November 2006 / Vol.3 / Issue 11

Hello and Welcome to the November Greenpest News. Each month we aim to provide you with some useful information, keeping it short, sweet and pertinent.

Contents

1. Pest Talk
2. Quick Tip: Gutters.
3. Customer Question of the Month.
4. Story of the Month.
5. Monthly Special

Pest Talk

Termite alates.

If you haven't already seen them, expect them soon. Between the months of October and March, termite colonies regularly release thousands of alates into the air. These future Kings and Queens hope to pair up and find a fertile place to land and start a family. They usually emerge on very hot, very humid days just before sunset.

Termite alates vary in size and colour depending on the species. Usually they are brown to black in colour, with two pair of wings; and yes, they do have eyes, unlike the regular termite workers that don't need eyes. If you find them with their wings still attached you will notice that the wings are swept back along their body. Often as not, you will discover them wingless. At this stage they are wandering around searching for a suitable nesting site.

You can see termites alates on our photo page here. Row 2, Pic 4.

The good news is that 99.9% of termite alates fail to establish a new colony. They become food for birds, lizards, ants, spiders and in some African countries they are even harvested by the natives as a delicacy.

The bad news is that millions upon millions of these alates are released - consequently there are still quite a few that do survive. Very often several hundred will find their way into your home and scare the living daylights out you - especially when a friend or someone else 'in the know' tells you that they are termites!

The good news is that it's highly unlikely that any of these termites will get a start in your home. There simply isn't anywhere for them to become established. Unless, of course, you have serious moisture problems, such as water leaks or other wet areas in your bathroom or behind your dishwasher. These alates basically need moisture and timber if they are going to survive.

A common mistake that some home owners make, is to heap up garden beds against the walls of their house. Subsequently moisture invades the timbers of the home, especially the baseplates. Should a pair of alates crawl under your skirting boards (they are rarely as flush as you think, especially in a bare concrete garage - hint hint) and find a moist area - then expect the worst.

Alates usually enter your home in one of two ways. They either blow in when you open and close a door or fly screen, or else they land on your roof, drop into your guttering, crawl into your roof void, and eventually enter via a down-light or ceiling exhaust fan. If you find them dead in your bathtub it's because the surface is too smooth for them to crawl out of with their primitive legs.

Tip: Many alates will enter a home via the garage door. Garage doors never seal tight, top bottom or sides, so if you want to reduce the flying insects that enter your home, don't forget to put a screen on your internal door to your garage.

Since termite alates fly in swarms, you will rarely get just one entering your home. A few hundred is normal. A few thousand is not.

If you have way too many alates in your home, chances are that you might have a termite nest in one of your walls and that these alates have emerged from that nest. Go and slowly check all the walls of your home and check for flight holes. See pics - Row 8, Pic 4.

Whether you find the flight holes or not, you should call your local pest control company anyway and have them do a thorough termite inspection of your home. Better to be safe than sorry.

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Quick Tip: Gutters.

If you have trees around your property that cause your gutters to fill up with leaves, then seriously consider installing a quality leaf protection product. Otherwise clean your gutters regularly. People with investment properties especially should take note, because cleaning out gutters is one thing that gets overlooked by property managers and tenants.

It's important to keep your gutters clean for several reasons.

• All sorts of vermin will live in the debris, then enter the roof void, and eventually your home.
  • Cockroaches
  • Silverfish
  • Centipedes
  • Spiders, just to name a few.
• Termite alates can make a start in the mulch in your gutters, then enter and destroy your roof.
• It's a fire hazard, especially if you live in a bushland setting.

A good quality leaf protection product will also help to keep rats, mice, possums, birds and snakes out of your roof, as well as reducing the flow of insects into your roof void.

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Customer Question of the Month.

Question:

Dear Jerry,

I keep finding silverfish in my bathtub, at least one or two every morning. Are they coming up from the plug hole (I've tried flushing lots of water down the plug) or what? Your help would be appreciated.

Mrs Peggy S. Balmain.

Answer:

Hi Peggy,

Thank you for your question, I hope you don't mind if we use it for our question of the month and elaborate a little further?

Silverfish are a very primitive insect found in fossil records going back to the dinosaurs. They have changed very little in millions of years. With a lifespan of several years, their numbers can build up slowly in your home at first until the laws of mathematics eventually lead to a population explosion.

