Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Well, this morning we're visiting with Randall from Pestbros. Welcome
to Guardline, Rendal, good to have you here.
Speaker 2 (00:05):
Yes, Sarah, thanks for having me. Good to be here.
It's a good weekend to be inside with all the rain.
Speaker 1 (00:10):
Yeah, it is a rainy weekend. And I've said it
a couple of times today. But the creatures that are
the happiest right now are mosquitos. I think because they
you know, finding a little bit of water to reproduce in.
Speaker 3 (00:25):
There.
Speaker 1 (00:26):
You know, they not have any trouble doing that at all.
Speaker 2 (00:29):
Not at all. Yeah, that's for sure. There's plenty of
that lately.
Speaker 1 (00:32):
Tell us a little bit about mosquitos, the creature that
we're dealing with. You know, there's more than one species
we have. But talking about a little bit of water,
you don't have to have a giant pond for mosquitoes
to breed.
Speaker 4 (00:43):
Yeah, our most calm mosquito will be the eighties mosquito
and they need very little bit of water to breed.
You can study show you could take a bottle cap
off of a water bottle, fill it with water, and
those mosquitoes will actually lay their larvae in that small amount.
Speaker 2 (01:00):
There's plenty of that lately.
Speaker 4 (01:00):
You can think about underneath your flower pots where you
have water all the time. Your neighbor might have a
tire out back with water. Your goaters might be holding
water anywhere at all. They're going to find it and
they're going to lay their their larvae. They're gonna start
breeding very rapidly.
Speaker 1 (01:15):
That that is just crazy that that, You know, you
almost feel like you're defeated. If they can breed in
a thimble of water, you know, then it's like, well,
how can I find all the thumbles of water to
throw a mosquita dunk in or something. Yeah, it's hard
to win that game, isn't it.
Speaker 2 (01:31):
We got some great products that will will find it
for you.
Speaker 3 (01:33):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (01:34):
Well, I talk about the buckets a lot here and
people are always interested in that. But I would like you,
I like you to tell us about the bucket system
and how it works and what makes it unique and
what your experience has been. Of course, you're you're putting
those out of people's places. In fact, I have family
members in Houston that I think called you and got
(01:55):
some some buckets at their house.
Speaker 3 (01:57):
Uh, how does that does that work?
Speaker 1 (02:00):
And why is that a better system than just you know,
getting a crop duster and flying over and nuke and
everything that has six legs.
Speaker 2 (02:07):
Yeah. So this system is called into Care.
Speaker 4 (02:10):
It's developed by Enview used to be Bayer, now it's
called Enview. But this product is designed to use the
mosquito itself to go out and infect all those other
breeding sites. So has two two active ingredients. One is
an insect growth regulator and one is actually a fungus
that develops onto the mosquito. So we put these buckets out,
(02:32):
they fly into there, they lay their larvae, they get
that fungus picked up on them. Once they get that
fungus on them, it takes about two days to kill them.
The reason for that is because we want it to
kill them slowly so they can attract that and spread
it to all the other breeding sites.
Speaker 1 (02:47):
Yeah, there's a little screen in there that they land
on naturally and that it has that powder on it
and they pick it up. Yes, sir, It makes me
deeply happy inside to think of a mosquito dying of
a body fungal infection within a couple of days.
Speaker 2 (03:02):
Yeah. Absolutely.
Speaker 1 (03:02):
But in the meantime, during those two days, that mosquito
is going to go to work for you.
Speaker 4 (03:07):
Yeah, that mosquit is going to go to work. It's
gonna fly out all the other breeding sites that you
can't access and you can't treat. Maybe you can't put
a mosquito dunk in it because your neighbors hold a
bunch of water. You might even have a pool down
the street that's full of mosquito larvae. So it's gonna
actually infect all those breeding sites.
Speaker 1 (03:24):
It carries a little bit of the product over there.
Speaker 4 (03:26):
Correct. Yeah, this is not an instant knockdown. It takes
a little bit of time to work for them to
get out and spread that fungus.
Speaker 1 (03:33):
Sometimes I'll peek into my buckets and I'll see, you know,
a bunch of debris in there, and then I'll see
some wrigglers. But that makes me happy because those wrigglars
are never going to turn into adult mosquitos, and you
actually want them. Why is it good to have the
wrigglars in those buckets, even to lay the eggs and
have them come up and all this stuff's riding and stuff.
Speaker 4 (03:54):
Yeah, So the more you see in there, that's just
giving you a good sign that that bucket's working. It's
attracting a lot of us mosquitos. But mosquitoes they don't
lay all their eggs in one site. Matter of fact,
they'll fly out to several breeding sites throughout the whole
day and.
