Queen Wasp working on her nest and laying eggs. Photo credit: Alvesgaspar

During springtime in Sacramento, wasps comes out of hibernation and begin buzzing around your home, looking for an ideal place to begin building a nest. Nests can be found at your home entrance, the eves of your roof, or even at your pool pump. Upon building a nest site at your Sacramento home, the queen wasp will lay 50-80 eggs.

While harmless if left alone, and very beneficial to your garden, if a wasp colony feels threatened or their territory invaded, the wasp sting is one of the more painful stings – possibly causing a fatal anaphylactic reaction in people who are allergic.

You will want to get rid of wasps around your home if you have children running around or if there are people with a possible allergic reaction.

If you are stung by a wasp, do not sit down or rest. If you begin to experience swelling, trouble breathing, or itching in your throat, call 911 immediately. Immediately wash the wound and clean thoroughly. Wasp stings are infected with pus and almost always lead to an infection if not cleaned. Apply a cold press to the sting. Do not swat at the wasps – quickly remove yourself from the vicinity and call us for assistance in getting rid of the wasp colony.

Specialized Pest Patrol is full equipped to safely exterminate wasp colonies on an immediate basis. As a professional pest control company, we assist many of our customers with wasp nests which reside far up on multiple story homes, as well as customers who may be allergic.

Call Specialized Pest Patrol at (916) 987-9559 for immediate assistance in wasp pest control throughout the Sacramento region.

Paper Wasps in Sacramento

Paper wasp queen. Photo credit: Alvesgaspar

Paper wasps are extremely common in the Sacramento areas. You will find them foraging for food at nearly every home. Paper wasps are mostly beneficial to gardens and yards, but can be very territorial and have a painful and possibly fatal sting if they feel their nest is in danger.  This particular species of wasp has the unique trait of facial recognition in humans.

Because of the wasps ability to recognize your face, they may act much more passive in your presence, as they recognize your face as belonging in the area. If a friend or neighbor comes over who is allergic to wasps, these flying insects may become aggressive and territorial and sting your visitor.

Mud Wasps or Mud Daubers

Common mud dauber wasp nest. Photo credit: Keenan Pepper

Sacramento is host to a large amount of mud wasps. This particular species of wasp will return to the same nest year after year. Nests are shaped like an urn, usually found in cracks, corners, around porches, and have even been found inside walls and in the attic. The wasps are extremely fast at building their mud nests – they can appear overnight.

Mud dauber wasps have a long, more narrow body than paper wasps. This species is not very social, so it is not uncommon to find mud nests scattered throughout your property.

Ground Wasps and Digger Wasps

Ground wasps and digger wasps are much harder and more dangerous to eradicate than paper or mud wasps. Ground or digger wasps create nests in the ground, so you may not realize a nest is there until you step on it or a dog digs it up. If you accidentally find a wasp nest, they will consider their nest threatened and attack you.

Digger or ground wasps may start out as a harmless one or two on your property, but if left unchecked, it is quite possible to reach numbers in the thousands within 3-5 years. Due to mild Sacramento winters, wasp infestations grow extremely fast. It is very important to have Specialized Pest Patrol take care of these wasp infestations before they get out of hand.

Get Rid of Wasp Nests

Getting rid of wasp nests is as important as getting rid of the wasps themselves. Wasps will return to their own old nests year after year, as well as use other wasp colonies’ nests. Merely killing the wasps without removing their nests will not make much of a dent in their colony population.

Removing wasp nests and eradicating the nests yourself can be dangerous – it is always recommended to hire a professional pest control company such as Specialized Pest Control to ensure your family’s safety.

Nests can grow to hold thousands of wasps if left untouched for years. A larger nests makes the colony much more dangerous to remove, as the wasps will be clustered together and may attack with significant numbers.

Some places to find wasp nests include porches, eves of your home, around the garage, pool pumps, behind porch lights, or even cars.

Let A Professional Remove Wasps

As a Sacramento area resident, wasps are extremely common and prolific.

Call Specialized Pest Patrol at (916) 987-9559 for immediate assistance in safely removing wasp infestations throughout the Sacramento region.

