Q. Can mosquitoes develop indoors? I thought they needed water, but we keep getting bitten in our house even though all the windows are closed and the AC is on. We don’t have a real mosquito problem outside, just inside!
A. Yes, mosquito larvae do develop in standing water, and the standing water needs to contain some kind of organic material for the larvae to feed on. For that reason, although mosquitoes can get into a building, they rarely breed and develop inside a building. But it can happen in unusual circumstances.
VIEW MORE
The end of the ‘dog days’ of summer in the first half of August seem to coincide rather nicely with the first reporting of Triple E positive mosquitoes. (This is not a good thing!) The past few years this trend seems to be right on schedule. (http://www.eagletribune.com/latestnews/x2137442596/New-Hampshire-has
VIEW MORE
Q. We’ve had our home and our pet treated for fleas several times but eventually the fleas return. What else should we be doing to be rid of these things?
A. Does your pet go outside? If you have a dog, then it almost certainly does, even if it’s only briefly and only in your own yard. When pets go outside, it can be extra tough to get control of fleas inside. A pet’s yard represents a large reservoir of fleas just waiting to reinfest the house.
VIEW MORE
Most strains of the bacterium Escherichia coli are harmless and live in the intestines of healthy humans and animals. A few strains can cause illness. One strain, called E.coli
O157:H7, produces a powerful toxin and can cause severe illness, including bloody diarrhea, in people. In the young and the elderly, the disease can be life threatening. Outbreaks of disease from this organism are a
worldwide problem.
VIEW MORE
Blacklegged ticks (Ixodes scapularis) used to be called deer ticks. They are the main tick that spreads Lyme disease in the northeastern and northcentral United States. Blacklegged ticks have a complex 2-year life cycle with three stages (larva, nymph, and adult) that can all spread Lyme disease.
VIEW MOREQ. Every summer we have an influx of those big, black crickets. We seem to have a lot of them around the outside of the house but they get inside too. What can we do to get rid of them in our yard?
VIEW MOREQ. We recently moved into a new home right on the shore of a large lake. When we try to use our deck, we are plagued by swarms of small flies that the locals call midges. Sometimes it seems like there are hundreds of them sitting on the side of the house. Would it help if we got one of those bug zapper traps to use around our deck?
VIEW MOREQ. I’m thinking about ordering this device I saw advertised that says it repels cockroaches with sound waves. Do these things work? If it doesn’t work, how can they sell it?
VIEW MOREIn late May and June, we get calls from homeowners who suddenly have cockroaches in their homes. Large, brown, flying cockroaches that are freaking them out. When cockroaches appear indoors at this time of year where there have been no cockroaches before, it’s a good bet that it’s the Pennsylvania wood cockroach, especially if we’re talking about a single-family home on a wooded lot.
VIEW MORE