Speaker 2 (04:07):
Lay it in multiple areas.
Speaker 4 (04:09):
Okay, So as they're leaving that bucket flying off of
that screen, they're going to take that fungus and they're
gonna infect all those other breeding sites that they're flying.
Speaker 3 (04:18):
So it's good. That's good. So the.
Speaker 1 (04:23):
You put some stuff in there that that bucket actually
attracts mosquitoes to it.
Speaker 2 (04:27):
It does, Yeah, it attracts.
Speaker 4 (04:29):
And one bucket will cover about five thousand square foot,
so you're your average city lot, you know, we'll install
about two buckets on average.
Speaker 1 (04:38):
Okay, good, Well, we've been really happy with ours and
talking to family and dyking to people on their I've
had several people tell me, you know, how they love it,
you know, and I think it's important you know that
people understand that this isn't like every mosquito in your
city is going to fly to your house and die there.
Mosquitoes can come from a lot of places, and you know,
(05:00):
if one comes from the neighbor down the street, that
won't empty their kiddie pool and it ends up at
your house. Well, I mean, it can bite you, but
in general, what I found is it suppresses the numbers
down to a very manageable, very What.
Speaker 4 (05:16):
You're gonna see the next, you know, a week or
so is the eighties what we call a tiger mosquito.
That's the really aggressive one. Those are the daytime biters.
So those will be coming out soon, so get ready
for that.
Speaker 3 (05:28):
A lot of them.
Speaker 1 (05:29):
I've experienced her biting typically late in the day when
I'm out through at dusk time. That seems to be
a real popular time. Because we have more than one
kind of mosquito, I guess we do have some different behavior.
Speaker 2 (05:42):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (05:42):
And then you know, down in Galison County you get
a lot of the marsh land and the marsh mosquitoes.
Those are the bigger ones and very aggressive ones.
Speaker 3 (05:49):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (05:50):
Okay, all right, So I'm gonna just quick message here
to my producer. Check those check that chat for me
if you will. So in the past, I had a
little fogging machine and I didn't like to use it
(06:11):
because I got a garden and things. I didn't want
pesticides going in on stuff I was gonna eat. And
I knew that when you kill everything, you kill good
things as well as bad things. And I just kind
of put that thing up and don't have to use
it anymore. But I know a lot of people use
a lot of different systems to try to just knock
mosquitoes out because they're they're everywhere, They're coming in from everywhere,
(06:33):
and boy, with that bucket, once they get going, it's
just not a problem. You may have a couple of
little peaks in the summer where you know, with all
the rain and stuff, you get a few more. But
if everybody in the neighborhood had buckets, it'd be a
nice place to live.
Speaker 4 (06:47):
Yeah, And these these into care buckets are what they're
using a lot of the Third world countries, you know,
fighting malaria. They're very well studied.
Speaker 1 (06:55):
I've been amazed at that because they can't they don't
have access to all the chemical stuff that we do here. Correct,
when you're living in places where zeke and I'm trying
to think of some other mosquito diseases.
Speaker 4 (07:09):
Mosquitos, Yeah, they're the number one killer in America or
in the world, almost almost a million des a year.
Speaker 1 (07:16):
One folks, I want you to hear that again. The
number one creature killing humans is not sharks or tigers
or whatever. It's mosquitoes around the world, the number one
killer of humans. A second, little break here and we'll
be right back with random. If you've got a question
on mosquitoes, give me a call and we will talk
(07:37):
insects in and around the house. That is basically what
we're focusing on. So I tell you what we're going
to go to George in Jersey Village. Hey, George, welcome
to garden line.
Speaker 5 (07:49):
Yeah, good morning you skip. Good morning, mosquito man. So
I've got those dumps that they use, but I never
wonder how much to put in a like a five
gallon bucket. So that's my first question. The second question
is when you are walking out in the garden with
my wife, She's to attack her more than me, and
I feel sorry for her sometimes. So what can I
do about that with anything?
Speaker 1 (08:11):
She's she's a much much sweeter person than you. Any
of your neighbors could tell you that.
Speaker 6 (08:17):
Maybe, yeah, okay, we're going to We're going to stop
right there and not digging any old now seriously, Uh,
the mosquito.
Speaker 1 (08:27):
One mosquita dunk covers one hundred square feet of surface area.
So a little five gallon bucket, you could break a
mosquito dunk into pieces, a little chunk in there, or
just get some of the granules that they have. You
could do that. They're called mosquito bits. Same, Yeah, you
can do that. Yeah, all right, But I'm trying to
(08:49):
talk in to get some of these mosquito buckets too.