SpecializedPest Patrol services Sacramento as well as the following areas:

• Cameron Park Wasp Removal
• El Dorado Hills Wasp Removal
• Elk Grove Wasp Removal
• Folsom Wasp Removal
• Natomas Wasp Removal
• Roseville Wasp Removal
• West Sacramento Wasp Removal

Yellow Jacket Queen

Yellow Jackets are a common pest problem to your home. These pests are identifiable by their yellow and black and smaller sizes than a honey bee, as well as an aggressive disposition. Starting in the spring, Yellow Jackets begin building their tell-tale mud nests. Nests are commonly found in areas such as near your pool pump, home entrances, the eves of your roof, and around your garage area. You will often see several mud nests around your home in the spring or summer.

Lifecycle of a Yellow Jacket

The Yellow Jackets come annually, with Queens emerging in the late spring or early Summer. The queen selects a suitable nest site and begins to build a paper and mud nest in which 30 to 50 eggs are laid. After about 18-20 days, the larvae become wasps and they take over caring for the colony and nest, as well as expansion and colony defense.

Left uncontrolled, a typical colony will reach a size of nearly 5,000 individual wasps between May and August. With Autumn approaching, new queens are produced which build up fat reserves for Winter. As cool weather approaches, the fattened queens move to hollow logs, stumps, and other wood areas until Spring returns, with all of the male wasps dying off, and the cycle begins anew. Yellow Jackets will reuse old nests if they are kept dry – which means all those nests left under the eves of your home will be reused the following Spring if not removed and taken care of quickly.

Are Yellow Jackets Dangerous?

German Yellow Jacket

Beginning in 1975, the German Yellow Jacket has become the dominant species. This particular variety is much more aggressive than the Eastern Yellow Jacket, as it will sting repeatedly and painfully. Merely walking within the vicinity of a nest can lead to a painful assault led by winged zealots. Individuals prone to an allergic reaction will require hospitalization.

While a yellow jacket’s main diet consists of insects and sweet fruit, these pests are particularly attracted to human foods such as meat and soda. Combined with an aggressiveness, these are pests one should eliminate from the home on an immediate basis. With mild winters in the Sacramento area, it is not uncommon for yellow jackets to create nests which can take up the entire attic spaces in homes.

As a professional pest control company, we assist many of our customers with Yellow Jacket nests which reside far up on multiple story homes, as well as customers who may be allergic and cannot perform a DIY removal of the Yellow Jacket nests.

For more information or assistance in getting rid of yellow jackets, call Specialized Pest Patrol (916) 987-9559.

Field Vole

Although voles are often called field mice (“vole” is short for “volemouse” or “field mouse”), they differ from mice in that they have round bodies, short hairy tails, and small ears and eyes.

The types of vole species are diverse, as are their geographical locations. They can be found in lowland coastal areas and in mountain elevations exceeding 12,000 feet, resulting in a variety of climate living conditions. Because voles are able to evade birds of prey under cover of snow, Scotland, due to its recent freezing winters, is suffering from a record-breaking vole plague.

This stealth rodent is active year-round, and some vole species are active day and night. Their clandestine efforts are usually not discovered until a number of plants have already been destroyed.

The Vole Lifestyle

Although voles have a relatively short life span (up to a year), they are aggressive breeders. A homeowner’s yard could potentially house over 100 active voles, as one pregnant vole can produce up to ten litters, with each litter consisting of up to seven offspring. They can produce any time of the year.

Voles prefer areas thick in grasses and underbrush, where they can create runways and grass tunnels that will keep their travels hidden. They will either create their own tunnels, or invade abandoned tunnels created by moles or gophers. In just one minute, they can dig a hole over a foot deep. Due to their burrowing techniques, they are frequently mistaken for moles, gophers or rats. There will usually be closely cropped grass near a vole burrow entrance, and no mounds of soil.

Garden Damaging and Disease Carrying Marauders

Destructive Vole

Grass, bulbs, fruits, barks, leaves and succulent root systems are favorite plant foods for voles (they will eat dead animals as well). Since they can gnaw underneath a plant undetected, a homeowner is usually unaware of a vole infestation until the plant has died.

