Solitary Wasps

If you are seeing wasp-like insects hovering over a lawn area, they may be Solitary Wasps.  These wasps are hunters, looking for insect prey.  There are different species of Solitary Wasps, but all of them are hunting other insects.  Some are looking for spiders,  grasshoppers and crickets.  Still others, will hunt ants, flies, bees, butterflies and moths.  Most Solitary Wasps are not harmful to people, and will in fact, fly away to avoid human contact when approached.

When a Solitary Wasp catches it’s prey, it paralyzes it, and carries it back to its nest, which many species will have in ground burrows.  After carrying them into their nest, they lay eggs on them.  The prey will live until the larvae emerge to eat the prey.   Most species never see their parents, since  they move on after giving their offspring all they will need to survive.  If you need pest control products to control Solitary Wasps, visit the store.

Pest Control Products for Spiders

When it comes to pest control products for spiders, we use micro-encapsulated products such as Demand CS.  It has a long-lasting residual and works great.  You may watch Veteran Tech. Chris expain it below from the pest control reality show, Dominators.TV. To purchase Demand CS, go to our insecticide concentrate page here:  Insecticide or pest control products.

Odorous House Ants

Odorous House Ants have made a slight stink here in Lancaster & York PA. Known for their coconut smell when crushed, they can be the most menancing ant around. The more you spray pest control products, the worse they can get, unless you use baits. In the video below, veteran technician Christopher Komarow explains reasons why, as he is being filmed by the Dominators crew.

Mice

If you are seeing or hearing mice run around right now, chances are they did not just show up…they have probably been there for a while, you just finally found out.  Since they are primarily active at night, there is little detection except for their droppings.  However, when there is more mice, sometimes there is a competition for food sources, and mice will be forced to run around in the day when the other mice are resting.

The problem with the common house mouse is that they have an instinct to gnaw, and many unknown causes of house fires are attributed to mice and rats chewing on wires.  Recently, we were called to  a college that had an entire building shut down because of rodents chewing on main wires.

Mice are looking to get inside  Lancaster & York houses and businesses in the late fall and winter, due to extreme weather conditions.  Basements, attics, and garages are usually the first entry points.  After arriving, they will look for food sources.  Once they find a source, they will nest somewhere within 10-15 feet.  Finding the nest can be difficult, and require professional help.  Over 60% of the time we are called in to a mice situation, the homeowner or business owner had tried everything on the market to resolve it themselves.  If you are frustrated and concerned with a mouse in the house issue, it may be time to call for help.  To purchase pest control products for mice visit our online store.  To view Dominion Pest Control owner Gregory Pettis tackle a mouse problem, click below.

Stinging Insects

Yellowjackets can make a nest in the ground or inside strutures such as walls in a home or business.  If you have this situation, do not spray!  If you do, you risk pushing them inside where they will not be able to get out.  Wasps can make nests behind shutters, up in corners of eaves, inside lamp posts, etc.  And of course, you have your Hornets that make potentially basketball size nests anywhere.

All of these stinging insects can be controlled by Dominion Pest Control.  For some, it might be recommended to have a regular quarterly powerspray on the perimeter.  In any event,  control for pests is fairly simple.  Depending on the situation, we may use a dust, or a non-repellent transferable product whereby the insects transfer the product one-to-another.  If you would like, you may purchase pest control products here.

Boxelder Beetles

Boxelder Beetles come from a species of Maple tree, the Boxelder Maple. The beetles are simply named after the tree. In fact, the two come together. Get rid the Boxelder Maple trees (your whole neighborhood’s) and get rid of the bugs. Sadly however, most times you cannot get rid of the tree that allows these beetles to thrive. They say the tree can be up to one-mile from your home for an infestation to occur. Well, we will talk about controlling them, but first, let’s talk about their habits.

Boxelder Beetles are most commonly seen sun-bathing on the side of the home where the sun hits during the day. This usually occurs in the spring and fall, when the nights are much cooler. They will even follow the sun as it wraps around your home from morning to evening. As they do this, they sometimes find themselves pressing in around cracks that lead to the inside of your home such as windows that are not properly sealed, utility lines, dryer vents, outside faucets and the such that are losing their seals or caulking. Now the problem is, once they find a way into your home’s wall voids, they get confused and do not really remember how to get out. This is where these beetles become troublesome to the homeowner. You see, as it gets colder outside, your furnace or heaters operate inside all the more; now the difference in temperature (inside to outside) is more extreme and noticeable to a confused Boxelder Beetle. So what does he do? He presses in where he thinks summer is–inside your house. Actually, the worst invasions happen as it gets colder outside because of this extreme difference in temperature.

