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Was coming here to post about seeing black ants coming into my kitchen from my back patio door, and then I saw this good post-Motronic posted:Yes, super easy, very much non-toxic to pretty much anything other than ants. Terro. It's borax and sugar water. So I guess I'll be going out to buy some of these tomorrow. Could I place them just outside my back door if I want to keep the ants out, or will that attract other types of bugs?
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Jun 20, 2021 04:41
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Motronic posted:Yes, super easy, very much non-toxic to pretty much anything other than ants. Terro. It's borax and sugar water. We’re having ant…difficulties…right now, and we’ve put these out. The ants seem to love them, but it seems like a lot of them are dying around the traps. I don’t know if they’re giving up the ghost after dragging a bunch of it back to the colony, or if they’re just not making it back? Should we be cleaning up the dead ants, or would that disrupt the living ants from taking the bait back?
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Jun 20, 2021 06:14
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C-Euro posted:Was coming here to post about seeing black ants coming into my kitchen from my back patio door, and then I saw this good post- You'll want to place them along the existing ant trails. I don't think I've ever seen an issue with them attracting other bugs but I've never actually tried putting them outside. I typically perimeter spray so that wouldn't be effective/necessary. Blue Moonlight posted:We’re having ant…difficulties…right now, and we’ve put these out. The ants seem to love them, but it seems like a lot of them are dying around the traps. I don’t know if they’re giving up the ghost after dragging a bunch of it back to the colony, or if they’re just not making it back? Should we be cleaning up the dead ants, or would that disrupt the living ants from taking the bait back? You're probably seeing ants that have made multiple trips. No problem to sweep them up, but don't use any cleaners quite yet - you want to leave that ant trail in tact until you don't see any more coming for the bait.
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Jun 20, 2021 14:36
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Ants are beginning to come inside here (southwest US) too - little black ants and tiiiny red ants. Motronic, do you prefer the Terro to this stuff? It’s active ingredient is Fipronil. I have curious pets I want to keep safe too. 
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Jun 20, 2021 15:12
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Ghost Cactus posted:Ants are beginning to come inside here (southwest US) too - little black ants and tiiiny red ants. Fipronil is a typical neurotoxin broad-spectrum insecticide. Would you rather use a neurotoxin or a substance that is inter to mammals like the boax used in Terro? The Fipronil will work faster, but not too fast if they've kept the dosage right to let them get back to the colony.
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Jun 20, 2021 15:15
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Motronic posted:Fipronil is a typical neurotoxin broad-spectrum insecticide. Would you rather use a neurotoxin or a substance that is inter to mammals like the boax used in Terro? I didn’t know the difference - thank you! Time to order Terro.
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Jun 20, 2021 15:47
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For whatever reason at the end of spring I get little black ants in the kitchen. Terro works but you have to resist the urge to kill them as you see them congregating around the bait. 2 weeks or so they are gone til next year. Used to use some Bayer ant gel same little tube for years a dab or two and same concept but gone much quicker, only bought once and Amazon never sold it again. I ordered some Spartan mosquito tubes online that had really good reviews. I have a really large backyard and my kids, especially the youngest, are mosquito magnets. Well it only seemed to make them worse as I got ate up just on the back deck the other day. I emailed and complained as they had a money back guarantee. Didn’t threaten a negative review just wanted a refund. Well they did refund, and are sending another batch and want me to try again. Emphasis on they did not work so we shall see but a no hassle refund and asking if I would try again and give them the lot numbers of the first tubes. So we shall see. Definitely do not try these unless it really does end up being a good product so far no.
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Jun 20, 2021 18:22
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Motronic posted:You'll want to place them along the existing ant trails. I don't think I've ever seen an issue with them attracting other bugs but I've never actually tried putting them outside. I typically perimeter spray so that wouldn't be effective/necessary. I haven't seen (found?) a clear trail yet, I've just seen them sniffing around in the back door that leads into the kitchen and every once in a while I'll see one on a countertop. I was going to just lay one trap by the door and see what that does.