Speaker 5 (08:53):
I don't know what those are. Our will work.
Speaker 3 (08:57):
Well.
Speaker 1 (08:58):
The fellow here at past we just talked about a
little bit. But give him like a reader's digest version
of Randall if you would, of the bucket.
Speaker 2 (09:05):
Yes, sir.
Speaker 4 (09:06):
So basically it's a it's about a two gallon bucket.
We put it in your yard. One bucket'll cover about
five thousand square foot. The mosquito flies.
Speaker 2 (09:13):
In there and they lay their larvae.
Speaker 4 (09:14):
They get a fungus on them, and it takes about
two or three days to start killing them. But what
they're gonna do is they're gonna fly out and they're
gonna infect all those other breeding sites that you can't
get a mosquito dunk too.
Speaker 2 (09:26):
And things like that. They are they'll fly right into
that bucket.
Speaker 1 (09:31):
Yeah, anytime you're it's got stuff in the bucket to
track around. Yeah, all right, Chorge, good luck with that you. Yeah,
well you can find them at the dpestbros dot com.
Speaker 3 (09:42):
That's where you go.
Speaker 1 (09:45):
It's d right, yes, sir, the pest Bros. Yeah, okay,
all right, there we go. All right, So we were
talking about mosquitoes and dealing with these things and where
was there was something else I can't remember where we
dropped off our conversation.
Speaker 4 (09:58):
Yeah, we were going to talk about about how long
it takes to work. So, yeah, if we get a
call and somebody had heavy mosquito presents and we come
put these buckets out, they're not going to work right away.
They're not a quick knockdown. It takes time for the
mosquitos to get in there, get the focus on them,
lay their larvae. But thankfully this company, Envow has created
another product called bar core Es Central. So this is
(10:20):
an all natural mosquito control. It's a liquid spray or
a fog howevery want to apply it, and it's it's
basically just all sentral oil. So it sessame oil, sodium sulfate,
cinnamon oil, clove oil, and time oil. It'll it'll control
for twenty one to thirty days and leave your yard
smelling like falseme, it's amazing.
Speaker 3 (10:41):
That just blows my mind that.
Speaker 1 (10:45):
I the part that throws through me was when you
talked about it last in a while. You know, I
could see how spraying and oil on the insect's gonna
kill it. But you're talking about you're putting it. Are
you putting in like on the shrubbery the side of
the house or I mean we're.
Speaker 2 (11:00):
Yeah, we're going to focus on the air.
Speaker 4 (11:01):
You think, like a mosquito, where they're going to be
during the day, where they're hiding, So your shaded areas,
your shrubs, corners, things like that. But if it's a
real heavy presence, the label allows us we can broadcast
the entire lineup we need to.
Speaker 1 (11:14):
Wow, that's that's cool because that's why you know, folks,
you go out in the middle of the day and
it's like they're not that many mosquitoes, and then you
come back out in the evening, right when your guests
are arriving to set out on the patio and you're
having to grab a small child by the ankles to
keep mosquitoes from carrying them over across the neighbors fence.
This stuff is last for at what did you say.
Speaker 2 (11:37):
Twenty twenty one to thirty days.
Speaker 4 (11:38):
And you know the most amazing thing about it is
it only targets mosquitoes. It doesn't harm your butterflies. You're
pollinating bees. That's good your lady bugs. It's really amazing
how they've come up and put these ingredients together to
only target mosquitoes.
Speaker 1 (11:53):
Yeah, that ENVU company refocuses on safer, simpler supplies, Yes, sir, Yeah,
I don't know if you were listening coming in, but
the I have a picture of the kids running behind
the truck spraying DDT, playing in the water barefoot, and
every time I see.
Speaker 3 (12:11):
That picture, it's just like we've come.
Speaker 1 (12:13):
A long way, long way and here we are now
not even having to use a fogger. If we get
out there and get that spray done, it's gonna last
up to almost a month. There that that's effective, and
that's good for that lag time too. You were talking about.
I have noticed that the buckets. You got to get
them going, and again if your neighbors would do them too,
(12:33):
that'd be even better. But you get that system going,
now you got mosquitoes coming to the buckets, which is
what you want. And flying from the buckets, which is
what you want. And they got about two days to
help reduce the other breeding sites that you can't even
get to. So those are two really cool things. And
you know, one thing I've noticed over the years is
(12:54):
we just keep coming up with safer and safer technologies
and ways to deal with past.
