Monthly Archives: June 2013

Cockroaches, Commercial Services

How to Prevent Cockroach Infestations

Cockroaches may seem an inevitable past of doing business in New York City or northern New Jersey, but your business reputation may hinge on your ability to control and exterminate these noxious pests. Preventing cockroach infestations of commercial properties requires a multi-pronged approach that includes both cockroach prevention measures and commercial pest control services.

Prevention measures include:

  • Exclusion to prevent cockroaches from entering the building either in boxes, bags or supply containers or from other buildings or outdoors.
  • Sanitation is critical to cockroach control as these insects are attracted by dirt, filth and food scraps.
  • Monitoring for cockroach presence allows commercial pest control services to address possible issues before they become a major problem.

Commercial pest control services may include:

  • Bait traps to attract and kill roaches. Roaches not only die from eating poisoned baits, they carry poison back to their nests.
  • Insect growth regulators prevent immature cockroaches from reproducing when they reach adulthood. Colonies gradually die from attrition.
  • Dusts and poisons adhere to the insect’s legs and outer cuticle and are ingested during normal grooming, killing  cockroaches directly or through dehydration.
  • Cryonite is a revolutionary non-toxic cockroach control method that uses a frozen carbon dioxide mist to instantly kill roaches on contact.

For superior commercial cockroach control, contact the experts at Stern Environmental today.

Stinging Insects, Wasps, Yellow Jackets

Beware of Yellow Jacket Wasps This Summer

Check out the video clip in today’s Facebook post of the massive (6-ft. X 8-ft.) yellow jacket hive found in Florida. It doesn’t take much imagination to figure out what would happen if you stumbled on such a large hive of angry yellow jackets. A type of wasp, yellow jackets have straight stingers which means they can sting multiple times. A swarm of these extremely aggressive stinging insects can kill even if you are not allergic to their venom. Yellow jackets are responsible for most of the life-threatening bee and wasp attacks in the U.S.

Luckily for us, New Jersey winters are too chilly for wasps to overwinter which limits the size of their hives. With the exception of the queen, wasps die when cold weather hits. In the spring, the queen emerges from her underground lair to populate a new colony.

Unlike bees which typically feed on nectar, wasps are predatory carnivores that feed primarily on other insects, but will also eat carrion, fruit and plant nectar. The most aggressive stinging insect in the New York City and northern New Jersey areas, yellow jackets become increasingly aggressive as the summer moves into fall, often attacking without provocation.

If you find a yellow jacket hive on your property, don’t put yourself at risk. Call the bee and wasp control experts at Stern Environmental.

Commercial Services, Disease Carrying Pests, Rats, Rodent Control

Rats Plague NY & NJ Metro Areas in Summer

Rats are a year-round plague in New York and New Jersey metropolitan areas, but they become particularly bold and problematic during the summer months. New York City’s habit of piling trash at curbside for collection contributes to the city’s constant rat problem, enticing rodents to forage in trash bags, frequently in plain site of pedestrians.

For many commercial enterprises, particularly restaurants, hotels and other members of the hospital industry, rodent control is a constant but necessary battle. Not only can a failed health inspection shut down your business, but it only takes a single rat scurrying across a floor to destroy a business reputation and send customers fleeing.

Effective commercial rat control must address both lower and upper levels of a building. Contrary to popular belief, rats are not just sewer dwellers. Norway rats, which are the most common rodent species in urban areas, do frequently colonize sewers and subway tunnels, but they also build nests in buildings and will even nest in wood piles or in ground burrows. However, roof rats, which prefer to live in attics and the upper stories of buildings, are also a problem in New York and New Jersey urban areas. Effective commercial rodent control must address possible rat colonization in both the upper and lower floors of a building.

Track & Trap rodent control systems identify rodent pathways, helping to prevent recurrence of rodent problems.

Ants, Commercial Services, Pest Control

Pavement Ants Can Be a Problem in Commercial Buildings

Pavement ants are the tiny black ants you see swarming over food particles dropped on the sidewalks of New York and New Jersey. These ants typically live under concrete slabs such as patios and sidewalks, but they may also build their nests under concrete slab buildings or in woodwork or masonry cracks inside buildings.

When-pavement ants nest under the concrete floors of commercial buildings, retail establishments or schools, their small size and swarming behavior can create a tremendous problem for building owners. Just 1/8-inch long, pavement ants can swarm into building areas en masse searching for food.

Opportunistic feeders, they’ll eat nearly anything humans eat. As they look for food, pavement ants will swarm over floors, into purses and lunch bags and onto desks; often causing panic among employees, customers or students. Understandably, employees may refuse to return to work in infested rooms until ants are exterminated.

The locations of their nests under concrete slabs and floors makes exterminating pavement ants a considerable challenge that calls for the services of an experienced New Jersey/New York commercial pest control professional. Eliminating any ant problem requires that all nest mates, eggs, immature hat and queens be killed. Pavement ant colonies typically have multiple queens which can make exterminating colonies a considerable challenge and a job for an experienced ant exterminator.

Bed Bug Information, Bed Bug News, Bed Bugs

New Jersey Couple Sets House on Fire Battling Bed Bugs

In a classic case of what not to do, a Woodbury, New Jersey couple set fire to their home while trying to remove bed bugs from a bedroom chair. Multiple fire companies were required to battle the blaze which injured one firefighter. The homeowners admitted they had been trying to use heat to remove bed bugs from a piece of furniture. Using a space heater, hair dryer and heat gun on the chair simultaneously, they obviously overdid it!

Bed bugs are susceptible to extreme temperatures, but the problem with heat treatment is that bed bugs must be exposed to a constant minimum temperature of 118°F. for at least 20 minutes; eggs for 90 minutes. As the New Jersey couple found, that’s effectively impossible to achieve safely without specialized equipment or professional services.

Because there has been no mention of the home being infested with bed bugs, it is likely that the chair was a second-hand piece of furniture already infested with bed bugs when the couple brought it into their home. Used, found and second-hand furniture have become a primary method of bed bug infestations in New Jersey homes.

When furniture is infested, Stern offers reliable professional fumigation at an offsite location. We us an odorless, colorless, tasteless gas that leaves no residue or film to treat clients’ furniture as part of our bed bug concierge services.