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Jun 20, 2021 19:15
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Motronic posted:You're probably seeing ants that have made multiple trips. No problem to sweep them up, but don't use any cleaners quite yet - you want to leave that ant trail in tact until you don't see any more coming for the bait. A follow-up to this:  It’s a link to a video because apparently I am too bad at the internet to embed videos anymore. They just don’t seem to be stopping. I keep hoping I’m on the tail end of it as they thin out, but then I replace the trap and a fuckton of them show up again. To me, pragmatically, they’re out of the way where they are now (versus earlier in our escapade where they were showing up all over the place, including bedrooms and the kitchen, which made eating and sleeping…frustrating), but they are an affront to my wife’s very existence. We had a guy out as well, and other than this one spot, all is well. Should we be asking him to come back out and deal with this spot in particular? Or are they “corralled” enough that continuing the Terro baits is the way to go? Thanks!
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Jul 6, 2021 17:26
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Blue Moonlight posted:A follow-up to this:
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Jul 6, 2021 17:37
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SpartanIvy posted:With that many ants you have to wonder how big the colony is. If you keep giving them the poison it should eventually get fed to the queen and kill the whole colony though. Yeah, unfortunately it's this. Unless you can track down the colony there's not a lot of better options.
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Jul 6, 2021 17:52
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Thanks for the replies! Would putting out more bait help (or in a different configuration, like not in the plastic traps but out on a card like the dropper-bottle Terro has or something)?
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Jul 6, 2021 18:50
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I would put out as much bait as you reasonably can. The more poison they consume at a faster rate, the more they will rely on it as a colony food source and the more damage it will do.
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Jul 6, 2021 19:18
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You can just get your hands on borax and sugar and make all the Ant WMD you want.
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Jul 7, 2021 13:44
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Lmao, was cleaning up a debris pile that came with the house and uncovered some scrap lumber and another carpenter ant colony, where's that sprayer  Motronic, while I'm thinking about it -- do you have any thoughts on systemic (i.e., injected or root-applied) tree treatments? I'm kinda leery because it seems like it could kill a wide swath of local insect ecology... but also carpenter ants and other wood destroying pests can get hosed.
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Jul 9, 2021 15:51
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the yeti posted:Motronic, while I'm thinking about it -- do you have any thoughts on systemic (i.e., injected or root-applied) tree treatments? I'm kinda leery because it seems like it could kill a wide swath of local insect ecology... but also carpenter ants and other wood destroying pests can get hosed. The only systemic tree product I'm familiar with is Boxer, which is used for (among other things) Emerald Ash Borer. It's an injectable and you need the $400+ Arbor Systems injector to use it. There aren't any approved systemic treatments for things like, say, spotted lanterfly because the pesticides used are so broad spectrum that they would also kill pollinators. I think that may be the same thing you'd run into when trying to systemically treat a tree for WDI. I typically use Talstar P or Bifen I/T applied with a sprayer to as much of the tree as I can reasonable reach in situations like yours. I'm hearing that for some applications an IGR like Tekko can help, but those need to be applied at JUST the right time to be effective (so you need to know your target pest(s) lifecycle). IGR are also typically real expensive. Motronic fucked around with this message at 18:31 on Jul 9, 2021 |
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Jul 9, 2021 18:28
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Motronic posted:The only systemic tree product I'm familiar with is Boxer, which is used for (among other things) Emerald Ash Borer. It's an injectable and you need the $400+ Arbor Systems injector to use it. That injector looks hardcore and I've gone down the rabbit hole of looking at all the injectables Arbor sells just to kill time, I had no idea there were nutrient and vitality injectables for trees Next time I go to Home Depot I'll try to remember to check what the active was in the "granules absorbed into roots" product I'm thinking of (or if I misunderstood how it's used) I have a hefty bottle of that lambda-cyhalothrin preparation-- I reckon I may as well go through but after that I'll check out those bifenthrin ones. Doing a little reading it seems like carpenter ants don't travel all that far from their colony, seems like if that's the case then if i can get all the (god damned, clown shoes rear end previous owner left it there) gross wet wood and lumber off the lot and get rid of this one hosed up tree then I should be in pretty good shape even without regular chemical application
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Jul 9, 2021 19:09
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the yeti posted:That injector looks hardcore and I've gone down the rabbit hole of looking at all the injectables Arbor sells just to kill time, I had no idea there were nutrient and vitality injectables for trees Yeah, Arbor Systems is good stuff. I killed me to spend that much on the injector but when I did the math it paid for itself halfway through the second year of treatments as compared to getting someone out here to do it for me. the yeti posted:Next time I go to Home Depot I'll try to remember to check what the active was in the "granules absorbed into roots" product I'm thinking of (or if I misunderstood how it's used) Yeah, that sounds like a "root drench" in a granular form. Let me know the active ingredient and I can probably tell you more.
