Grass carrying wasps, A solitary wasp, packs a small cavity such as around a window or storm window frame with grass, stings a grasshopper or other bug and lays her egg inside. Her hatched egg feeds on the insect and grows up to build a pupae casing in the grass nest created by its mother. Next spring the pupa will emerge and start the process again. Not structure infesting, does not sting, never even noticed by customers usually with the exception of the grass in the windows.
Change your dehumidifier filter every 3 months and the black plastic prefilter annually. A dirty filter makes the machine less efficient and have to work harder. The picture here is a clean Santa Fe Classic dehumidifier filter on the right compared to a dirty filter on the left side.
On nice sunny fall days we get calls for flying ants, often suspected as termites, inside homes or adjacent to them. Inside they are often in the basement near a furnace. Usually the culprit is: Citronella Ants. Crushing the ant between your fingers will release the characteristic odor of citronella that gives this ant its name. Not a structure infesting ant this ant lives in the ground and is usually only a pest when they swarm in the fall and are confused with termites which normally only swarm in the spring in eastern Massachusetts.
-Lauren Greenhow, General Manager, GreenHow, Inc.
www.GreenHow.com. Effective Organic & Low Impact Solutions, Lawn Care, Pest Control & Termite Control in Newton and Metro Boston.
http://greenhow.com/green-pestcontrol/wp-content/uploads/2017/10/Greenhow-organic-pest-control-lawn-boston-1.png00Lauren Greenhowhttp://greenhow.com/green-pestcontrol/wp-content/uploads/2017/10/Greenhow-organic-pest-control-lawn-boston-1.pngLauren Greenhow2017-10-22 08:51:592018-01-26 12:31:54Citronella Ants - Fall ant swarms
The thin brown line running down the side of this foundation is a termite mud tube. In New England we deal with the Eastern Subterranean termite. This termite must be near soil at all times, so to move up into and out of your home the termite (the size of a small ant, lacking pigment so referred to as a grain of rice as a visual reference) builds mud shelter tubes by placing grains of soil cemented together with saliva to protect the termites from drying out. Even inside the wood they consume they carrying in soil and plaster it against the walls to control humidity in the wood. They need the soil to manage the moisture in their environment. Exposed termite shelter tubes like this can easily be overlooked against gray foundations or when the height of the grade is much closer to or in contact with the siding of the structure.