Speaker 2 (13:01):
Yeah, it's pretty amazing.
Speaker 6 (13:02):
You know.
Speaker 4 (13:02):
I can remember my early early days in pest control
seventeen eighteen, you know, filling up a fifty gallon tank,
dragging out the hose. Yeah, the lasting the yard with
you know, permethro and her bife and thrown based products,
and you're just you're literally obliterating and killing everything and everything. Yeah,
it's not only the wrong way to do it, it's
just a lazy.
Speaker 2 (13:21):
Way to do it.
Speaker 4 (13:21):
Really, We've come a long way with technology and we
want to be more target specific.
Speaker 2 (13:26):
I don't want to kill all the pollinators.
Speaker 1 (13:28):
Sometimes one solution leads to other problems. When I was
growing up, there was a poem that I know an
old lady who swallowed a fly. I don't know if
you ever heard that poem, and then she swallowed a
spider to catch the fly, and then she swallowed a
bird to catch a spider, and then she swallowed.
Speaker 3 (13:42):
The cat to catch the bird.
Speaker 1 (13:45):
And the point being is that one problem just leads
to another one, and it is good to see that
kind of thing. And I know you don't have to
be like an organic person specifically to appreciate and have
a concern for misuse of pesticides and things. I don't
know if you've ever read that book, you may have
heard me talking about a chemical age, but it is
(14:07):
fascinating it. Yeah, it's a it's a really really good read.
There's there's a couple of books that are like that
that I love. Okay, so let's do this. Well, first
of all, I just want to mention we're talking about
Superturf earlier. Superturf nineteen four to ten from nitrofoss is
a slow release that carries your lawn through summer. It's
(14:29):
like three months, so you know, you put it down, now,
what is it. We're kind of toward the beginning of June,
so you got July, August, September, and then it's time
to put your fall fertilizer on, which is a different
fertilizer ratio that I have on my schedules. For fall.
By the way, if you don't have my schedule, go
to gardening with Skip dot com and you can get
the lawn care schedule and the lawn pest disease and
(14:51):
weed management schedule. They're both there at that website for free,
and they tell you what to do and when to
do it. So Superturf, being a night foss product, is
available at all the Fishers hardwares, the one in Pasadena,
the one on the Port, the one in my Bellevue,
and the one down there in Baytown.
Speaker 3 (15:10):
Well, let's shift.
Speaker 1 (15:10):
Gears a little bit, and let's talk a little bit
about termites. We have a similar story in termites and
that we're getting some technologies that are kind of cool
that avoid You know, with termites, you don't know when
they're going to show up, and they may show up
six months from now, or a year and a half
from now or tomorrow. And there it's not just a
(15:35):
mesquito bite that makes you run inside the house. There
it is the house, correct, and the expense of that
is something no one wants to deal with. We talk
a little bit about the termite. Let's start with the
termites we deal with here. You were telling me one
time about promotion and some other things. Could you tell
our listeners a little bit about termites.
Speaker 4 (15:53):
Yeah, So throughout the whole Houston region, we have only
three species of termites. That would be your drywood termites.
Those are the where you have to femigate the home,
wrap it in a tarp, fumigate it. And you have
your native eastern subterranean termites which come from the soil.
And then you have the most aggressive one. The further
you get to the coast, the more they're going to be.
Those are the foremost and termites.
Speaker 3 (16:14):
Yeah, those are bad.
Speaker 4 (16:15):
Those are the ones that are extremely destructive. In a
very short amount of time.
Speaker 1 (16:20):
Yeah, man, I'm having fun talking. We got about twenty
seconds until I got to go to a break here,
so hold that thought, folks, come back.
Speaker 3 (16:28):
We're going to talk about these termites and.
Speaker 1 (16:30):
The safest, most effective ways to manage termites at your property.
So grab your coffee, come right back. We'll see you
in just a minute. Turn it over to Erica now
for the news. If you got a question about gardening
that relates to specifically the insects and the house and
outside the house, give us a call for those of
(16:50):
you just tuning in. I'm visiting with Randall from Pest Bros.
You hear me talk about pest Bros. All the time
here on Garden Line. They service the area from Texas
City all the way up to the woodlands from Katie
across the Bay Town. Unless you've expanded it up into
other states and countries. I don't think that yet. Not yet.
(17:11):
All right, we're talking termites at this moment. We already
talked about mosquitoes. If you got a question about some
household pest or something like that, give us a call.
We'd be happy to have Randall address those questions. Now
we were talking about termites. So will you pick it
up with termites. You were talking about the down near
(17:33):
the coasts, the formost and being so bad down there.
