While it’s true we have to wade through spring and it’s rain first, summer is right around the corner. And with spring and summer coming, you can expect an increase in almost every single kind of pest heading your way. That’s why today, we’ll be talking about the Florida summer pests 2020 and what you can expect from them.
Florida Summer Pests: Overview
We’ll go insect by insect here, and our first pest to start with will be:
Fire Ants
Fire ants favor the warm, sunny conditions of Florida. This goes double if you live near dry fields and don’t have many shady areas around your home. Their colonies can contain hundreds of thousands of ants, and at least one queen. They can move into your yard as a result of infested plants, or grass sod being used in landscaping. Not only that, but their mounds can extend across several properties, making them more of a challenge than many pests to control.
When they bite, they bite hard. They use their strong mandibles to grip you and then stab you again and again with a stinger. Fire ants are painful for everyone, but can actually be fatal to some. If a victim has a severe reaction like sweating or nausea, or excessive itching, they may need a hospital visit. Fire ant stings include a venom that is highly irritating to humans and results in large red bumps with white heads. These bumps can lead to lifelong scars. The sensation of these stings can be described as an intense burning sensation. Not only that but these ants attack in large numbers. If you stumble into a colony, expect at least a thousand of these ants to emerge ready to fight you to the death.
Be cautious and observant outside of the home, and where you place your food and drinks.
Fire ants are difficult to control for several reasons: the colonies are often very large and extend under the ground a great distance. Colonies often have multiple queens, so they can recover if a part of the colony and a queen or two have been killed, and they often occur in large numbers, so that when you have eliminated one colony another will likely move in to occupy the space.
Spiders
BLACK WIDOW SPIDERS
As one of the most notable and venomous spiders, the black widow features a black body with a red hourglass marking on its abdomen. There are also other varieties of black widow spiders featuring red and brown bodies. Their bite is much to be feared, as their venom is reported to be 15 times stronger than that of a rattlesnake. If you are bitten by a black widow spider, you may suffer from muscle aches, nausea, and even death. Fortunately, fatalities are fairly rare and these spiders only tend to attack as a form of self-defense.
The animals that are most at risk from the black widow’s bite are insects and other male black widow spiders. Female black widows sometimes kill and eat their male counterparts after mating.
BROWN RECLUSE SPIDERS
Brown recluse spiders love to hide in dark, sheltered places like barns and basements. Mostly known for its appearance and poisonous bite, this spider gets its name from its color and its “shy nature.” They can go months without eating and are adapted to hot and dry weather conditions of Florida, making them even more difficult to control. Like most spiders, the brown recluse only bites when they are disturbed or feel threatened.
Florida Summer Pests 2020: Bed Bugs
Bed bugs are small, oval-shaped, brownish insects that live off of the blood of people and their pets. The adults have flat bodies about the size of an apple seed. But, after feeding, their bodies swell pretty massively and they turn redder in color. While this pest doesn’t fly, they move quickly across floors, walls, and ceilings. The females lay hundreds of eggs over their lifespan. These eggs are about the size of a speck of dust and almost impossible to notice before they hatch.
Immature bedbugs, known as nymphs, shed their skins about five times before reaching full grown maturity. Under good conditions, the bugs can develop fully in only one month and produce three or more generations a year.
Winter Bedbugs may enter your home undetected through luggage, clothing, used beds and couches, and other items. Their flattened bodies make it possible for them to fit into tiny spaces, about the width of a credit card. Bedbugs do not have nests like ants or bees but tend to live in groups in hiding places. Their initial hiding places are typically in mattresses, box springs, bed frames, and headboards where they have easy access to people to bite in the night.
Florida Summer Pests 2020: What to do?
It may seem bleak, and you may want to run straight into the arms of chemical pesticides. But you have to consider the other effects that those have. It’s relatively easy to control pests by just spraying toxic chemicals all over the place; there are lots of noxious substances that kill insects, rodents or other annoying and unwanted visitors.
Unfortunately, pests usually aren’t the only ones in an infested area. 99% of the time, humans are there, too. And if it’s a home that’s affected, there are often children and pets around. Poisonous pesticides don’t just poison pests, they poison people and small animals as well. Once upon a time, there was no viable option to the careful use of dangerous chemicals to control infestations. Now, there is – orange oil pest control, the non-toxic and effective alternative.
Additionally, awareness of the damage that pesticides can do to the environment has grown over the last few decades. One way to protect our environment is to use natural, organic approaches to pest control. The oil provides that socially-responsible, yet still highly-effective, option.
