Other invertebrates
Bed bugs
This common pest once associated with unhygienic surroundings is prevalent due to a number of reasons, including increased travel, the use of second-hand furniture, and suspected tolerance to some pesticides. These bugs still occur with regularity, particularly in multi-occupancy buildings with rapid resident turnover, for example, hostels, hotels, holiday camps and blocks of flats.
Appearance
Adult Bed bugs resemble a small brown disc, measuring up to 6mm in length. It is wingless but the legs are well developed and it can crawl up most vertical surfaces. Their elongated eggs are cemented in cracks or crevices close to the hosts (which for Bed bugs are humans). The early stages of the Bed bug (nymphs) are tiny making them hard to detect with the naked eye.
Characteristics
Bed bugs can usually be introduced to your property as they attach to luggage, bags, and clothing. Bed bugs may also be introduced through second-hand beds, furniture, and possessions.
Bed bugs can also travel from one room to another in search of food, or, after mating. Sometimes this may be a neighbouring property which then can create new infestations throughout multi-occupied premises.
Habitat
Mainly active at night Bed bugs hide in crevices in the bed, surrounding furniture, and also behind skirting boards, under loose wallpaper, behind pictures and even in plug sockets to name a few.
Diet
Bed bugs need to feed on the blood of a human host. However, in some cases, they can survive up to a year without feeding.
Why control Bed bugs?
Bed bug bites cause red, irritating marks/ lumps. Not everyone reacts to the bites, however, some people develop a more severe skin reaction and can experience disturbed sleep.
Bed bugs are not known to spread diseases. However, they can cause irritation and distress. Bed bugs can also ruin an organisation's reputation. If clients and customers experience a Bed bug infestation in the premises you manage, they are likely to complain and request a refund, report on your company negatively and be unlikely to want to do business with you again.
Signs of an infestation
Red irritating bites, typically in rows on your neck, shoulders, back, legs or arms.
Clusters or dark spots (about 1mm wide) that look like an ink dot are usually found on the bed frame or on the bottom side of the mattress.
Small blood smears on the bed linen or headboard.
Finding the small brown insects in and around your bed frame and sleeping area.
Biscuit Beetle
The Biscuit Beetle is found worldwide but more commonly in temperate latitudes. It is common throughout the UK, especially in food storage and retailing premises, and are frequently encountered in a domestic property. They are small reddish-brown insects, only about 3mm long, which attack stored foods in domestic cupboard and larders.
Very similar in appearance and closely related to the Common Furniture Beetle (Woodworm), these insects can easily be confused and misidentified.
Flour, biscuits, cake mixes, cereals, spices, meat and soup powders will attract them most, however, they will thrive on other substances such as poisonous substances like strychnine, belladonna and aconite - hence the beetle’s American name; Drug Store Beetle. They have also been known to penetrate tin foil and lead, and have even bored through a shelf-full of books.
The white larvae are very small and quite active when they hatch. They feed and grow for about two months or so, depending on temperature, the larvae pupate inside cocoons, often within the food material, and one or two weeks later the adult's hatch, their emergence holes resembling typical 'woodworm' (Anobium) exit holes. Mating takes place soon after emergence. The adults fly, but do not feed and live for relatively short periods of three to four weeks.
Booklice (Psocids)
Booklice (Psocids) are very common but harmless household pests. They are not caused by poor hygiene as they are just as common in scrupulously clean homes.
Appearance
These fast moving, tiny cream-coloured or light brown insects, only 1mm long, occur in small numbers in many premises.
Characteristics
Booklice stick pearl-coloured eggs and cement them to damp surfaces. Instead of a larval stage, the insect matures through four recognisable nymphal stages, taking about a fortnight to become an adult.
Habitat
Booklice are always associated with damp. It could be caused by new plaster drying out, condensation from not having enough ventilation in the kitchen/ bathroom, or a leaking water pipe.
Diet
Booklice feed on mould caused by damp conditions. They are also believed to feed on microscopic moulds that grow on the glue of book-bindings or on damp cardboard, damp food (especially cereals) or on the surfaces close to damp plaster inside buildings, which is very common with brand new houses.
Signs of an infestation
Visible mould and damp patches in the affected rooms.
Although they are only 1mm in size you may still see these white/cream species on your wall, surfaces, or in your cupboards.
Why control Booklice?
The major problem posed by Booklice is the nuisance they cause, especially when found in large numbers throughout the home. They don't spread disease, bite or damage your property and possessions.
Carpet Beetle
The larvae (known as “woolly bears”) of these small, oval beetles have outstripped the clothes moths as the major British textile pest. The Variegated Carpet Beetle is 2 to 4mm long, like a small, mottled brown, grey and cream ladybird. The related Fur Beetle is black with one spot on each wing case, and there is a rarer Black Carpet Beetle.
The larvae are small (about 4mm long), covered in brown hairs, and tend to roll up when disturbed. As they grow, they moult - and the old cast-off skins may be the first sign of infestation. Adults are often seen in April, May and June, seeking egg-laying sites; and the grubs are most active in October before they hibernate.
