Mosquitoes are among the most annoying of the summer pests. After a long, hot day, the temperatures finally start to cool down in the evening, making it the perfect time to get outside without fear of roasting in the sun… Only to then come under attack by clouds of mosquitoes. Can you even get rid of mosquitoes or are they just something that you have to try to keep at bay by covering yourself in bug spray? You don’t want mosquitoes holding your yard hostage, after all. You want to be able to use it, in peace.

Here’s what you need to know about what draws mosquitoes to your home and what you can do to help get rid of mosquitoes. While it is impossible to completely get rid of mosquitoes, you can still reduce the number of mosquitoes in your yard, making being outside more pleasant.

What Draws Mosquitoes To Your Home

Why is it that it feels like some places have more mosquitoes than others? There are a few factors that draw mosquitoes to your home and make it more likely that you’ll suffer from this annoying pest swarming your property. In order to get rid of mosquitoes, or at least, cull their numbers, you’ll need to be aware of what attracts mosquitoes to your property. 

Some of the things mosquitoes are drawn to include:

• Standing water. Mosquitoes lay their eggs in standing water. In order to get rid of mosquitoes, you want to try to eliminate as many sources of standing water as possible. This includes places such as: bird baths, tree stumps, toddler pools, overwatered grass, open cans and bottles and containers, and more. Mosquitoes can lay up to 100 eggs at a time, so if you’re trying to get rid of mosquitoes, eliminating sources of standing water is sure to help.
• Debris in your gutters. If you have debris in your gutters, it can trap water, giving mosquitoes a perfect place to breed. If you want to get rid of mosquitoes, ensure that you keep your gutters clean. Twice a year is generally what’s recommended, once in the late spring and once in the late fall.
• Open doors and damaged screens. Mosquitoes breed outside, so if they get into your home, this is more of a temporary nuisance than a problem to fret over. However, you still don’t want them in your home. They’ll fly in through open doors and broken screens. To get rid of mosquitoes inside your home, repair your screens, avoid leaving your doors open, and consider using mosquito zappers.

How To Get Rid Of Mosquitoes

Now that you know what draws mosquitoes to your home, you’re better equipped to stave them off. Unfortunately, you cannot truly get rid of mosquitoes. As they can lay up to 100 eggs at a time, this makes getting rid of mosquitoes entirely virtually impossible. You see why they’re such persistent pests and why it seems like there’s no end to how many mosquitoes there are outside. 

However, just because you can’t get rid of mosquitoes entirely or permanently does not mean that you cannot lessen their numbers and find some relief. Some of the things that you can do in order to get rid of mosquitoes include:

• Light citronella candles. Mosquitoes are repelled by the smell of citronella, so if you want to get rid of mosquitoes, lighting citronella candles and using other things with citronella will cause mosquitoes to try to stay away from the area, providing you with some relief.
• Treat your water features. So, mosquitoes lay their eggs in water, which is a significant problem if you have water features on your property. Fortunately, there are treatments you can use that cause mosquitoes to try to steer clear of them. 
• Clean your property. As mentioned above, if you clean away any standing water and debris in your gutters, this can help you to get rid of mosquitoes. 
• Call a pest control company. One of the best ways to get rid of mosquitoes is to call in the big guns. As previously mentioned, you cannot get rid of mosquitoes entirely, but you can get mosquito abatement. A pest control company will be able to treat your property with methods such as larvicide, source reduction, and fogging. With a treatment plan in place, you’ll be able to enjoy your yard again by lessening the number of mosquitoes invading it.

Onyx Lawn & Pest Control provides professional mosquito abatement services. If you’re looking for a way to get rid of mosquitoes on your property, contact us to learn more about our treatment plans. 

As the weather warms up and we start planning for pool days and summer vacations and dragging the barbeques and lawn furniture out of storage, wasps start to become a concern. Wasps are one of the most common summer pests, but that doesn’t mean you want to have to deal with them. Can you prevent wasps from building a nest on your property? Or are you doomed to live in fear of the ominous bzzz every time you step foot outside your home?

Fortunately, there are steps you can take in order to prevent wasps from encroaching upon your territory. Here’s what you need to know about the common types of wasps here in Northern Utah, why wasps even want to build a nest on your property in the first place, and what you can do to prevent wasps. If you’ve already discovered wasps on your property, you’ll want to contact a pest control expert to come out and resolve the problem and keep the stingers from coming back.

Common Types Of Wasps In Utah

There are over 4000 different types of wasps in the United States, according to the National Pest Management Association (NPMA). Some are more aggressive than others, but wasps, like all things, have a purpose. They can help control other pests around your garden and pollinate plants. However, they do sting, and those stings can cause allergic reactions that can end up sending you to the emergency room. As such, it’s no wonder that people want to prevent wasps from making your home theirs.

Some of the common types of wasps we see here in Northern Utah include:

• Yellow jackets
• Paper wasps
• Mud dauber wasps
• Hornets

Why Wasps Claim Your Home For Their Own

In order to know how to prevent wasps, it’s important to understand what attracts them to your home in the first place. Wasps seek out protection, food, and somewhere with plenty of materials they can use to build their nests with. Your house gives wasps a space away from predators, provides them with plenty of food supplies – such as exposed sodas and ant hills and more, and no shortage of building materials, like your damaged siding or your old wooden fence or that tree with the rotting bark in the backyard. 

