Professional Pest Control

Hiring a professional pest control service provider or exterminator offers several advantages over attempting to control and exterminate pests such as rodents, cockroaches, spiders, termites and ants in and around your property on your own. Professionally trained pest control service providers can resolve and prevent infestation, and also intervene on an emergency basis.

Function

Professional pest control service providers perform extermination procedures using highly potent chemicals to eradicate certain types of pests. They can set up termite and pest-baiting systems, and also protect the home or property from infestation by administering treatments on a weekly, monthly or quarterly basis. Unlike do-it-yourself pest control kits, professional pest control services can treat and prevent infestations over the long term.

Types of Pest Control Services

When working with a professional pest control service provider, you may be able to choose from the following types of services: pre-treatments for new construction, perimeter treatment to exterminate pests before they enter the home, emergency services to remove hives and kill pests that may be populating a certain area of the home, termite monitoring systems, infestation inspections, sanitization services, and sealing and caulking of certain structures to eliminate avenues of entry.

The Pest Control Process

When working with a pest control service provider, the first step is to undergo a thorough inspection. The provider will be able to document each area of the property that has been or is at risk of being infested, and will also take a close look at the types of pests affecting the area. The professional may also ask you what types of pests you have seen or encountered. After the inspection report is complete, the service provider can provide you with a proposal of services that may include pre-treatments, extermination treatments, sanitization and follow-up treatments.

Key Benefits of Pest Control

The key benefits of working with a pest control professional instead of attempting to eliminate pests on your own include thorough evaluation and inspection of your home that may detect areas that you did not know about, use of chemicals and compounds that do not damage the interior and exterior of the home, and the ability to close off all avenues of entry with general repair services.

Considerations

Pricing for professional pest control services can vary from region to region. Your quote will depend on the size of the home, the size of the lawn, whether you need interior and exterior treatments, the number of treatments you need over the recommended treatment plan, and the number of hours it will take to perform your required services. You can request for a site inspection with a breakdown of all services and rates so you know exactly what to expect from the service provider.

Be sure to contact The Bug Dude for all your pest control needs.

Phone: Toll Free: 800-310-BUGS (2847)
Phone: Local: 817-354-5350
Fax:817-540-0569

Pest Control Source Article

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Dealing With Winter Pests

Don’t Let Pests Take Refuge In Your Home

Winter weather is a time where pests want to hide in the warmth of your home. Most folks think of rats and mice, but many other pests like ants are also prone to hiding indoors in the wintertime.

Rats, mice, and squirrels love to nest in attics during the winter. They burrow through the insulation and huddle around furnaces. They can be especially annoying by scratching in the ceiling and walls, keeping you up all night. They can also turn your attic into a disaster zone by contaminating the insulation with feces and urine.

It is a nasty thought to think of all the airborne contaminates floating around the attic and into the HVAC system of your home. These rodents need to keep their teeth sharp and constantly gnaw on anything to sharpen their teeth. They chew on wires and in some cases have led to house fires.

Raccoons, opossums, and bats can also contaminate and destroy attics. These pests can be eliminated with proper exclusion work. Winter is a great time to ensure all entry points into the home are sealed off. Many do not realize there is a gap between the shingle line and the gutter line, the usual entry point into the home for unwanted pests. A good exterminator can seal off these areas so animals can no longer get in these gaps.

Roaches and silverfish enjoy huddling in the warmth of attic insulation, and many homes see an influx of these two pests during the winter. Cockroaches also spread disease, and their droppings and saliva can trigger asthma attacks, especially in young children.

Call The Bug Dude today, and take care of these pests before they do serious damage to your health and home!

Phone: Toll Free: 800-310-BUGS (2847)
Phone: Local: 817-354-5350
Fax:817-540-0569

Pests Source Article

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Nothing spoils a picnic more than seeing a trail of black ants travel over the food, down the table leg and off into the distance.

Where You’ll Find Black Ants

Black ants eat everything, vegetables, fruit and other insects, dead or alive. They especially love anything made with sugar or grease. The worker ant forages for the food, returns to the nest and alerts the others. The worker marks the trail by leaving a scent, produced by pheromones, along the way. Upon reaching the colony, the ant uses its antennae to brush against the other worker ants. This causes them to seek out the trail, get the food and bring it back to the nest. Though small in size the little black ant can transport items 20 times their weight.

Little black ants should not be confused with carpenter ants. Little black ants are located all over the world. They can be found in the backyards of most American homes. The nests can be located anywhere, in trees, under rotten wood and stones. Indoors, they’ll make a home under old carpeting, cracks and openings found in woodwork and the foundation. The majority of black ants found in the house are looking for food to take back to the nest.

Black Ants Appearance

Like their name, little black ants are small and jet- black in color. The scientific name is Monomorium minimum. Worker ants measure 1/16th of an inch. The queen is twice as the size at 1/8th of an inch. The colony consists of male ants, larvae, infertile female workers, all ruled by the queen. In some nests there will be two or more queens. There can be thousands of ants in the colony. When the colony is no longer able to support it, one of the queens and her workers will leave and start their own colony.

Black ants have a small stinger located at the rear of the abdomen but it’s not very effective, its effect is quite mild. The purpose of the antennae is to smell as well to touch. This is the ant’s way of communicating. The adult ants have six powerful legs along with a strong jaw. Although they have a jaw, they cannot chew food. The throat is long and thin, allowing for the swallowing of liquid from food, but not the solid bits.

