This site is all about integrated pest control; that is, using knowledge to understand the living habits, biology, and breeding of different kinds of pests and then using this knowledge to eliminate them as problems, using the least toxic means possible. A vital part of your knowledge about certain insect pests means understanding the life cycle that they go through.

Understanding the life cycle of insects will help you in a few ways:

1. You will know at what stage a certain insect pest is going to inflict damage to your property.

2. You will know when a certain type of insect pest is the most vulnerable to means of control.

3. You will understand what you are looking at when you discover a pest problem.

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Like many different pests, termites found in the United States can be one of several different species. Unlike other types of pests, the three species of termite which commonly cause problems in the country have to be dealt with in different ways in order to affect a long term solution to the problem. In this article, we will take a look at the three different termite species, how to identify which species is causing you a problem in your house, and in one case we will discuss treatment options.

Subterranean Termites

* Geography: Subterranean termites are the most commonly found termite pest in the United States. They are concentrated along the Gulf and in the South.

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Have you found suspicious holes in your framework? Finding mouse poop in with the utensils? Maybe you are trying to grow some prize winning tomatoes, but have an infestation of hornworm, or are finding that every time you go down to the basement there is a string of ants moving back and forth.

If you have these or any other pest problems, you have probably considered calling a pest control company to help deal with the situation. A lot of people will try to get rid of pests on their own first, but quite often this does not solve the problem in the long run. Most pests are prolific and reproduce in hard to reach areas. In this way, they are a lot like weeds; you have to address the problem at it’ root. The problem with pests is that they are living and the “roots” can be hard to find.

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Finding pests around your home and in your yard can be more than just annoying. Many kinds of pests have the potential to spread disease, while most create some form of hassle or another in the form of painful bites, destruction of property and a lot of extra work, or the annihilation of entire gardens. For many years people have taken steps to combat the influence of pests in their homes and gardens. While the approaches people took often appeared to work, in reality some of the most popular methods of pest control were ineffective or worse.

Since the middle of the 20th century, the favourite method for most people on both the large and small scale when it came to controlling pests was spraying poisons to wipe them out. Research has proven that not only are chemical insecticides not very effective in the long run, they may also actually pose a serious danger to the health of humans and other animals not considered pests.

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Part One: The hazards

Since the dawn of time man has waged war against various species that we label as pests. It’s a pretty broad category that runs the range of animals which pose a threat to our safety to those that we fight with over resources to those that ruin our hobbies and in some cases our livelihood. The development of poisonous chemicals in the middle of the 20th century brought this war to a whole new level, and people began to feel as though we were finally going to win the war against the pests which plagued us.

Unfortunately the reduction in pests for a short time was a battle won, but we were far from winning the war. In fact, the use of too much chemicals proved an awful mistake in all cases, whether large or small. Today chemical control of pests is restricted by law for commercial interests, but may still be carried on by the individual home owner. Let’s take a look at why too much usage of chemicals (and we’ve coined a new word for it, “chemicalization”, which we hope catches on) can be very hazardous - in the second part of the series we will take a look at why they are also ineffective.

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Snails are an incredibly amazing naturally occurring pest; the average snail can lay up to 300 eggs per day during the laying season, and these eggs can lie in the ground for eleven years or more until conditions are right for them to hatch. It’s easy to see how a snail infestation can occur overnight, and a bad infestation can prove very detrimental to your garden.

Snails are a pest which truly demonstrate the ineffectiveness of a toxic chemical approach to pest control. While they will perish individually, over use of toxic chemicals will actually create the ideal habitat for snails and their eggs as it kills the soil and dries it out. The only way to deal with snails is through time and patience, and here are some ways to do it.

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What are the real issues?

Every once in a while I find that there are pests that really don’t do a lot of harm, especially when the campaign to get rid of them is weighed up against the damage they do. In this article, we are going to take a look at two of the most benign pests there are, the fruit fly and the silver fish. What exactly are these insects being persecuted for?

Fruit flies

Fruit flies seem a particularly ridiculous case as far as pests go. They carry no diseases, are not harmful, and don’t even make noise in big groups. The only knock on the fruit fly as far as problems go is that they tend to breed very quickly and their numbers become suddenly vast. This amounts to a visual problem more than anything else; a basic psychological abhorrence of the presence of so many flying insect. Of course you may also have an aversion to these little guys flying into your wine every time you pop a cork too, and that’s understandable. I think that fruit flies should be dealt with, but as household pest insects go they are not too bad.

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Due in large part to their biology, raccoons stand apart from other common pests in several different areas. Where they don’t differ is in their ability to become a general nuisance in both urban and rural settings. Understanding the biology of a particular type of pest is part of the foundation of least toxic pest control, where pests are controlled through the comprehension of their habits, diet, and reproductive behaviour. Once these areas are understood, pests can be controlled much more effectively. Let’s take a look at some of the key points in the biological makeup of raccoons.

Diet

Raccoons are both opportunistic and omnivorous. This means that they are willing and able to eat plants or meat, and will take advantage of literally any meal that they can. In the wild, this means roots, seeds, berries, fruit, small mammals, fish, and so on. In an urban setting, though, raccoons will eat just about anything they find lying around. Like most pests, they are particularly fond of garbage, and they also seem to enjoy eating both dog and cat food.

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The key to a successful integrated pest control management strategy lies in understanding the nature of the particular pest that you are concerned about. Knowing how an animal or insect is likely to behave, what it eats, how it lives, and how it breeds means that you know where to cut the pest off so that conditions are no longer favourable to circumstances that could lead to an infestation.

In this article, we are going to take a look at the biology of rabbits. These rodents don’t create in most of us the same revulsion as some of their pest cousins (rats and mice) but they nevertheless can be quite annoying to have around, particularly for those home owners who are facetious about their lawns and gardens. By understanding some of the key parts of rabbit biology, you can devise a strategy which will help to limit their numbers.

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When it comes to picnic guests, few are as unwelcome as yellow jackets. The type that usually show up tend to be very aggressive insects who land all over your steak and become quite perturbed when you attempt to drive them off. Yellow jackets, also known as wasps, are one of the most dreaded “pest” insects around. You will notice that I put pest in quotation marks; that is because as far as pests go, people have relatively little to worry about when it comes to yellow jackets. We will look at some of the main concerns below.

Pain and suffering

Obviously, the number one cause reason for people to want to get rid of wasps is the pain that they sometimes deal out. Wasps are particularly nasty because they both bite and sting, and both weapons pack a powerful punch. Moreover, wasps don’t have the decency to perish after stinging like their cousins the honey bee, they can go on claming more victims.

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