Silverfish tend to live and breed in your roof void and wall voids. They frequent your linen cupboards and will eat materials made from natural fibres such as cotton but rarely do they eat wool, so if you have holes in your woolies, then maybe it is clothes moths instead. They also eat cardboard, labels and glue. We know of one instance where the label on a very expensive bottle of red wine stored in a wine cellar was eaten off!

Silverfish are named as such because they are silvery in colour, and when they move, they wiggle their body from side to side like a fish through water. When disturbed, they can move very fast. Surprising really, since they have primitive legs that don't have a great deal of grip; a bit like a bald tyre. Other more developed insects (such as flies and spiders) have very hairy legs enabling them to grip easily and walk across ceilings as well as on smooth surfaces.

You will find a picture of a silverfish here.

Silverfish can walk up walls reasonably well, and may even traverse across a ceiling on occasion, but often as not they fall off in the attempt. Their main hideout is usually in your roof void. From there they will often enter your home via the steam exhaust fan in your bathroom. If they end up in your sink or bathtub, they will be trapped because their primitive legs can't get enough grip on the smooth surface for them to climb out. If you are finding them every day in your bathtub, it suggests that you have a major infestation.

Treating inside the house alone will not rid you of silverfish; the roof void area should also be dusted with a safe product such as Coopex permethrin. Professionals use special blowers to spread the dust evenly throughout the roof void. The benefit of this is not just that it controls silverfish, but it will also kill other unwelcome insects in your roof void also such as ants, cockroaches, redbacks and other spiders. (Note it won't control termites because termites travel inside the timber and don't contact the powder).

Surprisingly, many brand new homes come complete with silverfish. They actually move in before you do! Silverfish are partial to cardboard boxes and so they are inadvertently bought in with white goods and other chattels from the warehouses and factories where the goods are stored before being installed in your new home. If you are moving into a new home make sure that you get it fully pest controlled before you move in. Then keep it vermin free by maintaining your treatment at least once a year.

Story of the Month.

Recent our crew were installing several hundred Green Termite Baits at a Unit Complex in Varsity Lakes. It was hoped that the job would be completed in one day, so the guys spent a few hours laying out all the baits in the correct places before beginning to install them.

Sounds good, but this was a big mistake as they discovered much to their dismay a couple of hours later when they reached a section where 50 baits had magically disappeared. Gone. no sign of them!

Questions were asked, but nobody had a clue. Management was called and more questions asked - still no clue. Eventually the baits were found. Two boys aged about 4, had quietly gone around and collected them and were using them as giant Lego blocks to build a great play area for their toy cars.

When quizzed earlier, the same pair of rascals had denied all knowledge of the missing baits. Fancy a pair of 4 year olds putting one over on a group of guys. No point getting mad, it was quite funny, but it did delay the install process.

Later in the afternoon, school children started arriving home, and more baits started to go missing. It was decided to call a halt to proceedings and to quickly go around and collect all the baits that had yet to be installed. This was more than half, since the ground turned out to be rock hard and every bait took much longer than normal to install.

At one unit we knocked on the door and the lady was surprised when we asked her if she had seen the termite baits that were missing. 'Termite Baits? Is that what they are? I thought they were door stops!' and sure enough there they were, chocking back her doors.

Another gentleman when asked where the baits were, simply pointed to his rubbish bin. He thought the kids had tossed them into his yard.

Of course we learnt a lesson, which was that in future on large scale jobs, we would put the baits out as we go. The job eventually took 3 days due to the very hard and rocky ground. The top soil was very shallow. Interesting enough, it was fortunate for the unit complex management that they chose to use our system and not one of the other systems that had also been quoted. The very hard and rocky nature of the ground would have made it virtually impossible for the fragile plastic bodied bait systems to be correctly installed.

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The Greenpest News is Published by J & A Furnell Nominees P/L; Shop 23a Franklin Square, 60 Railway Street, Mudgeeraba, Gold Coast, Queensland, Australia. The opinions expressed in this newsletter are those of Jerry Furnell. The reader is encouraged to seek further information from appropriate government and statutory departments before taking any action based on this material alone.

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See you again next month.

Always... At your service,

Jerry Furnell
Green Pest Control & Green Termite Bait Systems.
Phone 1800 6 12345.

Copyright 2006 Green Termite Bait Systems & Green Pest Control. All rights reserved.

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