“Ok, so what’s the harm?”, you may ask. Well, for the most part, not a lot. Only one small detail that most do not know about Boxelder Beetles: they can bite. It is true, and when they do, I have heard that it can itch for up to two weeks. After interviewing two family members who have been bitten, I have learned there is not much that can done for the itch either. The dermatologist gave up on the one. It is ok though, it did get better. Before you get all worked up, it is good to know that this biting is just a defense-mechanism. You are not food to a Boxelder Beetle. In fact, a lost Boxelder Beetle will eventually die because everything he needs is outside. What does he need? Well, first, the Boxelder Maple tree for one. The seeds on the tree (”helicopter seeds” as we used to call them when children) are the main staple for these guys. Without them, they cannot live for long. Also, they need a good place to “Overwinter”. This means they need to find some leaves or mulch they can bunker-down under for the winter. The inside of your home is not the best place for this.

“Alright, so what does one do?”, you may ask. Some say there is nothing you can do. And many believe that, but there is a way to prevent Boxelders from invading before they get inside the walls. It is called a “perimeter home treatment”. By treating the areas where the Boxelder Bugs sun-bathe with a general residual spray insecticide, you can control them before they get into the house walls. This shuts them down very effectively. Most homeowners end up calling a professional pest control company because most times it is difficult to reach some of the areas that the beetles congregate on the outside walls; others call a professional because they cannot find a product that works on them well enough, or the simply forget to treat regularly.  If you would like to purchase pest control products for these bugs, you may want to think about Demand CS or Border.

Carpenter Ants

When it comes to Carpenter Ants, the biggest question many people have is, “Are they in the house or are they coming from the outside?” This is a great question, and there are some ways to try and figure it out. Carpenter Ants can be a real problem if they are nesting in the house. Before you start spraying everything you can find under the kitchen sink on these ants, let us make sure they are Carpenter Ants, and not some other species. If you have black (not dark brown) ants that can be different sizes when found, you probably have Carpenter Ants. The same colony can have small and big members. Size is not a real factor in determining if you have them, so do not spend a lot of time analyzing this variable. A better idea is to determine where they are coming from (we will talk about this later).

One the sure way of knowing that you have an infestation inside the home is if you find “flying ants” or “swarmers”, as we in the pest control industry prefer to call them. Flying ants inside are never a good sign. But before you get all worked up, make sure they are not termites. You will be thankful when you determine it is just ants if that is what it is! If you do determine that they are termites, call a professional company and consider having a professional treatment before you try to tackle them yourself. Mistreating a termite colony could cost you thousands of dollars in the long run. The easiest way to determine if you have ants (whether Carpenter Ants or other) is to look for three distinct body parts. With ants, the head, thorax and abdomen are all visible to the naked eye. Termites appear to only have two segments. However if in doubt, call in a pest control company to make sure. Most companies have a “free inspection policy” and will not charge to tell you what kind of bugs you have.

Another way to determine if the ants are nesting in the home is to note the time of year. If you have Carpenter Ants roaming around the house in the middle of the winter and it is cold outside, they are definitely not coming from the outside! This is also possibly something you will see in the late winter-spring. “Ok, what do I do now?” you ask, itching to kill these things. Well hold on, before we get into that, let’s talk about some habits these home-wreckers have.

The biggest thing you need to know about Carpenter Ants is that they need water to survive. Although their primary diet is dead insects, they will always need a water source. It is usually outside–such as a bird bath, a clogged gutter, poor landscaping or some other drainage issue. Worse yet, the water source may be inside. “What?” you may ask. It is true, it can be inside your home. Many times homeowners have told me horror stories about that tiny leak under the bathtub or kitchen sink they never knew about under one day… Carpenter Ants started showing up and someone suggested a leak. Or, it could condensation on pipes in a crawl space. And what about improperly sealed shower stalls? All these things contribute to attracting Carpenter Ants. They say to themselves, “Why live outside in the elements when we can live can live here with our primary staple (water).” They certainly are not stupid creatures, as King Solomon noted and encouraged lazy people to go and learn from them.

Another habit worth noting is that they are primarily nocturnal. Most of the ones you see during the day are just scouting the situation out. A lot of people report to me that they see them only in the early morning. This is the graveyard shift getting ready to clock out. They most likely found a gold mine in the sink from last night’s dishes that were washed.

Now let us talk about control. First, you must determine where the colony is hiding. It may be far away from the sightings and you may never find them without help. A good idea is to look outside during the late afternoon on the perimeter of your home for “ant trails”. If you find them going up the side of your home, follow them. Especially if they are carrying something like a dead insect-they are always going back to the nest with it and will lead you to some idea as to where it may be. It could be in the attic, or one of your eaves, a basement sill area, or simply between your walls. If you can find the nest and want to treat it yourself, using a powder or “dust” is one way to kill the colony by using a bulb-duster and pumping the powder into the hole on the outside where they disappear into. Sometimes though, this can make matters worse, you may end chasing them deeper into your house and then they manifest in areas you were not seeing them in before. Using a general spray insecticide can hold them off on the inside, but could end up causing the situation to become more severe with their speading-out in areas where they are not visible.