How To Prevent Wasps

The last thing you want is to have to worry about wasps ruining your summer barbeques or time outside. In order to properly prevent wasps, you want to start your wasp control measures as early as you can, for optimal effectiveness. 

Some of the ways in which you can prevent wasps include:

• Sealing garbage cans and covering compost piles. Wasps will eat all kinds of foods, including what’s rotting in your garbage. They’ll be attracted to any food waste in your garbage or compost, as well as anything with protein or that is sugary. 
• Picking up trash around your property. This also attracts wasps. Whenever you have a barbeque or simply a snack outside, make sure that you don’t leave your trash out.
• Remove any food sources from around your home. This doesn’t just mean leftovers, but also, any rotten fruit that’s fallen from a tree, as well as bird feeders and pet food. 
• Patch up cracks and crevices. Wasps look for hollow spaces to build their nests in, so to help prevent wasps, make sure that you seal any cracks and crevices around your property.
• Use natural scents that wasps are repelled by. Some plants naturally prevent wasps, such as peppermint, spearmint, thyme, citronella, wormwood, eucalyptus, and more.
• Check for nests. The sooner you find a wasp nest, the sooner it can be treated before it gets the chance to grow and become a more significant problem. 

Why You Shouldn’t DIY Wasp Removal

Technically, you can try to DIY whatever you like, but that doesn’t mean that you should or that it’s a good idea for you to. Wasp removal is one such case. Wasps can be very aggressive, and those stings hurt! You don’t want to end up in the emergency room because you didn’t have the appropriate tools or equipment to treat the wasp nests around your property. If you try to knock down a nest, they could very well swarm you, causing just that to happen.

Wasp removal is best left to experienced professionals who have the safety equipment, tools, and training needed to properly remove your wasp problem and prevent wasps from coming back. 

Do You Have Wasps On Your Property?

Onyx Lawn & Pest Control provides professional wasp control services. If you have wasps on your property, contact us! We’ll treat the nests and keep them from coming back.

The sun is shining, the flowers are blooming, spring is here – and so are the carpenter ants. Carpenter ants are the largest ant in the United States, and the springtime, specifically March through April, is when they are most active. Since they can be easily confused with termites – another pest that likes to swarm during this time of year – many people don’t realize the extensive damage carpenter ants can do until it’s too late. 

Here’s what you need to know about these wood-destroying ants so you can take appropriate pest control measures to protect your home. 

#1. They’re Huge

As previously mentioned, carpenter ants are the largest type of ant in the United States. In our previous blog, we talked about the sugar ants that you’ll also find invading your home during this time of year. Carpenter ants are much larger than those. They can vary from ¼ to ½ an inch in length, although some, such as the queens, can grow up to an entire inch long. 

#2. They Don’t Eat Wood

Unlike termites, carpenter ants don’t eat wood, they just excavate it. Carpenter ants don’t have the digestive enzymes needed in order to be able to digest wood. Instead, they forage for proteins and sweet substances. These include other insects, dead or alive, as well as the sweet liquid that aphids and scale insects produce, which is called honeydew. 

#3. Having Them In Your Home Doesn’t Always Mean Infestation

Just because you’ve noticed these huge ants in your home doesn’t necessarily mean that you have an infestation on your hands. Swarmers and queens can gravitate towards interior spaces while searching for a place to establish a nest. If they’re in your home, they may just be looking for a spot to nest, rather than having already made one. The presence of them in your home alone is not enough to determine whether or not they have a nest there.

#4. Large Numbers Does Indicate A Nest

If they’re coming from inside your home rather than outside and there are more than just one or two, then yes, you probably do have an infestation on your hands. At this point, it’s important to contact professional pest control specialists in order to locate the nest and get rid of it before the ants can cause even more damage to your home.

#5. It Can Be Hard To Detect Them

Unlike termites, that leave behind muddy or rough holes, these ants can go undetected for months and even years on end, so that by the time you realize they’re there, the damage they’ve caused is extensive. In some cases, they can even damage the structure of your home.

These ants usually make smooth, clean holes that are hard to find. Some warning signs that you may have carpenter ants include: sawdust piles, shed wings, wet wood, damaged wood, rustling noises in your walls, and consistent sightings of ants in your home.   

#6. They Have 2 Types Of Nests

These ants have both parent nests and satellite nests. Parent nests are typically found outside, such as in tree stumps or around windows, although they can be inside. These ants love moist, decayed wood, so you’ll find their nests beyond bathroom tiles, around dishwashers and showers and the like, in hollow spaces, in your insulation, and other such areas. 

Satellite nests are usually composed of workers, as well as pupae and mature larvae. These nests are usually in drier locations, such as hollow areas around your doors. 

#7. They Can Cause Extensive Damage

As previously mentioned, carpenter ants can cause a lot of damage to your home. This usually happens quite slowly, and can take years to notice. The bigger the nest, the worse the damage. They can weaken the structure of your home, and cause damage to other wooden structures in and around your home.

#8. You Can Prevent Them

Given that it can be quite hard to detect carpenter ants, it’s important that you do what you can to keep them from ever becoming a problem. This includes measures such as: replacing moisture-damaged wood, trimming branches away from your home, removing tree stumps and roots, and more.

Do You Need Pest Control For Carpenter Ants?

Onyx Lawn & Pest Control knows how much of a pain carpenter ants can be, and how hard it can be to locate their nests and get rid of them. If you need help preventing them from infesting your home or getting rid of an infestation, contact us today. We’re here to help!