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Jul 9, 2021 19:18
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That Arbor injector looks fairly promising - how much of a pain is that to use in practice? I've got a bunch of ash trees w/ EAB next to a stream, so I can't use any root drench products. Although it looks like the price of the gun has gone up, and it's $645 now!
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Jul 10, 2021 15:52
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devicenull posted:That Arbor injector looks fairly promising - how much of a pain is that to use in practice? I've got a bunch of ash trees w/ EAB next to a stream, so I can't use any root drench products. It's actually really easy to use. Takes a bit of practice and it's not as quick as they'd have you believe in the videos.....sometimes you have to put the dose in slowly to it's taken up in the tree rather than dribbling out. But it's a lot faster and easier than the older systems where you had to drill and pressurize.
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Jul 10, 2021 16:20
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Any of y’all know anything about ‘less toxic’ rodenticides? Seems like most of them either involve salt or indigestible plant matter?
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Oct 30, 2021 15:12
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the yeti posted:Any of y’all know anything about ‘less toxic’ rodenticides? Seems like most of them either involve salt or indigestible plant matter? RatX gets pretty stellar reviews for being effective and not poisonous to other animals. I found an old opened bag of the stuff from my PO up in my garage loft when I was rebuilding it and later found a rat skeleton mummified in it's nest in the wall, so I'd say it at least works against rodents like it claims. I'd still try other non-poisonous methods first just in case.
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Oct 30, 2021 16:23
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I just did a continuing ed for my license on this. I chose it because I've never done much vertibrate control and figured I should learn something about it. Bromethalin, Cholecalciferol and Zinc Phosphide are the popular non-anticoagulant ones they discussed. I'm still not a fan. They have less secondary toxicity, but are still harming wildlife. Almost all of the AC and these non-AC rodenticides cause disorientation and sluggishness, making them easy targets for hawks, cats, whatever......so it's going right into these predators. I've mentioned it before in this thread, but IPM - Integrated Pest Management - is the current best practice methodology for all of these things. For rodents that would mostly be securing/remove trash and other food sources, repair/reinforce entry points and using glue or snap traps to clean up the stragglers.
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Oct 30, 2021 16:24
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SpartanIvy posted:
Yeah I’m def not interested in poisoning rodents indoors at least.
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Oct 30, 2021 16:25
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Nothin quite like that week old dead rat in the wall in august smell to make a house feel like a home.
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Oct 30, 2021 16:43
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Kaiser Schnitzel posted:Nothin quite like that week old dead rat in the wall in august smell to make a house feel like a home. Tbh as a lifelong snake keeper a whiff of grody rodent is more familiar than I wish it was.
