Cricket Control in SoCal
Crickets rule the summer season in Southern California. Prevent them from invading your home by taking a few tips from Preferred Pest Control! Cricket Facts and Information The cricket is an insect related to the grasshopper and they have flat bodies with long antennae. The male cricket is the one responsible for all that chirping that you hear outside your window at night as they rub the ridges on their wings together to form a sort of instrument. Male crickets play two types of songs: one to attract females and one to repel other males (this chirp is much louder than the other). If the male succeeds in attracting a ...
Controlling Snails/Slugs in OC
It’s still summer and the snail/slug season isn’t over quite yet! Learn how to get rid of them from Preferred Pest Control! The Facts about Snails and Slugs: Both of these animals, snails and slugs, have soft bodies, move very slowly, and are typically 20-100mm in length. Unlike slugs, snails have shells and are able to use them as defense mechanisms incase of prey or dangerous weather conditions. In desperate cases, snails have shown to seal their shells and stay alive inside for years at a time! A perfect habitat for both the snail and the slug would be somewhere damp and hidden, such as under rocks, logs, and other ...
Stop American Cockroaches in Orange County
Getting sick of American cockroaches around your home? Solve it by calling Preferred Pest Control! American Cockroach Facts American cockroaches are around 3 inches in length and have a red-brown color to them with a yellowing band behind their heads. The American cockroach reproduces by laying egg casings. The female cockroach will lay these capsule-like egg casing in a warm and humid area with each one of the casings containing around 16 eggs within. The eggs hatch and the American cockroaches grow into adults in about 5 months. Unlike the German cockroach, the American cockroach uses its pair of wings to fly and likes to live outdoors – typically in ...
Have German Cockroaches Invaded Your Home?
Learn all bout German cockroaches how to prevent them this summer! Facts about German cockroaches The German cockroach grows up to 16mm in length, has a tan color with two horizontal black stripes across its exterior, and has a pair of wings that are rarely put to use as they prefer to use their legs to move about. Younger German cockroaches are near black in color but also have the two stripes across their bodies. These cockroaches are known for their ability to reproduce at an incredible rate. After mating, the female German cockroach lays 4-6 egg cases, with each of those casings containing about 30-40 eggs! The eggs hatch ...
Summer Tick Prevention
Summer is officially here! Learn how to keep the ticks away so you can party all day! Tick Facts Ticks are classified as arachnids and are very small creatures – an adult engorged with blood can be over 1cm long – and they vary in color depending on the species. California is home to a few different types of ticks which include the Blacklegged tick, Lone Star tick, and Dog tick, among others. Ticks are external parasites that live on the blood of mammals, birds, and even reptiles and usually hang out in wooded areas or places with high vegetation. They prefer places with warm, humid climates as this supports ...
Southern California Ant Control and Extermination
Did you build your house on an ant hill? Reclaim your territory with Preferred Pest Control and show ‘em who’s boss! There are over 12,000 species of ants on planet Earth and many more believed to be undiscovered. It’s no wonder they outnumber us by 1,500,000 to 1! With so different species of ants around the globe, we should be thankful that California only has 270 to deal with and the most common type that plagues Orange County and Southern California homes is the Argentine Ant. If you guessed that this type is native to Argentina, you are correct! They were brought to the US by coffee ships from Brazil ...
Summertime Fleas
Summer is right around the corner and you know what that means…FLEAS! Don’t let these pesky critters ruin your summertime fun – learn how to control them from Preferred Pest Control! Identifying Fleas If you’ve had the pleasure of never seeing a flea, lucky you! People less fortunate than you know that they are wingless insects, about 2 ½ mm long, have a shiny brown color, and are capable of jumping huge distances. Fleas are parasites that suck blood from their hosts and are most usually found on hairy animals such as cats, dogs, rabbits, rats, and other animals. Fleas can lay about 20-50 eggs per day so to get ...
Preventing and Controlling Wasps
Wasps There exists a lot of different species of wasps in nature, ranging from colors such as black, green, and blue while measuring to a few centimeters in length. These insects have two pairs of wings and a pinched abdomen. Like bees, wasps feed from flowers and act like pollinators but they are much more predatorily than bees, thus act as pest control for other types of insects and this is where their primary contribution to the environment lies. Like bees, wasps can either be solitary or social insects. The social type lives in colonies along with a great number of other wasps. A size of a wasp colony can ...
Spring is coming! (Also Earwigs)
Don’t panic because despite what you might have heard, earwigs do not enter people’s ears while they sleep. The myth that these insects go into people’s ears and burrow into the brain to cause insanity is completely untrue but interestingly enough is how the insect got its name. The Earwig The Earwig (Latin name Order Dermaptera, meaning “skin winged”) is a blackish brown flat and thin insect ranging from ¼ to 1 inch in length. Earwigs have pinchers on their abdomens (which is why they are also known to some as pincher bugs) and the adults have 2 sets of wings on their thorax but even with those . . ...
Bee Prevention and Removal
With Preferred Pest Control, preventing bees is unbeelieveably easy 😉 California Bees: Here is California, we have a very diverse bee population. Believe it or not, there are over one thousand different species of native bees and most of them are solitary bees, meaning they don’t live in hives. These solitary bees make their homes in small holes in the ground that they dig themselves or other holes made by rodents. Bees can be great for your garden as they are excellent pollinators which will proliferate your planted fruits and vegetables. If you want to attract native bees in to your garden, plant a variety of flowers of different shapes ...