Wait, What? I can do it myself?!

Winter; The month we all dread! The sun disappears at 5pm, its cold, people get sick more often, and rodents make an appearance!

The reason why mice and rats start becoming more noticeable is because they are cold too. They find your roof cavity and internal of the home a nice cosy place for them to call home. Here we are warming up the house for ourselves and our family, when we are also making it a warm spot for rodents to come and enjoy the warmth with us!

Rats/mice can produce 10 babies in 1 litter. This can happen every 8 weeks if the conditions are ideal.  So you could image how many extra little tenants you could have in your home if you let them be.

They also can cause terrible damage to insulation, ducting in the roof, electrical wiring and even plumbing pipes!  

Great, so I’ve told you all the cons about rodents, what are the pros?

They can be evicted!

Let’s not lie to ourselves; money makes the world go around. Bug King has a solution for low cost rodent control... DO IT YOURSELF! Having the right products is only 20% of the solution. The other 80% is knowing how to use them effectively. And this is where we come in...

Below is a link to all of our DIY rodent packages. The packages include baits, bait stations, full instructions on how to effectively kill the current rodent nests, and more importantly, to keep them from getting re-established. Not only that, you will receive help where needed from Bug Kings professional help line.

Bug Kings DIY Pest Control Link: https://diypestcontrol.net.nz/

DIY not for you? Or you don’t have the time? Call us on 0800 54 64 54 or email on service@bugking.co.nz to discuss getting a professional pest control technician to you.

What's That Biting Me?

Here at Bug King, we get many calls from customers who aren’t sure what’s biting them,
especially in the night. Now, there could be a multitude of things biting, but the most common
biters here in Auckland, are fleas, mosquitoes and bed bugs.

But how do I know what it is?

Mosquitoes are an obvious one; they’ll be buzzing around, especially in the warm summer months
and annoying you with that high pitch of theirs. We can help reduce the number of mosquitoes in
your home by conducting a fly treatment. Call us to find out more about that!

It gets a bit trickier to work out when the culprits are tiny!

We often get phone calls from customers who are convinced that they have bed bugs because
they only seem to be bitten in their beds at night. Well, the truth is, fleas also love your bed and
quite quickly make it their home. So how can you tell the difference?

There are a few points of difference between flea and bed bug infestations:

• Flea bites will often be on the lower part of your body (especially feet and ankles), or  scattered throughout your body if the fleas are in your bed, whereas bed bugs most often only target the top half of your body. Places like shoulders, neck, arms, chest and stomach are bed bug territory!

• Bed bugs don’t jump, and they can be seen with the naked eye. If there are tiny jumping things on your sheets, you’re dealing with fleas.

• Bed bugs are more commonly found in apartments, or where dwellings are close together, whereas we find more flea infestations in suburban homes, where there are more pets present.

• Bed bugs hideaway during the day, and can be found on the bed frame, headboard, mattress, box spring, skirting boards and in crevices and seams of furniture and curtaining. They come out when they sense an increase in carbon dioxide, a sign that we are sleeping!

I’ve searched for Bedbugs but can’t find any; does this mean I have fleas??

Not necessarily! Bed bugs can be tricky to find, especially in earlier infestations. Before assuming
that there are none, give us a call and we can talk you through a few things to diagnose further. The
best solution is to book us in for an inspection. Our technicians are specially trained on all the signs
of bed bugs and they will hunt them down! Only once they say there are no signs, do we then look
at doing a flea treatment.

The technicians can often see signs of a flea infestation and can get a good idea whether they think
it's fleas by chatting with you.

Our flea treatments are applied to the floor, fabric couches, pet areas and stripped beds.
This ensures that we get every last one in the house. We don’t just treat your bedroom for fleas,
as the little buggers can move throughout your house very quickly!

With Bug King, you can be rest assured that whether its fleas or bedbugs keeping you up at night,
we will get it sorted for you. Our flea treatments come with a 6 month warranty, and our bed bug
treatments with a 9 month one.