As you go north in Texas, less and less of it,
But the subterraneans and drywoods are all equally. But tell
us a little bit about what's the latest and turmite control.
Speaker 4 (17:46):
Yeah, So the latest is another BASF product. It's called
termator HG with stands for high efficiency. This is designed
specifically to combat the aggressiveness of for most and termites.
Is a liquid treatment we put around your foundation. This
stuff will bond to your soil for about ten years
and pretty much give you a full protection against our
(18:08):
native eastern subs and our formost intermites.
Speaker 1 (18:11):
It's designed to not just wash away, but to tie
up correct to the soil particles. And when you put
that out, I've noticed you dig a little trench, put
it in the trend, not a deep trench, just a
shallow trench, and then put sod or soil back over
that spot the side you took away or the soil,
put it back over that spot. So if the family
(18:31):
pet goes and lays there on top of it, it's
like they're not getting access to that pesticide.
Speaker 4 (18:36):
Correct, there's nothing topical. We only dig about a three
inch trench right up against the foundation. That product's going
to lead down about six inches close to the bottom
of the footing of the slab. Covered up. You can
have an ant cral across it. Three days later. I'm
not going to kill and there's nothing active on top
of the soil.
Speaker 1 (18:52):
Okay, but it will get those termites and for most
ins are horrible. When I was in Harris County Extension Office,
I worked with some City of Houston foresters. We went
downtown and there were like big old trees and the
whole interior had been eaten out by formotion termites, which
is not our Other termites aren't.
Speaker 3 (19:11):
Quite quite like that.
Speaker 2 (19:13):
Yeah, they can.
Speaker 4 (19:13):
They can consume about sixteen ounces of wood in less
than a week. So you start adding that up.
Speaker 1 (19:19):
Per termite, per per colony or per colony.
Speaker 4 (19:21):
Okay, I mean they can destroy an entire you know,
eight foot two by four in a very short amount
of time.
Speaker 1 (19:27):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (19:28):
So they work very quickly build very large colonies.
Speaker 1 (19:31):
All right, So tell me about some other ways that
we can deal with termites that are less of an
exposure for humans to pesticides.
Speaker 4 (19:41):
Yeah, So we have a baiting system. This is called
This is called Trelona. It's also made by BSF. These
are bait stations that go in ground around the foundation.
So we apply these every fifteen to twenty feet. As
those termites are forging under the soil looking looking for
somewhere to infest, they're going to attack those baits. Theyations first.
It has a cellulose compound inside of it. They'll feed
(20:04):
on that, they'll take it back to the colony and
it doesn't as they start molting, it'll it'll kill off
the colony.
Speaker 2 (20:10):
The workers will carry it back.
Speaker 1 (20:12):
So so like a fire at bait where they pick
up the granule and they take it home and feed
it to the queen and everybody else and it takes
it out. This is like doing that for urmaite. And
for those of you who are golfers and you know
how sometimes you're able to get the ball to go
into that little cup on the green well, imagine something
about that size, but deeper, and then a little plug
(20:34):
put into it so it's flat to the surface of
the ground, but inside it's got the bait and termites.
I don't know if the word smell is right, but
they essentially know it's there and they go to feed
on that.
Speaker 4 (20:47):
Yeah, cellulase material in there is more attracting than the
wood in your wall. They're going to hit that station.
And then, like I said, we put them every fifteen
feet around the entire foundation, so it's basically like a
board protection right your home.
Speaker 1 (21:01):
And if you have a lawn, you don't even see them.
They're not you're not going to hit them with your lawn.
More there at the soil surface, so they're they're down low.
Speaker 4 (21:08):
And then you guys monitor that right, correct, yep, So
the label allows us only requires us to come out
once a year, open those up, make sure they have
fresh bait. Being the heavy president's presence of termites we
have in our reagion, will typically come out twice a
year and check those, make sure they're fresh.
Speaker 1 (21:24):
Okay. And while while we're talking coming out with the buckets,
do you typically come once a month to replenish the
bucket or for.
Speaker 2 (21:34):
The mosquito bucket?
Speaker 1 (21:34):
Yeah, the mosquito buckets.
Speaker 4 (21:36):
Yeah, that bucket gets replenished every four to six weeks,
but we stick those on a monthly basis.
Speaker 1 (21:43):
Okay, good, So all right, every four weeks. Well, those
are two termite solutions that are are big and you know,
how would you put this with termites? There's a lot
at steak and so you know, people like, you know,
we buy insurance for floods, We buy insurance for a
lot of things that happen in our house, and with termites,
(22:07):
it's like, yeah, that's that hugely effects the value your
home and the cost to deal them especially.