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Oct 30, 2021 17:05
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Yeah I saw a mouse a couple months ago, and caught one tonight. Appeared to be a baby. Probably 2 inches long tops. I have a kid and a dog so I’d really like to not deal with poison in general (plus dead mice in the walls makes for a rough smelling house for a while) but the non-lethal traps don’t really seem to be doing the trick. I think I’ve seen a bigger mouse than the one I caught, which means im dealing with mice rather than a mouse. I haven’t been able to find entry points, but they go nuts for my dog’s food. I was really hoping I wouldn’t have to use snap traps, but I’ve only caught the one. Im gonna see if there are further signs of mouse activity but I doubt I ended it tonight. My parents suggested the high frequency emitters and said that they work wonders for them. They live in a big house in the country, so it’s not like there aren’t tons of field mice everywhere out there and they swear by them. It’s 20 bucks for like 4 so wouldn’t be the worst idea maybe but figured I’d ask here.
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Jan 5, 2022 05:00
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If you see one mouse there's definitely more than one. Ultrasonic does nothing, it's pseudoscience at best and a scam at worst. They might not like the sound but it won't stop them from going for food. Get a container for your dog's food that has a lid that seals and is made of decent plastic, reasonably thick. Also put any dry goods that you have in sealing containers. I've found that they'll chew into instant oatmeal packets, crackers, etc, although they love to dive into the trash can for scraps of whatever from ketchup packets to ham scraps to cantaloupe seeds. Getting a simplehuman can with a lid that closes has stopped that. The only way to keep them out entirely is to block up their entry points with exclusion product (like a copper wool kind of thing or rodent proof expanding foam, not just regular stuff), but mice can get into tiny gaps you'll have a hard time finding. They'll also gnaw open entries they've been through before if you don't seal them up with something they can't get through. As someone who caught about 50 in a year at one point when it was really bad and I was just starting to work on stopping them, snap traps are the most effective if and only if you can put them in locations where your baby and dog won't go but that is a mouse highway, like the basement or wherever you find mice travel. There'll be greasy streaks along the walls and dropping since the mice use their whiskers to follow walls and poop non stop. They won't really run through an open area unless they're just running away from something. Glue traps can also work but are a little cruel, although having rodents that can carry fleas and diseases around in your house and will chew on your wires definitely outweighs the cruelty factor for some, but I still don't like them. They should also be where your dog or baby can't get to. Mint oils will dissuade mice from entering the immediate area but tend to be only useful if you reapply every couple of days, and only very near where you want to keep them away from. I've used peppermint essential oil on cotton balls and also products like Rodent Sheriff but I think the mint concentration in the latter is a little too weak for the price. There are a zillion kinds of traps like bucket traps that you can set that might catch them that won't hurt anything else, but you'll need to judge for yourself what you think about a setup like this with a 5 gallon bucket with some water in the bottom (this is the flip n slide). It probably won't be as appealing to a couple of mice that get into your house as a bag of dog food, but if you have a big infestation it could catch a lot of them: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pHwvVPT202Y I like to watch Mousetrap Monday and see what's out there since there's a huge variety and Shawn Woods collects mouse traps and shows them working: https://www.youtube.com/c/ShawnWoodsprimitive-archer/videos His amazon affiliate page has his favorite traps including the flip n slide: https://smile.amazon.com/shop/historichunter?listId=1D658A5F4DK6L If those options don't appeal, I'd consider an electronic one that's not going to be set off by your dog but make sure to keep the baby away from it. It's also on Shawn Woods' affiliate page (and he's got a video about it): https://smile.amazon.com/dp/B078H55CVJ?ref=exp_historichunter_dp_vv_d I've got a pest control company handling some of it now since they also do carpenter ant, termite, and carpenter bee treatments, and after they sealed some entry points there are far fewer mice coming inside these days, but they still do manage to get inside when the weather gets cold and I usually catch a few over the winter. The company also puts down bait in bait boxes that kills the mice. It's a poison that they claim isn't lethal to most other animals that might eat a dead mouse in the tiny dosage they'd get from that (assuming the mouse got a small percentage of its body