Archive for the ‘Pest Control Manchester Manchester Pest Control’ Category
Bed Bugs in Manchester, Trafford, Cheshire, Liverpool and Wirral
April 29th, 2011 | 
Author: Bed Bugs in Manchester, Trafford,
Cheshire, Liverpool and Wirral
0161 930 8814 / 0151 471 8660
Bed Bugs in Manchester, Trafford, Cheshire, Liverpool and Wirral – One of the most reviled and misunderstood pests known to man is the bed bug (Cimex lectularius). How many of us gone off to sleep at night as children with the words of our parents in our ears ‘sleep tight and don’t let the bed bugs bite’?
The Bed Bug
Bed bugs probably started to feed on man at about the time we moved into caves, the ‘bat bugs’ Cimex pilosellus and Cimex pipistrella primarily feed on bats and it is probable that bat feeding species of bug evolved to feed on human blood when our ancestors started dwelling in bat infested caves.
Until the arrival of DDT in the early 20th century bed bugs were common non-paying guests in much low quality homes, bed bug bites would be commonplace.
The later part of the 20th century experienced pest control companies dealing with very few bed bug calls indeed, their presence being largely confined to inexpensive holiday camps and student accommodation etc.
Many people mistake dust mites, which are not visible to the unaided eye, with bed bugs which very definitely are.
Adult bedbugs are reddy-brown, about a quarter of an inch in size and decidedly swollen after a meal of our blood.
They grow by an incomplete metamorphosis which means that the nymphs are just smaller copies of the adult, they do not have a pupal stage like fleas or a fly.
Bed bugs regularly feed on human blood every 7 – 10 days, emerging in the hours before dawn and finding their target by detecting the exhaled CO2 from human breath and when close in on their target, infra red body heat.
In the absence of a suitable human host to dine on they can remain dormant for periods of up to 18 months.
Indications of a bed bug infestation are spots of blood on bedding and on the underside of mattresses and some people can react badly to their bites.
The early 21st century has seen bed bug numbers explode across the globe, the easy availability of global travel and economic migration have both been blamed for the resurgence.
What is positive is that they are now making a real return not only in poor quality dwellings but high class hotels, schools and even hospitals.
One London borough reports a doubling of bed bug infestations each year from 1995 – 2001.
One night away in an infested hotel is all it takes, they hitch a ride in your suitcases or bags. Pest control companies are also now reporting instances of transport related bug infestations on tubes, trains and buses so a simple journey to work on an infested tube or train can be sufficient to spread the infestation to your own home.
They are an expensive pest to deal with as contrary to popular opinion they do not just live in beds. They infest any nook and cranny conveniently close to a sleeping human, beds, electrical sockets, televisions, bed-side telephones etc and treatment is both difficult and time consuming. They have even been found living beneath the toe-nails of infirm people and in the rolls of flesh on heavily over-weight people.
They are not a pest that can be tackled by an amateur and a professional will almost certainly be required to achieve a satisfactory eradication if these pests.
Posted in Pest Control Manchester Manchester Pest Control | 
Tags: bed bug bites, bed bugs, bedbugs | 
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Wasps Nests In Manchester, Trafford, Liverpool, Wirral and Cheshire 2011
Wasps Nests In Manchester, Trafford,
Liverpool, Wirral, Lancashire & Cheshire
Summer 2011
0800 019 8382 or 0161 930 8814
or 0151 471 8660
Wasps Nests In Manchester, Trafford, Liverpool, Wirral and Cheshire 2011 - Harrier Pest Prevention are pleased to announce that rates for destroying wasps’ nests throughout Manchester, Trafford, Liverpool, Wirral, Lancashire and Cheshire remain unchanged for the summer of 2011 at £32.00 fixed price seven days per week including weekends and bank holidays or £44.50 for postcode areas L, CH, & CW due to increased travelling distance.
Wasps Nest
Many local councils are no longer providing a wasps nest service and many now charge in excess of £50 and have long waiting lists. We will always endeavour to destroy your wasps nest as quickly as possible and often a same day service is available at no extra charge, please ring us for an update on current state of service.
No supplements will be added and when you may have several nests we’ll wipe out the 2nd at no further cost and any subsequent ones at an extra £10 each on the same visit.
