Lakeland Exterminators Editorial TeamQuick answer: A hurricane rearranges Florida’s pest map in seventy-two hours. Floodwater flushes rats out of burrows and sewer roaches up through drains, wind opens buildings to everything, fire ant colonies raft on the water and land in new yards, and the wet debris that follows feeds mosquito booms for a month. The week after … Read more
Quick answer: Late August and September are Florida’s quiet bed bug surge. Summer travel returns, college move-ins, and the secondhand-furniture wave that follows both put more hitchhiking opportunities in motion than any other stretch of the year — and introductions made now surface as confirmed infestations in October. The counter is a one-week interception routine: … Read more
Quick answer: Central Florida’s rainy season — roughly June through September — resets your yard’s mosquito population every five to seven days. The species biting you at the grill, the container-breeding Aedes aegypti and Aedes albopictus, can go from egg to biting adult in under a week in a bottle cap of warm water, and … Read more
Quick answer: Florida has three termite problems wearing one name. Subterranean termites swarm in daylight from roughly February through May, drywood termites swarm at dusk from April through July, and Formosan subterranean termites swarm on humid May and June evenings around lights. Which species you have decides everything that follows — soil treatment, tent fumigation, … Read more
Quick answer: Floodwater does not drown a fire ant colony — it relocates it. When Lakeland yards flood during summer storms, red imported fire ants link their bodies into floating rafts that carry the entire colony, queen included, until they hit dry ground. That is why new mounds appear in yards that never had them … Read more
Quick answer: Rats chew car wires because rodent incisors grow constantly and engine bays offer warm, sheltered gnawing spots. In Lakeland, the culprit is usually the roof rat — Florida’s most common rat — moving between trees, attics, and garages. Look for chewed insulation, droppings on the engine cover, and shredded nesting material under the … Read more
Quick answer: After a heavy Lakeland rain event floods low ground, two different rats move indoors for two different reasons – the ground-burrowing Norway rat pushed out of a flooded storm drain or canal bank, and the tree-climbing roof rat that was already living in your attic and is now more active because the wet … Read more
Quick answer: If you knocked down a mud tube on your slab and it’s back within a day or two after a heavy August rain, the colony is still active – subterranean termites rebuild fastest when soil moisture is highest, which in Lakeland means right after Central Florida’s rainy-season downpours. A rebuilt tube is not … Read more
Quick answer: If German cockroach gel bait worked at first and then stopped, the colony hasn’t necessarily “gotten smart” – some German cockroach populations develop a genetic aversion to glucose, a common sweetener in bait matrices, so they detect and avoid it without touching the actual insecticide. Rotating to a non-glucose bait formulation – something … Read more
Quick answer: Drywood termites (Cryptotermes brevis) don’t need soil contact the way subterranean termites do – they live entirely inside dry wood, which means the real warning signs in a Polk County home are small: pepper-flake-sized fecal pellets (frass), tiny kick-out holes, and piles of shed swarmer wings after a flight. Because there’s no mud … Read more