Crickie's New Jersey Pest Control Tips

When you find them in your northern New Jersey home, your first impulse is to squash these ugly-looking bugs. That’s a mistake most people don’t make twice! Looking like some prehistoric creature, stink bugs are gray to brown with long spidery-looking legs and antennae. These insects have a knobby, shield-shaped back that has the appearance of armor plating. When stink bugs are squashed or disturbed, they release a powerful pheromone that has a nauseating sweet odor. It’s an effective defense mechanism that has left this insect with few natural predators.

Stink bugs live, feed and breed outdoors during the summer months, but they spend their winters harboring inside northern New Jersey homes and other heated buildings. These insects, along with other overwintering insects like box elder bugs and Asian lady bird beetles, hide in toasty wall voids until spring arrives. The first cool days of September send these insect pests scurrying indoors in large numbers where they can create a serious problem for northern New Jersey home and business owners.

To prevent stink bugs from invading your home or building, a preventive pesticide barrier must be laid down around building perimeters before stink bugs begin to enter buildings in mid-September. To prevent an invasion of overwintering pests, contact the expert northern New Jersey pest control professionals at Heritage Pest Control today.

Last week, discovery of a single bed bug shut down a waiting room and exam room at the Newark facility of  the University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey. The bed bug was found in a patient’s belongings. The two rooms were treated promptly by New Jersey pest control professionals and reopened the next day.

This incident is one of an exploding number of bed bug infestations being reported daily in northern New Jersey and across the country. In nearby New York City, Ground Zero for America’s bed bug invasion, bed bugs are being found not just in residential buildings, but in upscale retail establishments, office buildings, schools and hospitals. New York state has recently passed two bed bug notification laws that require:

1. Landlords to notify prospective tenants of current and previous bed bug infestations.
2. Schools to promptly notify parents when bed bugs are found at school (effective July 1, 2011).

In northern New Jersey we’ve had our own problems with these blood-sucking pests. Infestations have been reported in apartments, homes, office building, hospitals and senior facilities. If you get bed bugs, call the northern New Jersey bed bug extermination experts at Heritage Pest Control. Our proprietary pesticide blend has proven very successful in eliminating bed bug infestations.

Most ants come inside northern New Jersey homes to forage for food but live outdoors in underground colonies. The Pharaoh Ant is a notable exception. A tropical transport, pharaoh ants cannot survive our chilly New Jersey winters and live exclusively inside homes and other buildings. Pharaoh ants live in massive colonies, “budding” to form new colonies nearby as populations grow. A mature pharaoh ant colony may house as many as 200 egg-laying queens and be comprised of dozens of satellite colonies.

The sheer force of their numbers is not the only thing that makes pharaoh ants a dangerous pest. These ants carry numerous pathogens and bacteria and are known to spread infection. A dangerous threat in hospitals, nursing homes and long-term care facilities, pharaoh ants crawl in and out of wounds and open sores and forage among discarded bandages, spreading pathogens from patient to patient.

Because of the huge size of their colonies,  pharaoh ants can consume and contaminate vast quantities of food if they take up residence in your northern New Jersey home or facility. Although these ants prefer to feed on sweets such as fruit juices, soft drinks, cakes and breads, they will also feed on grease, fatty foods and dead insects.

Hard to detect due to their minute size (1/16 inch) and translucent yellow color, pharaoh ants are also difficult to eliminate because of their prodigious numbers and multiple colonies. Successful extermination of pharaoh ants requires the services of an expert northern New Jersey pest control firm.

The first cool nights of late summer signal New Jersey insects that it’s time to seek shelter for the cold winter ahead. A number of insects — stink bugs, Asian lady bird beetles, native lady bugs, boxelder bugs and cluster flies — creep into northern New Jersey homes each fall to overwinter in wall voids and attics. In the middle of winter, you’ll occasionally find one of these uninvited guests basking in the warmth of a sunny wall or window. Those big, fat, lazy flies you find buzzing around winter windows aren’t house flies, they’re cluster flies that have snuck out of their winter hiding place within the walls of your northern New Jersey home!

