Pest infestations can damage your home, contaminate food, and pose health risks for you and your family. When hiring a pest control company, look for one with tenured legacies and solid credentials, such as state licenses and certifications.
Monitoring insect, mollusk, and vertebrate pests often involves trapping or scouting. Monitoring can also include checking environmental conditions such as temperature and moisture levels. Contact Abbotsford Pest Control now!
Pests are more than just a nuisance; they can damage property and even cause health problems. Rats, for example, can gnaw on electrical wires and spread diseases like hantavirus, leptospirosis and Salmonella. While some pests can be quite dangerous, there are many steps that can be taken to prevent them from entering your home or office.
Prevention techniques include traps, baits and a variety of physical controls. They are often used in conjunction with other methods to provide a more holistic approach to pest control. The idea is to eliminate the food, water and shelter that pests need in order to survive. Once these sources are eliminated, they will be forced to seek out other accommodations.
It is important to keep in mind that pests can enter a building through cracks and holes, so these areas must be kept clean and sanitized as well. Frequently check for any potential entry points and take the time to seal them when necessary. This can be as simple as adding screens to windows and doors (20-mesh or finer) and repairing them regularly.
Another area to be concerned about is wood piles that are located near a structure. These can be a source of termites, ants and other pests that may want to move indoors. Keeping them cleared away from the house and trimming back bushes that come into contact with the building will help to reduce this risk.
In addition, make sure that garbage cans are tightly closed and emptied on a regular basis to prevent rodents from breeding inside them. Also, keep kitchen counters and floors clean so that crumbs and spilled foods don’t attract pests. Finally, it is a good idea to get rid of any standing water around the structure (this can be caused by leaking pipes or gutters) as this can attract mosquitoes and other insects that are attracted to moist areas.
Lastly, it is wise to walk the perimeter of the building and check for any places where the foundation or siding may be compromised. It is also important to maintain the landscaping so that it does not provide a hiding place for pests such as spiders and mice.
Suppression
Suppression techniques are used to control pests that have already invaded an area. They involve reducing pest numbers or damage to an acceptable level with as little harm as possible to the environment, crops, people, pets and livestock. There are three main suppression tactics:
Prevention is a key to preventing pests from becoming a problem in the first place. Good sanitation practices such as eliminating food sources and shelter can help prevent pest infestations. Examples of preventive measures include using pest-free seeds or transplants, avoiding overwatering that encourages weed growth, improving field and equipment sanitation, and eliminating alternate hosts for insect pests and disease organisms.
Scouting is a crucial part of any pest management program. This involves regularly searching for and identifying pests, assessing damage levels, and monitoring the effectiveness of other control methods. This is a great way to detect the presence of pests, including pesticide resistance, and to determine when and where further inspections are necessary.
Biological controls use natural enemies such as predators, parasitoids and pathogens to reduce pest populations. These can include nematodes (microscopic worms) that feed on insect pests, and plant pathogens such as viruses and bacteria. Prediction models can be used to identify which enemies will work best on a particular pest, and how many enemies are needed to keep populations low. Unlike chemical pesticides that offer a quick knockdown effect, biological controls take time to work.
A common method of utilizing biological control is to delay the pest’s reproduction or development, such as by introducing sterile males or using pheromone-released juvenile hormones. This can be a useful technique for controlling horticultural pests such as thrips or caterpillars, and is especially effective when applied to horticultural crops that experience critical periods of development, such as bud burst and flowering.
Another method of utilizing biological control is to spray a mixture of beneficial microbes and organic materials that are toxic to pests, such as the bacterium Bacillus thuringiensis var. kurstaki that releases the enzyme lysophosphatidylcholine, which breaks down an insect’s cell walls and causes it to die. This technique can be used to control a wide variety of pests, and is safe for the environment and for people.
Eradication
Pesticides can be very effective for eradicating persistent pests such as ants and flies, but they often have side effects. For example, a bird may be poisoned if it eats a bug killed by an insecticide or if the chemical gets into its water supply. Using baits instead of sprays for these insects, where possible, is often less toxic. It is also important to keep food and utensils away from areas that are being treated.
If a pesticide is used incorrectly or at the wrong time, it can cause resistance. This occurs when the surviving pests develop resistance to the pesticide. It is important to select the correct pesticide and application method, follow label instructions and rotate chemicals whenever possible to reduce the development of resistant populations.
Eradication is the reduction to zero of a pest population. This is often the goal in health care settings, where there is a zero tolerance for pests in operating rooms and other sterile areas. It is also the goal with endemic diseases such as smallpox and rinderpest, although these diseases still exist in the world today.
Biological control methods use the pest’s natural enemies such as parasites and predators to reduce its numbers. This can be supplemented with artificial means such as the release of sterile insects or the manipulation of the organism’s biology, such as with pheromones or juvenile hormones.
Microbial pesticides are made of bacteria or fungi that have been developed into strains that target specific pest species. Bacillus thuringiensis (commonly known as Bt) is a well-known example of this type of product. It is found in more than 130 commercial pesticide products and is used to kill a wide range of pests including beetles, flies and mosquitoes.
It is a good idea to remove any standing water sources from your home, as this will prevent the breeding of mosquitoes and other disease-causing pests. This includes draining or regularly changing the water in bird baths, relocating outdoor fountains to a higher location and using larvae-eating fish in ornamental ponds. Adding leaf litter or other material to your garden can also help to prevent pests by limiting their access to moisture.
Mechanical or Physical Controls
The best way to deal with a pest problem is to prevent it from occurring in the first place. Plant selection, proper placement, good irrigation and fertilization practices, and avoiding overcrowding can all help reduce the need for chemical control measures. It is important to accurately identify your pest and understand its biology and ecology. This information will help you decide when and how to use management techniques.
Many pests are a natural part of the environment, and their presence in urban landscapes is often due to factors beyond our control. Climate, the availability of food and water, natural enemies, and barriers to movement all affect the numbers of pests that can be tolerated. In addition, some plants are more prone to pests than others; for example, a lawn may be dominated by the green June beetle grub or the seed heads of sow bugs while another lawn nearby has few problems.
Monitoring and scouting are essential to pest control. Scouting is the process of regularly searching for and assessing the number of pests and damage they are causing. This enables you to take action when needed before the problem gets out of hand. Action thresholds have been established for many pests; when a certain level is reached, the pest population must be controlled.
Mechanical or physical controls kill a pest directly or block them out of an area, such as traps for rodents or screens to keep insects and birds away. Other techniques alter the environment to make it unsuitable for pests, such as mulches for weed management or steam sterilization of the soil to control pathogens.
When modern pesticides were first developed, their widespread use led to the emergence of resistant pests. As a result, a new approach to pest management was developed; this is known as integrated pest management (IPM). IPM includes prevention, suppression, and eradication tactics but also takes advantage of the ways in which plants interact with their environment and each other. It is through a combination of these approaches that the most effective control methods are achieved.