Common Spring Pests to Prevent

Prevent spring pests by spring cleaning your Atlanta GA home! Tips from Active Pest ControlSpring is almost here, which means pests are on their way! While pest problems are a fact of life in Georgia year-round, springtime sees a big fluctuation in pest problems. This is because many pests that are less active throughout the winter are encouraged by warming temperatures to start invading homes again. To keep spring pests out of your property, it’s important to prepare your home now! Keep reading for tips from the experts at Active Pest Control.

5 Common Springtime Pests

It’s pest season, and there are many pests to be on the lookout for in the next couple of months. The most common pest problems this time of year are:

  • Ants. With warmer weather comes hoards of ants in your home.
  • Termites. Termite swarming season is here! Termite infestations often start in the spring.
  • Rodents. Although they’re active year-round, rats and mice are a problem in the spring.
  • Stinging insects. Wasps and hornets are gearing up to build nests this time of year.
  • Stink bugs. After overwintering, people report a resurgence in stink bugs.

How to Prevent Pests this Spring

Chances are, you’ll be doing some spring cleaning around your home. Why not throw in pest prevention measures while you’re at it? To prepare your home for spring pests, implement the following tips:

  1. Clean your windows and doors, and make sure there are no cracks or crevices. If there are, seal them properly.
  2. Deep-clean your carpets by vacuuming and shampooing, if possible.
  3. Clean your kitchen with a focus on your appliances. Crumbs and spilled liquids are easy bait for rodents, cockroaches, and more!
  4. Remove debris from your yard, and trim back tree branches away from your home. Also clean out gutters and downspouts.
  5. Ensure your plumbing is working properly and fix any leaks.
  6. In general, tidy up your home. Clean under furniture, wipe down surfaces, and inspect areas of your home that need some fixing up.

How to Get Rid of Spring Pests

You’ve thoroughly cleaned your kitchen and tidied your backyard, but there’s still ants crawling across your kitchen counters—now what? To prevent inevitable spring pests, it’s best to team up with a professional pest control company. The exterminators at Active Pest Control will work with you to ensure your home is safeguarded from pests this spring and all year long.

Termites or Carpenter Ants: How to Tell the Difference

Carpenter ants are often confused for termites in Atlanta GA. Learn more from Active Pest ControlIf you think you’ve spotted a termite in or near your home, how can you be so sure it’s not a carpenter ant? These two wood-destroying insects are commonly mistaken for one another. Together, they are responsible for some of the worst residential pest infestations each year for homeowners. Swarmers (termites or carpenter ants with wings) are both active around the same time of year, but their similarities end there.

Keep reading for expert info from Active Pest Control on how to tell the difference between termites and carpenter ants.

What do Carpenter Ants and Termites Look Like?

To the untrained eye, it’s very easy to confuse carpenter ants for termites in the swarmer stage. Although they look very similar, the size of the swarmer differentiates the two. The main differences between how carpenter ants and termites look are:

  1. Carpenter ant swarmers: These are black in color, with some species having slightly red coloring. Carpenter ants measure 1/2″–5/8″ with antenna bent at a 45-degree angle. Their wings are translucent with a reddish brown hue, laying over the posterior of the ant. Carpenter ants are by far the biggest ant species in the nation.
  2. Termite swarmers: These termites are dark brown to black, and measure 3/8″ long including the wings. Their wings are a translucent to slightly milky or smoky color. Their wings may overlap, and are typically as long as or slightly longer than the body. This is an easy visual clue to differentiate them from carpenter ants.

Winged ant vs. Termite Swarmer in Atlanta GA & Knoxville TN - Active Pest Control

What’s Worse: Termite Damage or Carpenter Ant Damage?

Both the termite and the carpenter ant attack wood, but in very different ways. For the most part, carpenter ants establish their nests in decayed wood and then later expand into undamaged wood, insulation, or wall voids. Their damage is not always visible, but the galleries they excavate appear to have been sanded.

Termites, on the other hand, eat through wood. These wood-destroying insects find their way into a structure around basement windows, doorways, under siding, porches, or any structure in contact with the soil. Established colonies can range from 60,000 to over a million workers and can consume nearly 5 grams of wood per day. For this reason, termites are significantly more dangerous than the carpenter ant, as they can cause much more damage in a short period of time.

When to Call a Termites or Carpenter Ants Exterminator

If you’ve seen the signs of either of these insects or have noticed damage, it’s crucial to call the exterminators at Active Pest Control as soon as possible. Everyone knows termites are infamously difficult to control, but carpenter ant colonies are hard to exterminate as well! With our licensed and tenured termite control specialists, we can inspect your Atlanta GA property and protect your structure from wood-destroying insects like termites and carpenter ants.

Prevent Unwanted Pest Infestations with TAP Insulation

TAP Insulation protects against pests and is energy efficient for your Atlanta GA - Active Pest ControlEveryone knows that pest prevention is the best form of pest control, and TAP® Insulation is changing the pest control industry. This innovative home insulation surpasses all other insulation in efficiency, and also provides superior pest control for a number of insects. Made of more than 80% recycled paper, it is eco-friendly and is a smart investment for all property owners looking to prevent pest infestations. Read on to learn more about this game-changing TAP Insulation service offered by the Active Pest Control team!