Come spring, these insects emerge from their winter hiding places en masse to return to the outdoors. Hundreds of these overwintering insects may cover walls, windows, floors or siding as they emerge from winter “hibernation.” While all of these insects are considered nuisance pests, their prodigious numbers can make them a real problem for northern New Jersey homeowners. Most of these insects, particularly the stink bug, emit strong, unpleasant odors if crushed and can stain wallpaper and curtains. Several also emit unpleasant chemicals that can irritate the skin.

Sheer numbers can make these flying pests a considerable nuisance each fall and spring. To prevent insects from moving in for the winter, call your northern New Jersey pest control professional now before pests start moving indoors to schedule treatment of your home or commercial site.

Bed bugs seem to be everywhere. In a new poll, New York City again ranked first as the most bed bug-infested city in America, beating out Philadelphia, Detroit, Cincinnati and Chicago for the dubious honor. That’s bad news for northern New Jersey residents, many of whom work in New York or visit the city regularly for shopping and entertainment. Bed bugs are adept hitchhikers and are easily transported on clothing and in backpacks, briefcases and shopping bags carried from New York back to your northern New Jersey home.

Recent bed bug infestations at two popular Hollister stores and a Victoria’s Secrets in Manhattan, a movie theater near Times Square and, most recently, the Empire State Building indicate how easy it can be to come into contact with bed bugs in the course of everyday activities. In another recent poll, 10% of people who work in New Yorker said their workplace had been infested with bed bugs. Ten percent of NYC shoppers had seen bed bugs at a store. One-third of the New Yorkers polled had either suffered a bed bug infestation in their home or had a close relative or friend whose home had been invaded by bed bugs.

With all the transportation between New York and northern New Jersey, the arrival of every train and ferry brings new risk of bed bug infestation. Northern New Jersey home and business owners need to educate themselves about bed bugs and know what to look for.

Many insects that plague us during the hot summer months die back or go dormant during northern New Jersey’s cold winters. Unfortunately there is no respite from termites. These destructive wood-eating insects continue gnawing on the structural wood in New Jersey homes and commercial buildings year-round. Each year, termites attack one in four northern New Jersey buildings, causing thousands of dollars in damage. A severe termite infestation that remains untreated can in time cause structural collapse!

Termites live deep in underground nests but forage for food in northern New Jersey buildings. They eat cellulose, particularly wooden beams and boards used to construct homes and commercial buildings. These voracious feeders usually attack moist, rotting timbers, but will feed on sound wood as colonies grow. Leaky pipes, undrained ground water, inefficient sump pumps and other conditions can cause poorly drained structural lumber and foundation beams to absorb moisture and begin to deteriorate, creating the perfect conditions for attracting termites.

Termites have soft, unprotected bodies. They are attracted to moist conditions and feed on water-softened wood. One telling sign that termites have invaded your northern New Jersey home or business is pencil-sized mud tubes on walls or across floors. When termites are forced to leave the protection of the ground to forage, they build transit tubes across non-dirt surfaces like concrete and siding.

Heritage Pest Control provides expert termite elimination services. We also off unique Home Damage Repair Services to repair termite damage to protect the structural integrity of your home or business.

We all laugh at those funny squirrel videos on YouTube. These wily backyard acrobats seem capable of performing the most incredible contortions to get to the birdseed in your feeder. Nothing keeps a determined squirrel from achieving his goal. An admirable characteristic until his goal is to make a toasty nest in your attic. When searching for a winter nest, squirrels have been known to gnaw holes through roof shingles and wood underlayment to reach the toasty confines of an attic.

Nuisance wildlife are a pesky problem all year round. Squirrels not only steal birdseed from feeders, they carry fleas and ticks into your yard that can infect outdoor pets. In the spring, squirrels will eat the heads off your tulips. In the fall, they’ll dig up and feed on the flower bulbs you spent an afternoon planting. Squirrels are at their most destructive in the fall. Like other rodents, squirrels have teeth that grow continuously. Squirrels must gnaw constantly to keep their teeth sharp and at the proper length.