Call us on 0800 54 64 54 today so that we can get you bug free!

White Footed House Ants

White-Footed House Ants

What are white footed ants?

White-Footed house ants have become quite well in established in the Auckland region. They are one of the most common invaders of ants in homes and businesses in NZ. They got their name from the yellowish lower legs. Despite their small size of 3.0mm to 3.5mm long, they are a huge nuisance, especially when they are found throughout the kitchen pantry in large numbers!

Nesting

White-Footed house ants are found both indoors and outdoors. They enjoy nesting within walls, ceiling cavities and sub-floors. Here they are safe from the environmental factors like the rain and wind. One ant nest can have many queen ants and up to 2 million individuals!

A lot of our customers notice piles of dead ants, bits of wood and dust right under light fittings or window sills. Ants like to have a clean nest, so they will clear out any scraps and dead ants from their nest.

They don’t cause damage, however if they were to be nesting along power boxes it may cause short circuiting.

Diet/Do it yourself baiting

White-Footed house ants have a sweet-tooth. They enjoy a good meal of honey dew and nectar. They also love a good feast on ant bait you buy from the supermarket, or your local hardware store, as it is full of sugary goodness for them.

Do it yourself baiting can make the problem you have a whole lot worse! The ants that you see out and about are worker ants. This type of bait will usually only kill the ants that have taken the bait, not the colony. The ants unaffected by the bait realize something is going on and they may decide to relocate to avoid extermination. Or they may start laying more eggs to repopulate!

Treatment:

The best way to attack a nest is to do it slowly. Applying a treatment that is invisible to ants is the most effective way to wipe those little suckers out once and for all. The ants will walk through the treatment and tread it back to the nest to pass it on to the other workers and the queen. Slowly but surely this will exterminate the nest.

When you’re away, the fleas WON’T play!

Warm, summer days often bring a surge of flea infestations to many of our customers. Often people who didn’t even realise that they had fleas are greeted by hundreds of fleas as they return from their holiday.

We also have lots of customers who book in a treatment as they are leaving for holiday. It may seem like a good plan to get a flea treatment as you’re about to go on holiday and you’ll surely come home to a lovely, flea-free home...

But, as you walk in the door, what are you greeted by?

Yup, you guessed it, FLEAS! And lots of them, no less.

But why is this the case? And how can we prevent it?

Unfortunately, the holiday plan doesn’t often work as well as everyone would like. When you go on holiday, so do the fleas. When our houses have no activity in them, those pesky little fleas go dormant and on your return they are starving!

Adult fleas feast on warm blood and if they do not have a host they can go into a dormant  state which can last up to two years. Normally, flea eggs hatch in one to twelve days and the larva eats debris from animal hairs or vegetable matter. It generally takes about 3 weeks for the larvae to reach adulthood.

When no one is around, however, the adults in their pupal stage will just stay and wait until a host is present. If there is no movement in the house, they’ll go dormant, and won’t be hopping on the carpet and coming into contact with our treatment.

You open the front door after your amazing time away, and the fleas detect you by picking up vibrations. This triggers them to come out of dormancy and look for food. This is why, when you get home from your relaxing summer holiday, you get swarmed by fleas even though you may have had a treatment done.

Even a milder flea infestation, that you may not have even noticed, will appear severe as they jump on your legs looking for lunch!

So what can you do to prevent this from happening?

• If you didn’t realise that you had fleas, and they are all of a sudden everywhere once returning home, call us to book in a treatment, on 0800 54 64 54.
• If the property is empty or you’re planning a trip away, its important that someone goes around each day and has a good stomp in every room so that the fleas don’t go into the dormant state. The more active they are, the faster they will come into contact with the treatment.
• Rather get your house treated when you return from holiday or just a day before. This means that there is no chance of the fleas entering the dormant state and we’ll be able to eradicate them at a much quicker rate.  

If you’ve got a flea problem, call us on 0800 54 64 54 and we can discuss a solution with you.