If you see something moving around your home or hear a sound that doesn’t belong, contact your local pest control specialist. It’s important to get help before the problem gets out of hand.
Physical or mechanical methods include sticky barriers and heat killing (for storage pests). Netting, traps and wood-destroying barriers can prevent birds from damaging fruit crops. Contact Pest Control In Bakersfield now!
The first step in successful pest control is identifying what kind of pest you have. This can be done by examining damage, tracks, droppings or other signs of the pest. It is important to know what kind of pest you are dealing with because different control methods apply depending on whether the pest is a weed, disease, or insect. In addition, many insects look quite different as they pass through various stages of their life cycle.
It is important to identify the species of your pest because species within the same order and family may have very different behaviors, host plant and natural enemy complexes, and damage patterns. At a minimum, insect identification should be made to the order level in order to select an appropriate biological control agent (BCA) if chemical control is needed. In addition, some pests can only be controlled by specific insecticides that are approved for that species.
Once a pest is identified, scouting should be routinely performed. The scout should check the entire crop, focusing on areas where damage is occurring. The scout should also determine if the pest is continuous, sporadic or seasonal and the environmental conditions that favor it. This information is used to develop an integrated pest management program.
The scout should look for non-chemical strategies that can be applied to prevent or reduce pest damage. This could include the use of non-host plants, cultural controls such as crop rotation, or removing chronically infested areas of the field. He or she should also preserve and observe natural enemies of the pest in the area, as well as determining if there are predators available for introduction that would be effective at controlling the pest.
Prevention strategies can be applied on a daily or weekly basis. This includes reducing the availability of food, water or shelter to the pest by removing trash regularly and fixing leaky plumbing. It is also important to keep plants healthy and to monitor them frequently for a variety of stresses that can lead to pest invasion, such as nutrient deficiencies or disease.
Pesticides
A pesticide is any substance or mixture of substances intended for preventing, destroying or controlling pests. Pesticides are usually chemicals, but can also be anything that prevents, destroys or controls pests such as bacteria, viruses and fungi. They can be delivered to a target pest in a liquid, solid, powder or gas form.
A single pesticide may control many types of pests at the same time. Some are fast acting, such as space sprays, while others linger in the environment for days or weeks, such as soil treatments or termite treatments. They may be biodegradable, meaning they break down into harmless compounds in microorganisms and other living things, or persistent, which means they don’t degrade or break down over time.
The type of pesticide you use depends on the kind of pest problem you have. For example, fungicides kill fungi, which can cause plant diseases that reduce or damage crops. Insecticides kill insects, which are a major pest of most vegetable and fruit crops. Other kinds of pesticides include algaecides, antifoulants, desiccants, insect growth regulators and nematodes.
Some pesticides are used to control disease-carrying vector species such as mosquitoes, ticks and rodents, which can transmit human diseases including West Nile virus, Lyme disease and rabies. Others control specific pests such as cockroaches, which are a major contributor to asthma and allergies in indoor environments.
EPA registers pesticides that are safe to use in homes and gardens, as well as professional applications such as crop dusting or ground spraying. When a pesticide is registered, it is given a label, which must be read and followed to ensure proper application and safety. The label lists the pests it is designed to control and how it works. It also warns you of potential hazards and provides instructions for use.
Some pesticides are very dangerous to people and must be stored, handled and applied carefully. They must be kept out of the reach of children and pets, and should never be ingested or inhaled. Wear gloves, goggles and other protective equipment when handling pesticides. Whenever possible, use mechanical and cultural methods of pest control before resorting to chemical methods.
Baits and Traps
Many pest control professionals rely on both traps and bait stations to gain control of a rodent infestation. This combination allows for the safest and most effective treatment of both mice and rats. The traps allow us to quickly capture rodents and take them away from your home for extermination, while the bait stations prevent new rodents from entering.
When using traps, it’s important to place them strategically throughout the interior of your home. You should always set them up where you have observed gnaw marks, grease smears, or urine spots. We also recommend putting traps outside near the entry points where rodents have been entering and exiting. This can be the garage door, basement window wells, or drop ceiling openings.
Trap bait is typically a mix of something sweet and rotting, which attracts insects to the traps. Some traps use mechanical barriers to catch insects that crawl, while others have low-voltage electrical lines inside which give insect pests a quick and painless shock.
Clutter provides places for rodents to breed and hide, so be sure to clear up areas where they may live. We also suggest caulking cracks and crevices that can be used as entrance points by rodents. Any gaps that can’t be caulked should be filled with steel wool.
Rats are nocturnal creatures, so they’re more likely to enter your traps at night. You can increase your odds of catching them by setting multiple traps overnight. They are often wary of new things in their environment, and the more they see of your traps, the less likely they will be to avoid them.
While the bait stations are a great way to control rodents outside, they can’t be placed in locations where children and pets frequent. We also don’t want to put them where forklifts and other plant activities could damage or scatter the bait, which might result in a contamination issue. With that in mind, there’s more leeway with the tamper-resistant stations, but it’s still best to keep them out of reach from kids and pets.
Biological Control
Natural enemies, including predators, parasitoids and pathogens, are a vital part of the system that keeps pest populations low enough to avoid serious damage. They are a key component of integrated pest management (IPM) and rely on the interaction between the plant and its environment to control pest numbers.
Biological control attempts to reduce or eliminate the use of pesticides by introducing natural enemies into the cropping system that can suppress or kill the targeted pest. Biological control agents are living organisms and, unlike most pesticides, are non-toxic to humans and animals. They also tend to be environmentally safe, energy self-sufficient and cost-effective. However, biocontrol agents have several limitations, such as a slow response time and the need to establish a population that can keep pace with the target pest’s growth.
In IPM programs, the use of biocontrol agents is usually supplemental to cultural and mechanical controls. Biocontrol agent species are selected to match the specific characteristics of the pest, and must be identified to the correct level of granularity (usually to the species level). In some cases the habitat of the cropping system is modified to favor the development of the biological control agent population, a practice known as augmentation. In other cases, a relatively small number of the biological control agent species is mass-reared in insectaries and then periodically released, often into a field. This is called inoculative release or augmentative release. Examples of this type of control include the periodic releases of the thrips predator Encarsia formosa, used to control greenhouse whitefly; and the predaceous mite Phytoseiulus persimilis, which is used in commercial production to control two-spotted spider mite.
Importation of exotic natural enemies, called classical biological control, is another approach to biocontrol. This type of program is sometimes necessary, particularly when a pest invades from outside the country or region and rapidly becomes a significant problem. To be effective, the natural enemy must have a high reproductive rate and be well adapted to its new environment, so it quickly establishes itself. The organism must also have a high predatory or parasitic ability on its target pest, so it can suppress the pest without being affected by other, more generalized pests.