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772-878-1972 bens@benspest.biz

Hello, this is Ben with Ben’s pest control. And today we’re doing another episode of the Ben’s Pest Control podcast. Here in Florida, we are coming in or I’m sorry, we should say we are in our full blown rainy, wet season. It is hurricane season here. And it is our summer storms, there is just a lot of stuff going on as far as moisture and water that is ever present. And as I say that, kind of give you an example. Hopefully this will help you understand we have a lot of ponds here. And back in the beginning of July, a lot of our ponds were actually pretty dry. The ponds in one community I can think of were down two to three feet. And it almost seemed like the people who lived on the pond had their own little beaches out back of their house because the water was just so low. And when the rain started, especially the afternoon rains and the storms kicked in, we went from ponds that were super low to ponds that were actually overflowing. And in the pond that I’m thinking of the one that’s near my community, the pond was actually over the highest level I had seen all of last year. So we went from really, really low to super high and it all developed in a rather quick period of time. So you throw on top of that hurricane season, we are in full blown wet time of the year here. And why is that important? Well, as I like to explain to people, the pests are driven by the weather, no matter what the weather is that it can drive the pests to do things. And one of the things that the rainy season does is the pests that are living in their typical environment also get driven out of that environment and pushed to areas where they feel safe from the rain. It’s it’s kind of a harsh analogy. But when you look at like videos of floods that are going on and floods that have happened in the world, if the houses for people flood, people will go to the highest ground they can get to and in some cases, there’s video and footage and news footage of people actually climbing on their roofs to get away from the flood because the floodwaters so high. Well, pests are really no different. They have to get away from that water, or they could drowned. So as an example, you know, you get three or four inches of rain and the areas around the house that are like mulch beds planter areas that that would normally suffice as absolutely great areas for pests to survive all sudden now have water in them. Another example would be things like palm trees, we have a whole list of pests that love to live in the frogs of palm trees. And now all sudden, all this water is is just being down poured onto the palm trees and they can actually get flooded out of that nesting area and have to go find a suitable site to to try to get away from all that rain. One example I have given for years here, if you were in the Treasure Coast during Hurricane Francis or gene, which we were here and we were in business at the time, a lot of houses lost their roofs and there were shingles. Laying everywhere. I mean, when you went outside of the storms, it was like shingles all over the place that had just blown off the roofs. And one of the things we found very quickly after Francis and Jeanne were all of those shingles laying on the ground all sudden became little houses for insects, especially things like fire ants here in Florida. The fire ants thought that was an absolute great place to go and try to build a nest underneath because they were protected from some of the rain and the people who then went and picked up those shingles had a tendency to get stung up pretty badly. So we quickly had to respond and tell people listen, if you’re going to pick up your shingles, you need to have gloves on some kind of protection because there’s a good chance there are creatures living underneath there. So that is kind of where we’re at. We are in the full blown wet season. And if you think about where are pests going to go well, we talked about high ground, the highest ground for almost every home is the home itself. Here in Florida they build the houses up on on small little hills usually to make it so that way when there is flooding and heavy rains, the water goes down towards the street and into the ditches. So your house is literally the highest ground there is so it makes an absolute perfect environment to try to get away from all of that water. And then when you add on top of it, the fact that the house usually has some cracks,
possibly doorframes that aren’t sealed window sills that aren’t sealed waterline. That are possibly not sealed garage doors that have poor seals, these are all areas that are very easy for them to get into and then get out of that rain. So it protects them from that environment, and gives them an opportunity to move their nest actually in the house and exposing the family whoever’s living into the house, or I’m sorry, living in the house, they now have to deal with these pests that are invading because the pest want to get away from the rain. So this is an example of how the wet season here in Florida can affect homeowners as far as pesco. And what I would say is that homeowners have to be prepared. Usually, having your house treated on a regular basis can give you a level of protection. A fascinating fact, imported fire ants, which are the ants that make the dirt mounds and everybody considers to be so dangerous, they’ve actually been able to show that they can survive up to two weeks in a flood. crazy enough if the if there’s flooding they can, they can come together on a high point and create a ball and they’ll surround the queen and they will protect the queen and they can float for up to two weeks till they hopefully come to dry ground before they start a new nest. As we’ve discussed many times in the past, these insects are true survivalists that their whole survival over the years has been based on surviving every kind of environment you can imagine. From droughts to storms, to even in some cases, cold and snow. fire ants are a perfect example. They have fire ants up in North Georgia. And not that they get a ton of snow but they do get snow and they do get cold and it seems in the clay environment, they just kind of go down deeper. So they’re able to survive those winters. But again, the rainy season is a perfect time for bugs and pests to be driven. You think about things like cockroaches living in mulcher planting areas. There’s a whole list of cockroaches that just live in your grass. Things like earwigs and millipedes that live in the fascia layer of the grass and all sudden, boom, all this water’s just drowning out that that area, well, where are they going to go? They’re going to go to high ground, they’re gonna try to get away and they’re looking for a safe and protected place from all that water. So these are just a couple of examples of how the rainy season affects pests. Hope you enjoyed this one.

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