Speaker 4 (22:13):
Yeah, it's the cheapest insurance policy you can buy. You know,
termite protection. Everyone kind of overlooks that you think about
your windstorm and your flood. Termites are way more likely
to happen than either one of those. And if you
can do a one treatment and last up to ten years,
and the base stations are going to last a lifetime
of the home assongs are maintained annually.
Speaker 1 (22:34):
Okay, So all right, Like my good.
Speaker 4 (22:37):
Friend Ronnie Holder said, there's only two types of homes
in Southeast Texas, those that have termites.
Speaker 2 (22:41):
And those are going to get them.
Speaker 1 (22:43):
Say that again, I like that.
Speaker 4 (22:44):
Yeah, two types of homes. Homes that have them have turmites,
and homes that are going to get them.
Speaker 1 (22:49):
Right there, You go, all right, well that's that is
a that is a good point. So we're talking about
those controls for turmite. With the formotions and things, you
guys have to sometimes go to great links after they're in.
So it's so much easier to put out the product
(23:10):
that you talked about in the trench, or to put
out the little bait stations.
Speaker 3 (23:14):
And avoid them.
Speaker 1 (23:15):
But when you don't do that and you wait till
you have termites and then you call a pest control
company to come out, now you're spending some money.
Speaker 4 (23:23):
Yeah, once the formotions establish a calling in your home.
The treatment becomes much more invasive. Then we're talking about
going up in the attic looking for what we call
a carton, which is a secondary nest, doing wall injections
with a turmotor foam treatment, sometimes cutting open walls, checking
for high moisture. It becomes much more invasive once they.
Speaker 1 (23:43):
Establish Okay, yeah, that you don't want to have to
do that.
Speaker 2 (23:47):
Yeah, better to protect it beforehand for sure.
Speaker 1 (23:50):
Okay, So when someone is looking at avoiding problems with termites,
can you talk about some of the things they may
need to be conscious of in terms of flower beds
against the house. You had told me about the little
corner pops, So would you talk about some of those
(24:10):
kind of things.
Speaker 2 (24:11):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (24:11):
The best thing you can do as a homeowner is
avoiding what we call conducive conditions. So, you know, soil
too high around the foundation. If you have a brick home,
you're gonna have wheat poles all around the bottom. You
typically want to soil at least two to three inches
below that. You want to slab to be very clear,
keep your molch levels down, trim the trees back, try
(24:31):
to get some sunlight in there. If you have standing
water somewhere you want to correct that obviously, you know,
not stacking firewood right up against the foundation.
Speaker 2 (24:40):
You'd be surprised.
Speaker 4 (24:41):
Sometimes we see that blocking your foundation is the best
thing to do is keep your slab exposed as much
as possible.
Speaker 1 (24:48):
Okay, yeah, those are that's good advice. And check periodically
for those.
Speaker 2 (24:54):
Yeah yeah, definitely have a professional check minimum once a year.
Speaker 1 (24:59):
Okay, okay, all right, well, good advice.
Speaker 3 (25:04):
Uh Chris A.
Speaker 1 (25:05):
Loto the creepy crawleys that bug us in the house,
general general past control kinds of things. Are you gonna
talk a little bit about some of the options there?
Speaker 4 (25:13):
Yeah, yeah, we uh so, we're full service, so we
handle everything from you know, German roach infestations to bed
bugs to fleas are a huge thing right now. They're
they're popping out breeding everywhere.
Speaker 1 (25:26):
You know.
Speaker 4 (25:26):
Fire Ants are always a big deal, and they're they're
really going to come out once the all this rain passes.
Speaker 2 (25:32):
So we have a lot of fire ant options.
Speaker 4 (25:34):
We have a baiting option that we do two or
three times a year that will pretty much keep your
fire ants at bay for the majority of the year,
just doing two or three applications. And then we have
long time applications fipper nail based granules that we put
out once a year and that comes with a three
hundred and sixty five day warranty. So those are great
products to combat fire ants.
Speaker 1 (25:56):
Okay, okay, Well, fire ants are always a big problem,
you know for people, and the fact that they can
fly up in the air three hundred feet mate and
then land somewhere and start a new colony, that's a
big deal. The thing I always try to get people
remember about fire ants is there's colonies developing that you
don't see. And so, like you see a mound in
(26:19):
your yard, but there could be a colony that hasn't
built up to that point yet. So when you just
go around doing mound treatments, you're playing that whack a
mole game, and another one just pops up correct where
they are, and people say, well, the colony just moved over. Well, no,
not necessarily. It probably was another colony that just hadn't
come up yet. And so the baits are a real
(26:39):
good way.
