Insect control

Insects in the house - a phenomenon that is unpleasant in all respects, which causes a lot of inconvenience to its inhabitants. Fighting insects is a necessary procedure that helps get rid of pests and their harmful effects on human health, as well as furniture, clothes, and products. What methods and means for controlling insects are best used, you will learn from this article.

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What types of insects are most often found in the house?

Almost all of us have repeatedly come across a situation where various buzzing, crawling and biting insects appear in the house or apartment - pests or parasites. The main "enemies" of a person who most often penetrate into dwellings or live in them are:

• flies;
• mosquitoes;
• wasps;
• ants
• cockroaches;
• fleas
• ticks;
• bedbugs;
• the mole.

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What harm can insects do and why fight them?

Just ignoring the various arthropods is not worth it, and it is unlikely to succeed, since pests will constantly remind you of their presence. Peaceful coexistence with them is impossible in principle for the following reasons:

1. Insect bites are very painful and can cause severe allergic reactions.
2. Many of their species are carriers of various infections that are dangerous to human health.
3. Insects are able to spoil food, clothing, furniture.
4. The presence of pests in the house is also unfavorable from the point of view of aesthetics - few of us will find a cozy apartment where cockroaches run in the kitchen and flies are teeming in the living room.

On a note! To protect the house from the appearance of unwanted “guests” is 100% almost impossible. Insects can not only fly into rooms through open windows, but also penetrate housing through sewers, ventilation, and gaps under the door. There are frequent cases when they get into the house with food, brought with things or cling to shoes. In an apartment building, insects may well move to you from neighbors. In this case, the fight against insects should be organized immediately and all tenants of the entrance should be involved in this. This is the only way pest control - an insect-removing measure - can be effective.

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What are the difficulties of controlling insects?

The main problem in the removal of insects is that they are very tenacious, resistant and differ in their ability to adapt to any environment, temperature and humidity drops, and even to the means used against them.

Here are just a few facts that will convince you that the pests that have entered your home are amazingly viable:

1. Cockroaches - they can do without food for about a month, omnivores - are able to eat even cosmetics, in addition, they can live for several weeks without a head.
2. Bed bugs - are able to survive in almost any conditions, even in the absence of food and air, while the female bug lays 5 eggs per day.
3. Flies are even more prolific and lay 100 eggs per hour.
4. Fleas - able to attach eggs to any surface.
5. Ants - arrange their nests in hard-to-reach places, and the population of the anthill is more than 1000 individual individuals.
6. Almost all insects are resistant to radiation.

On a note! We hope that the above information will finally convince you that insect control in the house is a difficult but necessary process, and the sooner you do it, the better. Difficulties arise due to the fact that many insects tend to mutate and can become immune to certain types of substances. Therefore, it is extremely important not only to choose the right products that repel and destroy pests, but also to use them in the required concentration.

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What are the methods for controlling insects?

There are several ways to combat insects and pests, which are characterized by different directions of action and can be applied in practice:

1. Mechanical - includes the collection of pests and their larvae by hand with their subsequent destruction, as well as the use of various traps for insects. Not a reliable method, does not work for all groups of insects.
2. Physical - consists in the application of heat treatment in the form of high and low temperatures. Temperatures above + 40 ° C adversely affect all phases of the development of insects. Low temperatures can be used against heat-loving grinders, however, a short-term decrease in temperature to -10 ° C does not affect individual phases of insects.
3. Chemical. It is based on the use of chemicals - insecticides, more or less toxic. Depending on the way an insect enters the body, they are divided into several groups: contact, intestinal poisons, systemic and fumigants. You can use special aerosols, repellents, as well as boric acid. The method is effective, but unsafe, as toxic substances can harm human health, and also adversely affect pets.
4. Biological - use for the destruction of pests of birds, animals, as well as, in some cases, predatory or parasitic insects. This method may be quite acceptable in the garden or in the garden, but it is completely unsuitable for controlling insects in the apartment.
5. Fitontsidny - it has long been noticed that some plants can protect themselves by releasing phytoncides, which repel certain types of insects. The method consists in planting such plants in the immediate vicinity of the pest colony. To combat insects in the house - is ineffective, unless you will constantly scatter bunches of such plants with a specific smell throughout the house and change them as they wither.
6. Genetic - its essence is to saturate the population of insects with sterile males, specially grown in the laboratory. As a result, insects gradually disappear, as they lose their ability to reproduce. At home, not applicable.
7. The method of biological baits - is to use traps in which the gland extract of female insects is placed. The smell attracts males of the same species at considerable distances and, as a result, they fall directly into the trap.
8. Microbiological - sowing in places of mass reproduction of pests of bacteria or viruses that cause massive diseases of insects and, accordingly, leading to their destruction.

On a note! Individual methods alone are rarely used. Most often, you have to combine several methods at once, and sometimes - means for controlling insects, for example, physical with mechanical or chemical.

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What insecticides can be used in an apartment or house?