weight in poison, and the thing eating it is a lot bigger than a mouse). That said I don't know how much it'd take to build up in the local ecosystem or if it would, I mostly trust that the pros aren't nuking all the local fox population since I see them fairly often. I don't love poison, but it does keep their numbers down. There have only been a couple of times that I've been pretty sure one died somewhere inaccessible and while there is a smell, it doesn't linger for more than a week or so, usually. It's part of a multi layer strategy for trying to keep the rodents out and numbers down. The bait boxes are heavy plastic so at least in that case your baby or dog would be unlikely to get inside of one without a real ruckus, but I could see just avoiding the issue entirely. Ultimately even if you kill the ones inside, they won't stop coming in until you get their entry blocked up but it can be a challenge. Killing the ones that do get in does help stop them from building nests, having babies, being destructive, getting in your food, and potentially causing health issues or house damage. Rexxed fucked around with this message at 11:43 on Jan 5, 2022 |
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Jan 5, 2022 11:38
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The biggest thing that helped me was getting some gel bait for traps; i dunno what’s in it but it worked way better than peanut butter. I caught about 15 towards the end of fall, one every day or three. Think some of them were deer mice but I still don’t want them inside even if they’re ostensibly just foraging. If you feel like you gotta use glue traps imo you should be prepared to check them regularly and dispatch anything you find alive. And please don’t use them in the garage or anywhere else open to outside.
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Jan 6, 2022 11:59
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the yeti posted:If you feel like you gotta use glue traps imo you should be prepared to check them regularly and dispatch anything you find alive. And please don’t use them in the garage or anywhere else open to outside. Nah, I doubt I would use them, but yeah if for some reason I decided to, I realize I need to be as humane as possible. I’m other news I bought snap traps and some of that gel. I caught baby mouse #3 from under the stove though mama mouse is elusive.
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Jan 6, 2022 15:01
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Anybody got experience with pest exclusion? We just bought a house with some cracking going on that is letting bugs in and the previous owner hired an exterminator which revealed a bunch of maybe cockroaches (idk, they're pretty small but look like they could be baby brown banded or oriental roaches). I'm gonna patch the obvious cracks and get the doors reframed. What else? Edit: called in a professional, does anybody have anything bad to say about Orkin? Justa Dandelion fucked around with this message at 18:53 on Jan 7, 2022 |
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Jan 6, 2022 16:49
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My house is full of silverfish. My wife does not like this. How do I get rid of them? What would a professional do? I have kids and a dog, so something they can eat/get sick is probably no good.
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Feb 18, 2022 20:40
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blindjoe posted:My house is full of silverfish. My wife does not like this. If you have that many silverfish you've got some severe moisture problems. I'd start there. This includes any leaks/spills/shower/bath issues inside as well as making sure you don't have a lot of leaf or other debris up against the outside of your home. You should also check for where and how they are getting in and repair the damage/recaulk those areas. Are they only in specific areas or concentrated in some areas? For non-toxic you actually have a really good option: DE (diatomaceous earth). It's a powder so it will make a mess, but you can spread it around where you see them/where they travel and all the have to do it track through it. It will damage the integrity of their exoskeleton and they will dehydrate and die in a matter of days after contact. It is completely nontoxic, but i wouldn't want to breathe a cloud of it. This is largely what a professional would be likely to do in a home with children and pets. There are other (neurotoxin) control methods that could be used outside but really, the cleaning and repairs are the actual solution there. Anything less is just a short term stop gap.
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Feb 18, 2022 21:07
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Thanks. I have the DE from the ants that live under the driveway slab, so ill spread that around. I live in BC where it rains all winter, they probably live under the house in the crawlspace and come up through the walls We have water that comes up through the concrete - it needs to be sealed but i haven't had the budget for someone to come do it, or looked in to the DIY options.