Girdling (stripping of bark) is another indication that voles have been hard at work. They enjoy fruit and ornamental trees, and tree plantings. Unlike other animals, voles gnaw the bark in irregular patches and at a variety of angles. If the girdling is too deep and too low to the ground for regeneration, the tree can die.

Although they won’t enter a home, the vole can carry disease that can be transferred to humans through food cross-contamination.

Allowing populations to multiply increases the probability of damage to trees, and makes future control more difficult.

As a professional pest control company, we can ease your mind with our humane vole extermination methods.

For more information or assistance in eliminating voles,
call Specialized Pest Patrol (916) 987-9559.

Call Rob The Exterminator at Specialized Pest Patrol. All work is 100% guaranteed.

Now rat problems always grow worse during our chilly, rainy Sacramento winters, because, like us, the rats are looking for a cozy, dry place indoors where they can build nests and have babies… lots and lots of babies—three to five litters per year, and as many as eight rat pups per litter!

But this year we’re seeing something a little different: The rats our expert pest control technicians are pulling out of the traps they place are huge… some of them nearly a foot-and-a-half long, measuring both body and tail.

What could be creating this bumper crop of plus-size rats? People pouring multi-vitamins down the kitchen sink? Radiation from so many people constantly using their cell phones?

No, far from being a plot line from an upcoming sci-fi movie, the fat and happy rats we’re seeing are simply the products of a series of fairly mild winters in the Sacramento region. Whereas in a normal winter, a large proportion of rats naturally succumb to cold, exposure and scarcity of food, in a mild winter, more rats live to see the spring. A rat whose normal life span might be two years may live to be three, growing correspondingly larger with age. Foods that rats like, such as seeds and grains, are more abundant during mild years, so the surviving rats get plenty to eat.

There are numerous examples of mild winters leading to a boom in rat populations. In 2002, the city of Boston was overrun with rats; thanks to a series of mild New England winters, instead of some 30 percent of rats dying off in frigid cold, only about 5 percent succumbed, according to the Boston Phoenix newspaper (http://www.bostonphoenix.com/boston/news_features/top/features/documents/02194425.htm).

A 2009 article in the UK Guardian newspaper reports the worst rat infestation in 30 years, due to a run of mild winters, and warns consumers that the overpopulation of rats, combined with a bumper wheat crop could increase the danger of rodent droppings in whole-grain breads. Foods made with whole grain flour were more susceptible to rat droppings, the article stated, because they are less processed than goods made with white flour.

Perhaps the most amusing—if alarming—example of rats gone wild was the 2002 Los Angeles Times article reporting that rats seemed drawn to the lifestyles of the rich and famous. One well-to-do Beverly Hills doctor and his party guests were horrified to discover three rats helping themselves to his outdoor buffet. Just a few days later, on a warm Saturday afternoon, the physician found five rats swimming in his marble pool. The culprit: several mild Southern California winters in a row, coupled with near-drought conditions (similar to recent climate conditions in our Sacramento region) that drove the rats from fields and vacant lots into the lush, well-watered gardens and patios of upscale L.A. (http://www.nytimes.com/2002/09/17/us/up-down-in-and-out-in-beverly-hills-rats.html?pagewanted=1)

While such tales may make us laugh, the fact is that rats pose a danger to our homes, families and businesses and to the public health. In addition to carrying diseases and contaminating foodstuffs, rats pose a fire hazard due to their constant gnawing.

Because their four long incisor teeth grow very rapidly and continually throughout the rats’ lifespan, they must constantly gnaw to keep the teeth worn down (http://www.ratbehavior.org/Teeth.htm). If they were to stop, their long, sharp front teeth would grow in spirals and impale them. Among rats’ favorite teething toys appear to be electrical wires, telephone wires, satellite and cable TV wiring and alarm-system wires—at best a nuisance or a repair bill, at worst a fire that destroys a home or place of business.

Rat infestations are a stubborn pest control problem best left to licensed and trained pest control professionals. Call Specialized Pest Patrol (916) 987-9559 we specialize in rodent irradication and exclusion repairs.

Pigeons are a serious pest control problem for many homes and business in the Greater Sacramento region. Call Specialized Pest Patrol for a free estimate to relocate these pests in a safe and humane manner. All services are 100% guaranteed.

Specialized Pest Patrol is a pet friendly pest control service.