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Don't be buggin'
‘Tis the spring season for insects, ants and termites
Wednesday, April 1, 2009
 Click here to enlarge this photo Staff photos by EMILY BARNES
Sam Brown says the spring is bug season. "Springtime is when all the bugs you haven't seen all winter come back," he says.
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The start of spring means different things to different folks.
For some, its the start of baseball, others spend weekends digging in the flowerbeds or loading up on allergy medication, making a weekly trip to the ice cream shop or standing outside talking to their neighbors only to realize by the time they get in, the clock reads it is almost primetime.
For Sam Brown the climbing temperatures herald a boom in business.
"Its bug season," said the owner of Sambeck Inc., a home inspection and pest control company based in Waldorf. "Springtime is when all the bugs you haven't seen all winter come back."
And in full force.
Currently, Brown's company is fielding several calls about termites and ants.
He said ants aren't that dangerous, just a bother.
"They're not going to hurt you," he said. "They're just as annoying as they can be."
Most likely, the little black speck-sized insects gain entry to a home through a crack or a crevice. The sterile, female worker ants — they are the ones that do the hunting and heavy lifting (ants can lift 20 times their body weight) — look for food to take back to the nest in order to feed the queen. Male ants serve no real purpose in a colony other than to mate with the queen, Brown said. After that job is done, the males die off.
"Think of it like this," Brown said. "When you go to Giant food, you're there to shop. You shop and then you go home. Ants don't want to live in your house, they're just shopping."
But there are some things homeowners can do to make their house less appetizing to the buggers.
"Eighty-five percent of pest control is down by homeowners," said Brown, who started as a home inspector in 1990. "You have to look where [bugs] are entering the house, somebody's habit could be causing the infestation … open containers in cupboards, pet food on the floor, crumbs."
Home remedies can help too. Baby powder sprinkled around windows has helped some of Brown's clients, while he guesses that there isn't a home in America that doesn't have a can of Black Flag bug spray stashed under a sink somewhere.
If over-the-counter bug spray doesn't rid a house of ants, exterminators might have to be called in.
"By the time they call me, they're having big problems," said Brown of many of his clients. "I have been in a house with literally millions of ants."
It isn't hard to track an ant's march.
"Bugs really are kind of cool … they are very organized, they very much are focused on a task," he said. "People can learn a lot from bugs. "
Organization can be an insect colony's downfall.
"Ants leave a trail," said Brown, adding that when he and his crew are called out to a home, they will set bait traps for the insects.
"I'm not crazy about putting chemicals inside of houses," he said.
Although at times, more powerful means are necessary, especially when it comes to termites who are also busy this time of the year.
"Termites are bad because they can eat your house down, they are the most dangerous insects," Brown said. "They eat wood as a food source."
Before it was banned, exterminators used a chemical so deadly that three drops could kill a man and it was being dumped around homes without much regard.
"We didn't seem to have a lot of old pest control guys around," Brown said. Now, the chemicals are more "friendly" with a bug-barrier around a house lasting about five to seven years.
But make no mistake, Brown said, the chemicals aren't healthy.
"We don't use chemicals in a house if we can avoid it, they're just not good for you," he said. "It's poison. Anyway you cut it, it's poison."
Which may be why Brown recently used a vacuum cleaner to rid a house of a yellow jacket nest; it was the same method he employed to remove a bunch of ladybugs who invaded a house.
Interesting side note — a few years ago when the ladybug population seemed to jump, exterminators attributed the rise to a ship docked in the Port of Baltimore that is believed to have carried them into the area.
And this will bring sweet dreams tonight — Brown said the region is looking at an increase of bed bugs. Introduced to the area via travelers bringing the blood-feeding insects home with them.
"Maryland is seeing a bedbug problem," Brown said. "And they are very expensive to get rid of; we're talking $400 a room, not a house, a room. They are the most troubling and the hardest to kill."
But there is some good bug news.
Reports of fleas have gone down over the years, in large part because of advances in veterinary medicines and responsible pet ownersensuring their animals are properly treated against the bugs.