Preventing Black Ant Infestation

Good housekeeping is best way to prevent an infestation of ants in the house. All food should be kept in closed containers. A solution of half water and half vinegar can be poured into a spray bottle and used on the kitchen surfaces. Ant bait can also be used. Caulk all openings into the home.

Treating Black Ants

The mistake most people make when attempting to control ants is only spraying the ones they see. This approach usually fails because the ants seen foraging over exposed surfaces is only a small portion of the colony. Typically, there will be thousands of additional ants including one or more egg-laying queens hidden somewhere in a nest. Eliminating queens and other colony members within nests is often the key to effective ant control.

If you think you have a problem with black ants, contact us here. We will make sure that your problem is solved properly so you can enjoy your home, and yard again. Black Ants Treatment Services

Black Ants Source Article 1
Black Ants Source Article 2

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One can readily learn how to identify recluse spiders with less than a minute’s training. Whereas most U.S. spiders have 8 eyes, typically arranged in 2 rows of 4, the recluse spiders have 6 eyes arranged in pairs (dyads) with one anterior dyad and 2 lateral dyads (Fig. 1). All 13 species of U.S. recluses (11 native, 2 non-native) share the same eye pattern. In many publications, the violin pattern on the cephalothorax (the first body part to which the legs attach) is mentioned as a diagnostic characteristic (Fig 2). Although it is quite consistent in adult brown recluses (although it can fade in preserved specimens), many western U.S. recluse species and some young brown recluses have virtually no contrasting pigmentation in the violin region (Fig. 3, 4). In addition, recluse spiders have abdomens that are devoid of coloration pattern and their legs are covered with fine hairs but lack thickened spines.

Figure 1	Figure 2
Close-up of the cephalothorax of the brown recluse spider, Loxosceles reclusa, (from Missouri) showing the pattern of 6 eyes arranged in dyads	A preserved brown recluse spider showing the strongly contrasting and well-defined violin pattern on the cephalothorax as well as the patternless abdomen covered with fine hairs.

Figure 3	Figure 4
A desert recluse, Loxosceles deserta, (from near Indio, Calif) showing the lack of a strongly defined violin pattern.	The cephalothorax of a preserved desert recluse showing the characteristic recluse eye pattern and a uniformly colored cephalothorax

Misidentification of spiders as brown recluses is not uncommon both in the lay and medical communities. Many of these mistaken spiders are similar in only one trait with actual recluse spiders, with some only sharing the characteristics of brown color and eight legs.

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Grace Grapevine Writes:

Development Team Evicts Family of Four

It was an ongoing saga. On June 6, Development Director Mark Woolverton noticed a strange sound coming from the supply closet. When he saw a paw emerge from a small hole in the ceiling, he immediately posted a warning sign on the door and called Mid-Cities Pest Control. First Rocky, estimated to be at least 25 pounds, was brought down from the attic. Over the weekend, his wife June was caught. Early the next week two youngsters were humanely recovered. At each instance, curious GRACE staffers stopped to bid the masked visitors a fond farewell. The generous folks from Mid-Cities Pest Control transported the family of raccoons south and released them in the wilds of Midlothian. Bon voyage, varmints!

Gracegrapevine.org

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When controlling ants, keep these important pest control tips in mind:

Our Pest Control Company Stops Ant’s Food Source

Knowing what the ant needs is vital to pest control and making your home or yard less inviting. Ants have various food sources including wood, decaying plants and insects or even your yummy food. Practice house hygiene. Empty and wash garbage cans and recycling bins. Clean up crumbs and spills, especially sweet liquids like soda. To do these things as they come up is good pest control.

Another way to control pest that come inside your home is by keeping your food in hard sealed containers, not cardboard boxes or paper wrappers. Ants are expert infiltrators and will swarm your delicious foods if you’re not prepared. Your yard is another prime spot for ants to flourish so keep the vegetation and growth around the house trimmed. This will hinder the ants ability to travel from the shrubs and branches into your house. Something as simple as yard maintenance will make you a pest control master!

Let’s make sure those pest don’t have a way to get in your house. Seal any cracks and crevices that ants may use to enter your house. Also ask how to use The Bug Dude to prevent and control ants in and around your home. If you decide to use pesticides, always read and follow all labeled instructions carefully.

There are many pest control companies in DFW to choose from, thank you for choosing
The Bug Dude!

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Mid-Cities Pest Control was established in 1979 by Roy Leal with the dream of not only providing a pest control service, but of providing exceptional services at a reasonable price. Over the years his dream has become reality. Randy Leal, Roy’s son, and his wife Debbie have since taken over the family business. They have taken his father’s dream and grown upon it; still keeping in mind his father’s wishes to exceed the client’s expectations. Mid-Cities Pest Control has grown from the few customers it started with in 1979 to over 25,000 happy clients.

One of the ideas that Mid-Cities Pest Control practices today is that customers are priority #1. That is why clients’ rates are not increased as long as they stay on schedule with the company. We have found that there are no other companies out there that do this. We have customers that are paying the same price as their original price from years and years ago. Is that customer service or what?

Mid-Cities Pest Control provides free inspections; this allows you, the homeowner, to have a trained pest professional to come to your residence, not only to identify the pest but also to discuss the different options and plans that we have to take care of your pest needs. The inspector/technician will be able to discuss the process of making sure that your home is well protected, whether it is from ants, roaches, mice, rats or even termites. No matter what the multi-legged pest is, give us a call we would love the opportunity to earn your business. With weekday and even Saturday appointments we make it convenient for you to get the proper protection.

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