Speaker 2 (26:40):
Yeah, fire ants are incredible.
Speaker 4 (26:41):
That little mound you see sticking up underneath it can
be up to six feet deep and eight feet wide. Okay,
so when you're just killing the workers on top. All
those ones underneath the ground are not being killed, and
they will just move over.
Speaker 1 (26:53):
I've seen pictures of people that pour hot aluminum down
the holes of fire ants and they create this underground.
It goes in all their tunnels and when you you
got a work of art when they washed your herd
off after and cools off. Yeah, hey, let's go to
a break, Jeff and Hussman. We are going to come
to your call first when we come back. Just learning
a lot about a lot of insects. We spent some
(27:16):
time on mosquitos with the mosquito buckets and is.
Speaker 3 (27:19):
It barricour was at the arcoor central barricoor.
Speaker 1 (27:22):
The essentially essential oils that last about twenty to thirty
days out there that just knock out mosquitos and don't
hurt your good guys out there. The beneficials and things.
We switched over to termites, which is what we're talking
about right now, and then actually we switched over to
indoor pasts and things that we're dealing with render There's
(27:45):
some other things that you know, just are what's keeping
you busy right now? What are the calls that what's
happening in Houston.
Speaker 4 (27:52):
Insect wise, well, everything, but right now it's for most
and termites for most. I think we've been for about
twenty nine straight days we've been doing for most in
termite treatment. So big thing right now. But it's everything.
It's it's fleas, it's fire ants. Unfortunately, a lot of
the outdoor stuff is on hold because of all the
brain so have a lot of interior work right now.
Speaker 1 (28:14):
Okay, lots of things. Well, people are concerned about that.
I you know, thinking about everything that's outside, like the
fleas for example, there's do you do regular insecticides for
the fleas or do you do like maybe insect growth
regulators or what what kinds of approaches do you have
for fleas?
Speaker 4 (28:34):
Yeah, we use synthetic pesticides for those. Sometimes depending on
the situation, how how bad the infestation infestation is, we
may use some i g RS, which insect growth regulator,
but that would be indoors. We have products that we
you know, we spray on the lawn and it's going
to wipe those fleas out in one treatment.
Speaker 1 (28:52):
Okay. Uh. The thing to remember folks too is to
treat your pets too. You know, your veterinarian can give
you stuff that you put on your pets and it
helps control them there. Otherwise it kind of becomes a
whack a mole because you know, a squirrel hops across
the yard and drops some fleas in the ground. The
neighborhood cat does the same thing. So you're treating in
(29:12):
the yard, but if you're not treating your pets coming
inside too, it's well, it's easier to knock out.
Speaker 2 (29:19):
That cycle if you do it, very important to have
your pets treat it.
Speaker 1 (29:22):
Yeah, that's good. He mentioned insect growth regulator. He mentioned
that on termites, the product that went it was like
cellulose and a hole in the ground product that we
talked about. So what an insect growth regulator does is
that it prevents the insects normal development. You know, an
insect act hatches out of an egg and it becomes
(29:44):
a larvae or a nymph, depending on what kind of
insect it is, and then that may go through what
we call in stars where it grows slowly over time
and then eventually it becomes an adult. In order to
do that, the molting sometimes that's in there, the insect
growth regulator stop that process so they're not like a
poison to just fight kill the insect, which we're all
(30:04):
familiar with those, but this is something that prevents the
insect from going to the next stage.
Speaker 3 (30:09):
Those are very effective.
Speaker 2 (30:11):
Fancy term for birth control basically.
Speaker 1 (30:13):
Okay, birth control for insects. All right, well that's good.
Are there some other topics that or other things that
maybe people aren't aware of.
Speaker 4 (30:22):
That you think, yes, sir, how about how about rodents?
You know, oh gosh, very overlooked. You might hear something
in your attic at night or probably going to be
a roof rat. So we always recommend doing it, doing inspection,
looking for ways they can get in, because if there's
a way, they're going to find it, whether it's your
AC line where it goes up to the wall, maybe
some gable junctions, Oversized wheepholes are common. You'd be really
(30:46):
surprised the amount of small holes they can make their
way into.
Speaker 1 (30:50):
Yeah, you were telling me one time, and I've got
a pipe I need to have you look at sometime
out on the side of the house where I don't
know if it's an air conditioning line or something goes
into the wall and there's a little gap where there's
not mortar around it, and so you're telling me how
small of an area that are a mouse can squeeze through?