A wasps nest is created afresh each spring beginning with just one queen. In spring over wintering wasp queens depart their hibernation and start developing new nests with a papery substance that she creates by chewing small bits of wood blended with saliva. This is known as Wasp Paper. She will raise the first few workers by her very own efforts and those workers will then continue the growth of the nest and nurturing the immature wasps to follow.
Nest development begins in earnest in June but will reach its maximum in size in August and September, when 5000 – 20,000 workers may very well be present. In late autumn the nest generates as many as 2000 queens to hibernate and construct new nests the subsequent spring. The nest itself is then spent and never used again.
A wasp nest shouldn’t be approached unprotected as wasps will easily attack to shield their nest and it is possible to endure numerous stings.
Individuals react in different ways to being stung by wasps, some are hardly affected, others suffer substantial pain and swelling and a few become very seriously allergic to being stung, which now and again leads to sudden death as a consequence of anaphylactic shock.
Wasps’ nests treated after early September may need additional extra cost work such as loft or attic fogging to kill emerging Queens.
In order to allow our customers to locate us easily we have constructed a number of new websites which are:
Early Wasps Nests In Manchester, Liverpool and Warrington
Early Wasps Nests In Manchester,
Liverpool and Warrington
0800 019 8382 or 0161 932 8814
Early Wasps Nests In Manchester, Liverpool and Warrington – April and May are frustrating times for pest controllers in Manchester, Liverpool and Warrington as solitary bees emerge looking for holes to lay their eggs in.
Red mason bee Osmia rufa
These bees appear by the hundred leading people to believe that they have a wasps nest in Manchester, Liverpool and Warrington. However there are no wasps nests until at least late May and any wasps seen before this time are harmless solitary bees which do not have a sting.
There are more than 200 species of solitary bee in Britain. They are so named because, unlike honeybees and bumblebees, they do not live in colonies. The first solitary bees to appear in the garden, as early as March each year, are the miner bees (Andrena). Similar to honeybees in appearance, they lack pollen baskets on their hind tibiae. These hairy bees make nests in the ground, usually in sandy soil and along paths. The female will dig the nest, stock it with nectar and pollen and then seal it, leaving the young to fend for themselves. Also to be seen later on in the season are the leaf-cutter bees such as the Megachile species, which cut neat circles out of rose leaves and petals to build nests in dead plant stems or sometimes in stacks of old flowerpots. These bees resemble honeybees but can be distinguished by the bright orange pollen brushes under their abdomens. All solitary bees are excellent pollinators and should be encouraged into your garden.
Cuckoo bees lay their eggs in the nests of bumblebees. Having killed the bumblebee queen, the female cuckoo bee leaves her offspring to be reared by the bumblebee workers.
Bees are also parasitized by the Bee Fly Bombylius major. This stout and furry fly looks like a bumblebee with long thin legs. It lays eggs close to the entrance to solitary nests and the larvae feed on bee larvae and their stored food.
Cluster Flies in Manchester, Lancashire, Cheshire and Merseyside
Cluster Flies in Manchester, Lancashire, Cheshire and Merseyside
Cluster Flies are a major pest in Manchester, Lancashire, Cheshire and Merseyside
The large, black, pesky flies that show up in bed rooms and on window sills from late autumn through early spring are a common household pest. These flies are known as cluster flies, a name that describes their habit of clustering in large numbers inside attics. Their abundance varies from year to year, possibly in relation to the amount of rainfall through the summer.
Cluster flies do not reproduce indoors, and home owners bothered by these pests do not need to fear the flies are “hatching” from a dead animal or other unpleasant material within the attic or walls. Cluster flies develop as parasites inside the bodies of earthworms. There are three generations of flies produced each summer, and the final generation of the season migrates to houses and other buildings during mid to late September. Casual observation of client reports suggests houses located on an exposed hill top or high ground are most attractive to these migrating flies.
The flies cluster on the warm sides of buildings in late summer during the day. When the sun goes down and the temperatures cool, these flies crawl into the building through cracks under the eaves and around windows or through gaps in the siding. Once inside and secured in a protected location, they remain in hibernation until warmed by heat from the heating system or the sun.
