Each of us has encountered pests at some point in our lives, whether it was cockroaches, rats, or bedbugs. However, have you ever considered that pests, like humans, are also affected by the weather or the season?
How does the season affect pests?
Spring
Spring is the most active and favourable season for pests. This is their time of awakening and mating. Once the weather warms up, they emerge from their long hibernation and enter homes and businesses. To eliminate these pests from your home, you must identify them as soon as possible.
Summer
During this season, Cape Town is known for being warm, dry, and mostly clear, which makes it an ideal environment for pests such as wasps, and cockroaches to thrive. Even though there are fewer pests in your house they are still everywhere around the house. However, you will quickly meet the acquaintance if a sudden downpour happens during the summer, and they need shelter. It is known that ants, cockroaches, rodents, and wasps are the most problematic pests during the summer.
Summer and Spring are the most active months for wasps. This is a huge problem as wasps are known to be dangerous. Therefore, if you ever find a hive in your home or close by, it is safer to call pest control to come and remove them. In addition, cockroaches also love the summer as they breed rapidly in these climates, and it is viewed as a health hazard. If you spot more than one, you should contact experts to come and terminate them as they are known to breed at astounding speeds and carry many diseases.
Autumn
After summer we get autumn. At this time of year, pests generally start getting less active due to the cooler climate and winter preparation is underway. One of these pests is spiders. Most of them will try to hide in dark, warm places inside the walls and cracks. In addition to spiders, mice and rats tend to shelter in residential and commercial properties. Spiders are known to be scary, but in fact, there are only a few that are really dangerous, and usually, an infestation is quickly solvable.
When you see signs of mice or rats, such as droppings or strong-smelling ammonia-like odors, it is usually a positive indicator of an infestation. If your property is infested, you must place baits as quickly as possible. Rats breed extremely fast producing a litter of 12 babies 6 times per year. In order to prevent them from coming into your home, you should try and close openings in floors, attics, foundations, and floors.
They will be easily accessible through these openings. Another spot that is a popular place for them is the roof and you should also keep a close eye or ear on it. Rats are nocturnal. Therefore, if you have activity during the night like gnawing, scratching, or thumbing you can be certain that there is either a mouse or a rat in your ceiling.
Winter
Lastly, we get winter. Wintertime is generally a very quiet time for pests as most of them are hibernating as food is not as abundant as in the warmer months. We are noticing that the weather is not as constant as it used to be. This is due to hotter days in between cold days and vice versa making trends in some insect and animal behaviour very erratic. This causes winter to have strange outbreaks of all different kinds of pests.
Conclusion – Prevention
Remove any debris around the house such as old rubble, piles of planks.
Make sure the grass is kept short especially against the boundary of the house. The sewage drains should be opened and inspected twice a year. Inspections on the inside of your roof need to be conducted if there are any sounds heard.
Do not delay because if it is a rodent infestation they might cause more damage than you think. For example, gnawing on wires is a common occurrence with rodents as their teeth never stop growing and they have to shorten their teeth to keep living.
Knowing more about pest behaviour, you are now equipped with the knowledge to act before pests become a problem.