The adult Carpet Beetle feeds only on pollen and nectar of garden flowers but lays its eggs in old birds’ nests, felt, fabric or accumulated fluff in buildings. It is the larvae from these eggs that do the damage. They feed on feathers, fur, hair, or wool and tend to wander along the pipes from roofs into airing cupboards - which house the clothes and blankets which constitute the food.
The life cycle takes about a year, and the grubs can survive starvation in hard times for several months.
Carpet beetle damage consists of fairly well-defined round holes along the seams of fabric where the grubs bite through the thread.
Ground Beetles
These various large black or violet beetles that occasionally wander in from the garden or emerge from under doormats or not a pest and control is rarely necessary.
The larger Ground Beetles can grow up to 25mm long and tend to wander into properties to shelter from the cold.
Silverfish
A cigar-shaped, silver-grey, wingless insect about 12mm long, found in damp areas commonly in kitchens and bathrooms. Nocturnal in habit, but often trapped in baths, basins or chinaware as it cannot climb the smooth surfaces. Moves quickly and has three long bristles at the tail end.
Occasionally damages paper but feeds on residues of starchy substances such as glues, wallpaper paste and carbohydrate food debris. It may indicate damp conditions which need attention.
Eggs are laid in cracks and crevices, and the nymphs grow by an indefinite number of moults. Can grow a new leg if they lose one. Adults can live for over three years.
A closely related species, the Firebrat, is flatter and speckled, without the metallic appearance, and favours hot, dry situations, but can still be destroyed in the same way as its cousin.
Spiders
In the UK, native spiders are not considered dangerous, or a threat to health but some households suffer from ‘nuisance’ house spiders, and because of common fears (arachnophobia), many require pest control.
False Black Widow Spiders
Several spiders in the genus Steatoda are mistaken for the rather deadly Black Widow Spider. These lookalikes are often grouped together as False Black Widow Spiders. While these spiders are venomous and their bites can be very painful, they're no more dangerous than a wasp sting and the spiders are non-aggressive.
Identification
The False Black Widow is a relatively small spider, with a body length being 10-15mm (female) and only 3-6mm (male). The False Black Widow is shiny black and globular like the Black Widow, but they lack the characteristic red double triangle or ‘hourglass' marking.
The abdomen of the immature female has pale chevron markings on the dorsal surface and a white band around the anterior, but these diminish with each moult until the adult abdomen is black except for the band, now turned red.
Steatoda nobilis are believed to have been introduced to Devon from the Canary Islands in the 1880s, and has gradually spread northward and eastwards, with most confirmed records lying south of a line from the Wash to Pembrokeshire.
Although Steatoda nobilis was introduced, there are also five other closely related false widow spider species that occur in the UK.
Steatoda grossa and Steatoda bipunctata in particular are widespread and commonly found in sheds, outbuildings and porches as well as within homes.
It’s been tricky to identify the various False Widow Spiders with complete confidence, even using the online images.
Locations and webs
Typically, the False Widow Spiders spin a loose tangle of webbing, with a tube of silk in one corner that leads into a crevice where the spider hides in the day.
This web is often at least 1.5-2m above ground level, and sometimes higher.
The typical locations are around window and door frames, and eaves, but they have been reported from a wide range of other locations including walls, downpipes and gutters, waste pipes, porches, and outbuildings.
The spiders increase in numbers during warmer months, but in late summer and autumn they may become particularly conspicuous as the males wander more extensively in search of a mate. Requests for false widow pest control call-outs tend to peak in October.
Public health risk
False widow spiders are not aggressive and will not launch an unprovoked attack on people.
When bites do occur, it seems to be a result of accidental contact with a spider. The venom of Steatoda nobilis can cause a short-lived reaction, described as similar to a wasp sting, but occasionally it is longer-lasting and extends beyond the site of the bite.
In the UK, so-called spider bites are unlikely to be a reaction to the venom itself but are more likely to be the result of secondary infection of an initial skin lesion.
Given that Steatoda nobilis has been present in a large area of southern England for over a century, living in and around homes, the rarity of bites is an indication of the very low threat from this species. The threat is much less than that presented by wasp stings, or tick-borne Lyme disease, for example.
Brown House Moth
The commonest of the so-called clothes moths, with characteristic golden-bronze wings, flecked with black, folded flat along its back. The adult is about 8mm long and prefers to run rather than fly.
They grow up to 18mm long, feeding on wool, hair, fur, feathers, cork or debris from food such as dried fruit or cereals, and are common scavengers in old birds’ nests, from which they may enter buildings.
The related White Shouldered House Moth has mottled wings with a white head and “shoulders” where the wings join the body. Eggs are attached to fabric on which grubs will feed. The larvae are creamy-white caterpillars with brown heads.
The caterpillars spin silken cocoons in which they pupate. The life cycle takes several months to complete. Only the larval stage feeds, as a general scavenger as well as a textile pest.