Pest control - insect control, as a rule, is conducted in two directions:

• preventive measures - the creation of indoor adverse conditions for the life and reproduction of insects;
• extermination measures - the destruction of emerging pests in a chosen way.

Depending on which particular types of pests you want to get rid of, or even completely prevent them from appearing, the following groups of insect control agents are recommended for use.

Prophylactic agents

They are aimed primarily at the destruction of flying insects. Include:

• Repellents.
• Spiral.
• Fumigators.
• Mosquito nets.

Chemicals - Insecticides

The main advantage of such agents is that, when used correctly, they quickly and fairly effectively act on parasites. The disadvantage is that it is extremely difficult to select and calculate the desired concentration of the substance, in addition, due to its high toxicity, it can harm a person or pets.

Application forms:

• suspensions;
• powders;
• aerosols;
• crayons;
• dusts.

Folk remedies

The main is the use of natural ingredients. Advantage - they can become an alternative to chemical means if it is necessary to remove insects in a house where there are allergies or small children. The disadvantage is, as a rule, ineffective, since they are mainly aimed at scaring away, and not at exterminating insects.

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Recipes for folk insect repellents

If you decide to start your fight against insects with the most gentle and safe means from the “folk” category, use the following recipes, tested by home craftsmen in practice.

Method 1

If fleas, ticks, or bedbugs are wound up in carpets, try to cope with them using the simplest method:

1. Mix in equal proportions salt and soda.
2. Sprinkle the dry mixture over the carpets.
3. Leave it overnight.
4. Vacuum thoroughly in the morning.

On a note! Carry out this procedure as often as possible if animals live in the house, because it is they who can be carriers of parasites and at the same time suffer from them themselves. And do not forget to regularly remove fleas from your pets using special means from a veterinary pharmacy.

Method 2

You can get bedbugs from upholstered furniture using the following recipe:

1. Take 1 liter of clean, cool water.
2. Squeeze the juice of 1 lemon into it.
3. Pour into a spray bottle.
4. Treat the resulting solution with beds, sofas, pillows and all textiles.

On a note! To make the solution more saturated, you can boil finely chopped lemon in boiling water for 5 minutes, then strain and add to water. Next - use according to the scheme.

Method 3

Some types of insects do not tolerate certain odors. To sanitize surfaces and scare away pests, proceed as follows:

1. Pour 5-6 liters of cool water into a bucket.
2. Add 8-10 drops of aromatic oil - lavender, eucalyptus or rosemary.
3. Wash the flooring in the house with mortar.
4. Change the water.
5. Add the selected aromatic oil to it again.
6. Wipe all walls and surfaces.

Method 4

In the fight against small insects - fleas, ticks and bugs, this solution will help:

1. Take dry herbs with a strong smell - mint, eucalyptus, rosemary or lavender.
2. Prepare the broth - boil in a steam bath or pour boiling water in a thermos and let it brew for about 30 minutes.
3. Pour the decoction into the spray bottle.
4. Spray solution sofas, armchairs and other upholstered furniture.

On a note! To prevent small insects and parasites from appearing in the apartment, lay dry bundles of mint, laurel, geranium, lavender, rosemary in cabinets, on window sills, under sofas. At the same time, you can show your imagination and try to create original compositions from them to decorate the interior.

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The most popular insect control chemicals

Folk methods no longer work, because you missed the moment and the insects have long settled down in your territory? There is a way out - on the modern market there are a lot of different preparations that will certainly help you neutralize flying or crawling pests.The most famous of them are:

• Raid
• Raptor
• Dichlorvos.
• GET
• Combat
• Gel “Clean House”.

On a note! If you are at a loss in choosing suitable products or, tried and tested more than once, they no longer give the desired result - invite representatives of the sanitary-epidemiological station or use the services of a special insect control service that will perform high-quality disinsection of living quarters using the most effective products to date. However, keep in mind that attracting specialists will require certain cash costs from you.

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Useful Tips:

1. Always clean or discard food debris in a timely manner, and remove trash as often as possible to prevent insects from appearing.
2. Periodically inspect all rooms in the apartment, pay special attention to inaccessible places - crevices, indentations in order to detect the presence of pests in time.
3. Maintain cleanliness in the apartment constantly, do not ignore the general cleaning, which must be done at least 2 times a year. In dirty rooms, in dust, eggs, skins and larvae of various pests very often appear.
4. To protect yourself from flying insects, in the warm season, equip the windows with mosquito nets.
5. To control insects, first try using the least toxic agents, and only if they have not given the desired effect, use insecticides.
6. It is not advisable to use chemicals in rooms where young children or family members prone to allergic reactions live.
7. Use caution with insecticides and all kinds of lures, such as boric acid pellets, if you have any pets. Make sure that your pets do not come into contact with chemicals or accidentally swallow bait for parasites. It is better to transport cats or dogs to another place for the time of disinfestation.
8. When treating the room with chemicals, follow safety precautions when in contact with them, use respirators and protective gloves.

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We hope that the tips given in this article will be useful to you, and you will be able to correctly choose and apply the most effective insect control product. I wish you success in this difficult but necessary event!