After treating Carpenter Ants for more than a decade, I do want to encourage you consider calling a professional who has access to professional products that may discourage the ants from moving around and dying right where they are. An example of this would be baits or non-repellents that act like a virus to the colony. If your concern is financial, please consider that mistreating Carpenter Ants could result in serious damage to your home long-term, and translate into repairs that seriously out-way the cost of a professional treatment.    You may order ant baits from our pest control products page.  To learn more click on the video below.

Termites

Every year in Lancaster and York, PA, a healthy colony of Subterranean Termites release thousands of reproductive swarmers that try to emerge and start a new colony. These can sometimes be confused with Ant swarmers. It takes a trained eye to know the difference, so you might want to let us look at it for you if have a swarm. The other way you know if you have termites is if you find mud tunnels stemming out of wood.

Usually termites will manifest on the basement sill first, but sometimes they can be found in the garage door frame or any place you have wood-ground contact such as basement stairs that have poured concrete around the base. Termites may be in a piece of wood and not build mud tunnels or “shelter tubes”. Probing with a scratch awl is one way to determine termite activity; the awl will easily go into the wood if termites have been there for awhile.

If you need a termite treatment, you may not want to wait too long before calling us—termites do quite a bit damage quickly. This is your home we are talking about, one of your greatest investments literally being eaten! In Lancaster and York, PA, it is important to use a non-repellent insecticide on termites so they do not move down the road to the neighbors, but instead, die right where they are. Using technology that allows the termites to transfer the product one to another, we can shut down a termite colony with one-million members within three months! Not only will Dominion Pest Control kill the current termites attacking your home, our treatment will kill any other termite colony that comes in contact with the treatment for over one decade! Now that’s taking control!  To see a preview of veteran technician Christopher Komarow tackle a termite infestation, click below.

Stink Bugs

Stink Bugs have arrived! Within the last decade they have been imported to Allentown, and now they are in Lancaster and York, PA! Named for the terrible odor they give when crushed, stink bugs are here to stay. They seem to find their way into homes with little effort, and have now become a pest we need to control.

The easiest way for us to control stink bugs is to powerspay the perimeter of a home or structure, and focus on areas where they can penetrate into the interior walls. It is not uncommon for a stink bug to hitch-hike on a body into the house, but if you are seeing them in the winter that is not when they got in. Sadly, they are already in your walls, you just don’t know it. Stink bugs will sun-bathe on the south side of your home if you live in Lancaster or York, PA, and then press in around areas such as windows, doors, utility service lines, dryer vents, outside faucets, etc. Confused by the extreme difference in temperature between the inside and outside of your wall, stink bugs will press in to where they think summer is—the inside of your home! If you have stink bugs, don’t fret, give us a call! To purchase great pest control products to control Stink Bugs go to our store online.  We also offer a complete Stink Bug Control Package here: How to Kill Stink Bugs.  To view Dominion Pest Control owner Gregory Pettis treat a Stink Bug infestation (filmed by York Daily Record, article: Bugs Raise a Stink in Region),  click below.

Roaches

There are only three or four species of Roaches that you will find in your home here in Lancaster and York, PA. The most popular by far, is the German Roach. Sometimes confused with Brown Banded Roaches, German Roaches are light brown and small. These guys multiply faster than rabbits. They always come from people bringing them in, or by an attached building that has an infestation. They do not live outside, and need to dwell with people to survive. Once impregnated, the female German Roach can release eggs at will. It’s kind of scary isn’t it? Well don’t fear, Dominion is here! We can get control of these roaches rather quickly. Maintaining control is recommended monthly.  To see German Roaches at night, click below.

Another roach commonly seen here is the Oriental Cockroach. Black and larger, they are found mostly in basements, but can be seen wondering around even on the 2nd floor. In Lancaster and York, PA, one can find oriental roaches living in the sewers and coming up dried out drains. Older structures seem to be more susceptible to oriental roaches. Spraying is not as effective as commercial granule baits for this roach which loves the cover of darkness. There will be a significant decrease of activity after our 1st service for oriental roaches. Maintaining control is recommended monthly.  To to see an Oriental Roach emerging from a drain, click below.

The American Cockroach is the biggest that you will find in your home here in Lancaster and York, PA. These are the ones exterminators tell their “War Stories” about. They are a formable foe, but with proper professional products mixed with experience, we they don’t stand a chance against Dominion Pest Control. Although they are frightening to the home occupier, we can get and maintain control of these guys easily.  If you would like pest control products for roaches, visit our online store.

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Pro Tip

Most homeowner's insurance will not cover termite damage, so you want to talk to Dominion first.