What Pests are Controlled by TAP® Insulation?

The best feature of TAP Insulation is its pest control abilities. A borate-based pest control product is embedded within the insulation. When certain insects come into contact with the insulation, they will die off as they groom themselves and ingest the borate. Although TAP pest control insulation will not kill rodents or wildlife, there are many insects that it does kill, including:

Other Benefits of TAP Pest Control Insulation

In addition to controlling pest infestations, this home insulation is favored for its many other benefits. It can be installed over existing insulation or on its own and once it is in place, it never needs to be replaced. Some of the most desirable benefits of TAP pest resistant home insulation include:

  1. Reduces energy bill costs
  2. Reduces outside noises
  3. Made of recycled, eco-friendly materials
  4. Improves indoor air quality
  5. Mold & mildew resistant
  6. Not dangerous to humans or pets
  7. The borate serves as a fire-retardant

Pest Resistant Home Insulation Installation

Whether you own a new property or want to upgrade your existing insulation, TAP Insulation is the way to go. In addition to warding off pest infestations, it also reduces your energy bills and is an eco-friendly option. To learn more about TAP Insulation or to set up an appointment with Active Pest Control, give our team a call today!

Seeing Ants In Your Georgia Home?

It just so happens that your home provides everything an ant and several hundred of it’s friends need to survive. We’re talking about food and shelter. If gaps around doors and windows or cracks in the foundation are present, these pesky ants will slip right in. You’ll likely see them hanging out in the kitchen, bathrooms and other areas of the home you’d consider off limits to these foraging pests.

Here in Atlanta, we deal with both nuisance ants and wood destroying ants. Nuisance ants are relatively harmless. Their presence in your home is annoying but not considered threatening. If they trek through your pantry or across those cookies on your counter, you might want to throw out the food but you don’t have to worry about a bigger health threat. The carpenter ant is a wood destroying ant and again is not dangerous to your health. The same cannot be said for wood structures. Carpenter ants don’t eat wood like termites do but they do tunnel through to create galleries. They may even establish satellite colonies in your walls. Left untreated, carpenter ants can inflict significant damage to a structure.

So to recap, if you are seeing ants in your home, it’s because they’ve found a way in and are liking the accommodations. Now how to fix this problem.

To prevent ants from getting inside, you must start on the outside. You’ve got to make sure that the exterior of the house is sealed tight. That means any tiny hole or gap is identified and corrected. Next you will want to make sure that all hedges and shrubs are trimmed away from your home. Though they look nice, landscape elements often provide a nice bridge to the house.

Moving indoors, you must be sure to eliminate any potential food sources. Food on the counters and open packages in the pantry must be outlawed in your home if you want to deter ants. Use containers that seal to hold food. Crumbs and spills should be cleaned up right away as well. Don’t forget to run a cleaning cloth under the toaster and sweep under the major appliances to get rid of crumbs hiding.

If you already have an ant infestation in your home, Active Pest Control offers effective home pest control services that get rid of ants and other household pests. Best of all, our program protects your home all year round. Contact us today to find out how our Atlanta pest control pros can help you solve your ant problem!

Spring Ant Deterrents

Do ants make you want to squeeze both fists as tight as you can, look up into the sky, and scream, “Aaaaaaaaaaaaants!” Trust me when I say, “you’re not alone.” Ants are a pernicious and resilient insect. They breed like crazy, and an ant mound can have more than one queen. This makes them able to avoid all your attempts at do-it-yourself pest control. But you’re not completely without recourse. There are some things you can do to deter them.

Don’t give them a meal. If you have a superhighway of ants, it is because they found a food source. When you see one of these, your goal should be to figure out what they found. It might be a dish of pet food, an apple core that rolled behind the couch, some spilled cereal under the fridge, an open trash can, or any number of things. Sometimes it can be something as simple as a few chunks of toast that fell on the carpet. Whatever the food source is, dispose of it.

Once the food source is gone, find out where those ants are coming in. It will usually be somewhere low. Find the entry point and use a caulking gun to seal.

There is probably a good chance that those ants can find another way in, so it is also important to keep them from picking up the smell of trail pheromones, which allow them to find their way to a food source. Spray soap or window cleaner along the path the ants were taking. You’ll kill a lot of them, and get rid of the scent as well.

Keeping things clean and sealing up entry points are a good first step to keeping ants out. If they don’t have a reason to be in your house, they usually won’t bother to make the effort. But bothersome ants getting into your food isn’t the only issue you have to deal with. The ants also live around your home and can drive you crazy when you’re outside. To stop this, you’ll need a pest control company to pay you a visit and eradicate those colonies. This is especially important if you have carpenter ants. Carpenter ants burrow through the wood of your house, and can cause structural issues that are expensive to repair.

Now that winter is done, ants are going to start building their populations, and spreading. Spring is the best time to stop them before they damage your home and drive you crazy.