A. It’s conceivable they might use it again, it depends how much room there is. If they are not causing you a problem, they are not pests (to you). Feel free to leave them alone.

Q. What on earth are wasps for? Do they serve any useful purpose in the overall scheme of things?

Wasps are predatory insects; they perform a similar role to other predatory insects (including dragonflies, ladybirds and hoverflies). Remove wasps from an ecosystem and you would see a rise in the insects they feed on. They are pretty important beneficial insects in agriculture as they feed on a number of crop pests.

Q. We are going camping in August and I’m dreading it – any tips for keeping them away – does a jam jar really work?

Good hygiene is the basis of good pest control, so make sure that all litter is tidied away quickly and kept in a sealed bag. Clean up any spillages promptly too. Jars of sweetened water will hold a visiting wasp’s attention, although jar traps work best when the wasp can’t work out how to get out again. You can buy jar traps with narrow necks or make your own.

Q. We keep getting 2 or 3 odd ants in the conservatory and into the lounge. Is this because they smell food? What are they doing? Exploring for the main bunch?

Q. Last night I noticed lots of big flying ants in the kitchen and realised they were coming out from under the fridge. On pulling it put out I found about 2 inch deep sand piled up to the skirting boards. We shovelled it out and didn’t find many more ants so perhaps not the nest itself? The ants appear to be nesting under the patio directly outside the kitchen but we can’t see where they are coming in despite watching them for quite a while. Is this activity likely to damage our house and why are they leaving piles of sand in our kitchen?

A. Garden ant nests can remain active for well over five years. Digging up the nest is an effective non-chemical way of dealing with it, provided you can get to it. It’s impossible to a make a building ‘ant-proof’ so you will always find one or two ants looking for food. Try putting down some double-sided tape on the floor where you suspect they are coming in. They should get stuck and you might find some appropriate places to improve proofing or apply baits.

For more information about why ants fly en masse and why they turn soil into powder, visit our flying ants blog.

Thanks to everyone who contributed to the Q&A session at Mumset. You can still join the forum discussion here.

How To Get Rid Of Wasps And Ants is a post from: deBugged - The Rentokil Blog

A honey-bee colony can be decimated by an ant or yellow-jacket invasion. Driven by a sweet-toothed desire for honey just a handful of wasp ninja’s can diminish a hive within hours. However you may be surprised to find out what happens when an ant meets a wasp.

Check out these video’s which provide an insight into how insects provide their own pest control.

30 Hornets v 30,000 Bees

This incredible footage by silentrouge shows what happens when a handful of hornets plunder a beehive containing thousands of bees.

Ants v Bees

The beekeeper in the video explains that bees can’t contract their stinger enough to sting, but the ants can easily sting the bees. Interestingly the beekeeper also explains that fire ants don’t bother bees, just humans!

Ant v Wasp

Finally, who do you think comes off best when an ant attacks a wasp? To find out watch this great footage by Lionel9965:

Wasps v Bees and Ants is a post from: deBugged - The Rentokil Blog

And it is not just common black garden ants but the number of red ants too that are on the increase.

Thankfully, this should not be a major cause for alarm. Black garden ants do not actively carry diseases, unlike mosquitoes or flies, but they may well have crawled across some nasty, dirty outdoor areas before they venture inside your home to forage for food and end up on your worktops (my personal experience of this is still very vivid in my memory!). So, personally I would double up on your house cleaning efforts to dissuade them from entering your home.

Simple steps can help to get rid of ants:

• Clean up any liquid spills or food mess immediately
• Clean out bins regularly and keep them sealed
• Sweep up in your kitchen – clean food debris from under fridges, ovens, cupboards
• Ensure entry points are sealed to stop ants coming in. Common areas tend to be around pipes, drains, windows and door cracks
• Vacuum regularly
• Store food in containers

However much we all find ants a real pain to have in our homes, it is worth mentioning some interesting facts about these little crawling insects as you may acquire a new found respect for them:
• The ant has the largest brain for an insect, relative to its size. It has more processing power than the computer that controlled the first NASA moon mission!
• The ant brain has 250,000 brain cells compared to a human’s 10 billion – considering the difference in size that still sounds like a lot of brain power to me!
• An ant has the strength to carry food up to seven times their own body weight – not sure even weight lifting champions could come close to that!
• The combined weight of every ant in the world is greater than the combined weight of every human!

Sky’s The Limit for Ants in Ireland is a post from: deBugged - The Rentokil Blog