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Feb 22, 2022 05:07
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Hey goons, I have a particular problem: I have recently inherited a house from a family member that has a significant infestation of brown recluse spiders. This is a situation where the micro-biome in the house was, I guess, absolutely perfect for this species, because they have completely taken over and are the only species of spider that can be found in the house, outside of the occasional jumper or wolf that makes it through the front or back door. edit: Here's a picture, in case anyone wants to see a gross spider: https://i.imgur.com/XJH59tm.jpg (there were six more of them in the space between that piece of furniture and the wall, for a total of seven just in that part of the room, we've been killing the loving things for weeks) I am planning to move into this house in a month. I have absolutely obliterated every spider I have seen, taken the mop to their nests, and disrupted all the areas they were hiding. There are a few spaces I haven't addressed yet because A: my natural response to a spider, any spider, is to loving piss myself and cry and B: Those remaining places are the attic and crawlspace, gently caress, gently caress, gently caress, no That said: I feel like I have been successful in killing most, if not all of the adult and visible spiderling population in the living areas of the house, and any nests I could find ended up in the bottom of the mop bucket. Am I correct in assuming that just wiping out a couple complete generations of spiders and disrupting the breeding cycle should be enough to start leveling things out again? Also, uh, can i just like, toss a bug bomb into the crawlspace/attic? That job is extremely 
Mirthless fucked around with this message at 19:06 on Apr 29, 2022 |
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Apr 29, 2022 18:54
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Mirthless posted:Hey goons, I have a particular problem: I have recently inherited a house from a family member that has a significant infestation of brown recluse spiders. This is a situation where the micro-biome in the house was, I guess, absolutely perfect for this species, because they have completely taken over and are the only species of spider that can be found in the house, outside of the occasional jumper or wolf that makes it through the front or back door. Fyi bug bomb spray is usually combustible so make sure to turn off sources of ignition like furnaces, water heaters, etc. before setting them off.
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Apr 29, 2022 19:01
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SpartanIvy posted:perimeter Yeah a perimeter will be critical to block ingress. OP not wanting to insult your intelligence do you have a photo so we can verify that they’re recluses?
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Apr 29, 2022 21:57
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the yeti posted:Yeah a perimeter will be critical to block ingress. It's cool, I understand they are just about the most misidentified spider in the US and most people are generally mistaken when they think they see one. I linked a picture in the earlier post, it's a little blurry but she was a large enough lady that you should be able to see her fiddle pretty clearly: https://i.imgur.com/XJH59tm.jpg I'm absolutely sure they're brown recluses, unfortunately. I am smack dab in the center of the traditional range for the recluse and know what all of our local spiders look like pretty well. Mirthless fucked around with this message at 06:51 on May 3, 2022 |
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May 3, 2022 06:31
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Mirthless posted:It's cool, I understand they are just about the most misidentified spider in the US and most people are generally mistaken when they think they see one. I mean I was hoping I could say hey no worries that's Kukulcania hibernalis or a sac spider or something...but no that's deffo a recluse 
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May 3, 2022 14:20
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Checkin in, I'm planning to do the same thing discussed on the first page of this thread. Weekend cabin, must kill wood/deer ticks and put a dent in mosquitos. Apply Talstar P from my backpack 2 stroke sprayer. I wish to do this as little as possible, apply every 4 or 5 weeks, 25k sq ft with the nuclear 1oz/1sqft maximum per the label. Plan to buy 1 gallon. New this year will be garlic spray for mosquitos, doing this basically every time we go up. Hand sprayer, much more limited coverage. Is this still a reasonable plan of action? Is this treatment plan efficient from a cost perspective? "Controlled release" Talstar P, looks interesting, but is a LOT more expensive. Is this any good? Would I have to apply it less? Is there any bee friendly option that JUST kills ticks? I am getting flack from the family as I killed the bees last year. My argument is two fold: One, I don't want Lymes disease. Two, spraying 25,000 sqft leaves like 15 MILLION sqft untouched, its like less than 0.02% of the property.
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May 3, 2022 20:46
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