As the flies warm throughout the winter, and especially in the early spring, they come out of their cold temperature dormancy and begin sluggishly moving around. Their random crawling brings them into the house by way of electrical outlets, window pulley holes, and small openings around windows, mouldings and skirting boards.
Cluster flies hibernate in inaccessible places, making them difficult to control. Hidden within walls or under insulation, they are protected from most treatments until they appear within the living spaces of the house. Preventing attic flies is a job for the summer and autumn. As much as possible, seal cracks and openings around the outside of the house, especially under the eaves, as you would for energy conservation. Insecticides can be used on the outside of the house in mid-September if you have a persistent problem with attic flies. Remember the problem varies greatly from year to year and is worse than average this year and tends to be worse following a wet summer.
Cluster flies ‘mark’ their territory with a pheromone which means that infestations tend to become an annual event.
For help with a cluster fly problem in Manchester, Lancashire, Cheshire or Merseyside call Harrier Pest Prevention on 0800 019 8382
Cluster Flies in Manchester, Lancashire, Cheshire and Merseyside
Get Rid Of Ants Permanently – Spring Special Offer
Get Rid Of Ants Permanently
Get Rid Of Ants Permanently – Only the unfortunates who have suffered it will know the true terror of winged ants in their homes.
Having an infestation of normal wingless ants is bad enough but when they go through their annual mating cycle the situation can become insufferable.
Ants often start colonies under the floors and in the wall cavities of our homes and these colonies will continue for many years if left to their own devices getting progressively more intolerable each year.
Our dwellings are warm and dry and make the ideal places for a thriving ant colony; even ‘solid’ concrete floor is not a problem to an ant.
Our central heating systems maintains their metabolism even in the colder months and my earliest ant call-out was on my birthday, in early January!
Ants love a sandy soil and there are many towns in Lancashire, Cheshire and Manchester which tend to produce more ant problems than others, Southport, Blackpool, Bolton, Sale & Altrincham come to mind as hot ant towns.
Unfortunately it is during their mating period that they are most troublesome. Here in Lancashire, Cheshire and Manchester this tends to be fairlyoften around the third or fourth week in July.
Ants mate in-flight and around mid-summer the colony produces winged immature Queens and winged males which in a more natural environment would fly off and mate whilst airborne. Many thousands of these winged ants are produced per colony and nests tend to time their release so that they mate with ants produced by other colonies.
Invariably this process starts after two or three days of warm, dry weather and will usually go on for about a week although less frequent releases will continue throughout most of June, July & August.
Unfortunately when the nest is hidden beneath the floor of the property the results can be catastrophic, literally thousands of flying ants are disgorged into the lower rooms, collecting on windows as they head for the light.
This can be extremely distressing for some people leading to extreme emotional trauma to the degree that people learn to fear the summer months and have actually sold their homes to escape the invasion of ants which they know comes each year.
The very wet summers of 07 & 08 has meant that ant call-outs were down on previous years but ants seem to have a way of catching up and 2009 looks set to be a very troublesome year.
Most people who have this problem try DIY solutions with powders from hardware shops etc but usually these efforts are fruitless as they are not addressing the heart of the problem which is the colony itself, hidden away in the cavity wall or sub-floor area.
Fortunately for many people an answer is at hand.
At Harrier Pest Control (subject to site conditions) we are able to solve this problem and give an extendable three year guarantee.
The process which is done mainly from the exterior of the property, is perfectly safe for pets and children and produces no smell, involves drilling small holes into the cavity walls of the property, not unlike a damp-course injection and blowing an pesticidal powder into the cavity walls under pressure.
This forms an impenetrable barrier across which the ants cannot go and along with a precautionary internal spray treatment (if appropriate) will gradually bring the situation under control.
The holes, which are only 8mm in diameter remain open so it is a simply matter of topping up the cavities every three years to extend the effectiveness of the guarantee in three year terms.
This process is best carried out in the early spring however it can be done at any time of year.
As a limited time offer before our busy period starts we are offering 25% off the standard cost until April 30 2009. Whilst we normally cover the whole of Lancashire, Cheshire and Greater Manchester, we are willing to travel further afield but this will increase the cost.
For a discussion or to arrange an site visit contact Harrier Pest Prevention on Free Phone 0800 019 8382 or
http://harrierpestprevention.com