This gnawing behavior can be extremely detrimental to landscape trees. Squirrels chew or strip the bark from trees to sharpen their teeth, then feed on the exposed soft cambium fiber. If squirrels find a way into your attic, not only will they introduce fleas, mites and other problems into your home, but they have been known to gnaw through electrical wires and cause fires.

If squirrels move into your home, call your northern New Jersey pest control professional for removal.

When you were a kid, you probably laughed at Disney’s Jiminy Cricket sawing away on his violin. Now that you’re a homeowner, a cricket in the house is no laughing matter. What New Jersey homeowner hasn’t leapt out of bed in frustration to stalk the noisy cricket that is interrupting his sleep? Unfortunately, these nocturnal insects are elusive, tending to hide in dark, damp spaces behind and under things. As soon as you turn on the light to search for them, crickets go silent, waiting until your head hits the pillow again to resume their strident call.

This is the time of year when crickets wander into northern New Jersey homes. Often confused with their grasshopper cousins, smaller crickets have shiny black bodies with powerful jumping hind legs and long antennae. Although winged, crickets rarely fly, preferring to crawl and jump. Harmless to humans, crickets will munch on soiled clothing. But it’s their strident nighttime chirping that provokes northern New Jersey homeowners into calling pest control professionals.

Only male crickets chirp. Chirping attracts females and warns off other male crickets. It’s a myth that crickets chirp by rubbing their legs together. A large vein that runs along the bottom of each wing creates teeth-like ridges. Crickets make their chirping sound by rubbing the top of one wing along the “teeth” at the bottom of the other wing. To amplify the sound, crickets raise their wings which act as acoustical sails, projecting their mating call all the way up to your bedroom.

New Jersey pest control professionals from across the state, including Heritage Pest Control staff, will gather Thursday, August 19, for the New Jersey Pest Management Association (NJPMA) annual clinic and tradeshow on the Cook College campus of Rutgers University in New Brunswick. A variety of educational seminars approved for certification credit by the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection will be offered. Topics range from bed bug control and termite treatment services to new pesticide products and feral animal control. Pest control company owners are required to complete annual continuing education credits to renew their company’s pest control license and state certification.

Serving northern New Jersey home and business owners for more than 20 years, family-owned and operated Heritage Pest Control is dedicated to providing innovative pest control services and products that protect northern New Jersey families, homes and businesses and our precious New Jersey environment. At Heritage Pest Control, we conduct weekly training sessions so that our pest control staff is always up-to-date and knowledgeable about the newest pest control techniques and products on the market. We want to make sure that the Heritage Pest Control technician who arrives at your door is knowledgeable about pest behavior and habitats and current pest control methods and products so that he can provide the most effective solution to your pest problems.

The heat may make it hard to believe, but fall is right around the corner. Mice are already starting to look for warm places to spend the winter and breed. If you don’t take precautions to keep mice out, they’re likely to find your toasty northern New Jersey home the perfect place to raise a family.

A mouse in the house shouldn’t be ignored. Mice expose your family to dangerous parasites and diseases, including Lyme disease and potentially life threatening Hantavirus. Airborne particles of decomposed mouse feces can exacerbate breathing problems and trigger asthma attacks.

It’s not easy to keep mice out of your home. A mouse can squeeze through an opening as small as a dime. Because mice are secretive and nocturnal, you may not even realize you have a mouse problem until you start finding evidence of their nighttime forays into your kitchen. Mouse feces that look like small, black grains of rice are the most common indicator of a mouse infestation. Gnawed or shredded cereal or grain boxes are another. If you see any of these signs or if your dog or cat goes on alert, staring tensely under the dishwasher or stove, it’s time to call an experienced northern New Jersey pest control company.