It is tiny.
Speaker 4 (31:11):
Yeah, you could get an adult Norwegian roof rat about
the size of a squirrel, for example. You give them
a one inch hole and they will squeeze their entire
body through it. Pretty incredible. We have many videos of it.
Speaker 1 (31:23):
That's that's kind of what is it where you kind
of go down low under the limbo limbo stick or
something you gotta squeeze it or that's amazing that they
can can get through like that. So what do you
do when you see those holes?
Speaker 4 (31:38):
Well, first we're going to see if they made their
way into your attic. If so, you know, we have
some baits we can put up there that will flush
them out. Indoor, we can do trapping if we need to.
And then once we know the problem has solved and
all the rodents have been flushed out, you know we're
gonna come back and do an exclusion and seal that
that home up to where it's not going to happen again.
Speaker 1 (31:56):
Okay, Uh, I we got about a minute half or
left here. Uh. You said the term fleshing out. And
when I worked in Austin at the extension office. They
put poison in the attic that killed every rat in
the building and they all went down in my wall
and died an Oh my gosh, it was you couldn't
(32:16):
even walk in the building, much less my office. Right,
So what do you mean by when you say fleshing
about it? Are there things that make them go out,
like looking for water or something.
Speaker 4 (32:23):
Well, the way it happens is we use a second
generation anti koagulant that's the active ingredient, and it makes
them short shorter breadth actually, So an animal's natural instinct
is to get out of that environment. So typically they're
they're going to run off and die outside. Of course,
they can die in the attic. That's that's that can happen.
But the good thing about this product we use is
(32:45):
it doesn't transfer sofa hawk comes and picks it up
or something broke down enough into that bloodstream to where
it's not going to affect that bird, because there's always
a risk they can die in the atticts.
Speaker 3 (32:56):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (32:56):
Well, but that problem is a big thing with some
of the early stuff that we were putting out, where
someone picks up the animal and then you hurt the
bird or whatever.
Speaker 2 (33:07):
That's been adjusted drastically.
Speaker 3 (33:09):
Wow, that's cool. It is really nice. Thanks so much
for coming on and being here.
Speaker 1 (33:14):
I told you to go fast.
Speaker 3 (33:16):
Way. We didn't even get started.
Speaker 1 (33:17):
Here, but all it's exciting for me to hear about
all the better and better ways we're finding to deal
with problems, whether it's six legs or four legs. I
haven't heard you talk about dealing with two legged problems.
When the relatives come over the neighborhood, kids run the
house or whatever.
Speaker 2 (33:35):
Off the books. Everything's got a price tag.
Speaker 3 (33:38):
It's just you come in a clown suit and scare
the children out of the ark.
Speaker 1 (33:42):
I don't know that was stupid, but seriously that the
technologies today are amazing. This is Randall from pest Bros.
You hear me talk about them all the time. Depestbros
dot com if you want to check out those buckets.
Speaker 3 (33:56):
If you won't, check out.
Speaker 1 (33:56):
This really cool herbal mosquito solution that makes your house
makes your outdoors smell kind of cool, uh and works
for twenty to thirty days. Give them a call. The
same with the termites. I just think, why take a
chance on having a termite in it? Don't wait until
you find you have a termite problem. To do with termites.
(34:17):
It is so much less expensive, so much more effective,
so much less hassle to just get it done ahead
of time.
Speaker 3 (34:25):
So give them a call. What's a phone number there
at pest.
Speaker 4 (34:28):
Brounsy Sarah two eight one two zero six forty six seventy.
Speaker 1 (34:32):
I will say that again, two eight one two six.
Speaker 2 (34:35):
Forty six seven.
Speaker 1 (34:36):
There we go. Thanks so much for coming on, man,
I really appreciate it.
Well, this morning we're visiting with Randall from Pestbros. Welcome
to Guardline, Rendal, good to have you here.
Speaker 2 (00:05):
Yes, Sarah, thanks for having me. Good to be here.
It's a good weekend to be inside with all the rain.
Speaker 1 (00:10):
Yeah, it is a rainy weekend. And I've said it
a couple of times today. But the creatures that are
the happiest right now are mosquitos. I think because they
you know, finding a little bit of water to reproduce in.
Speaker 3 (00:25):
There.
Speaker 1 (00:26):
You know, they not have any trouble doing that at all.
Speaker 2 (00:29):
Not at all. Yeah, that's for sure. There's plenty of
that lately.
Speaker 1 (00:32):
Tell us a little bit about mosquitos, the creature that
we're dealing with. You know, there's more than one species
we have. But talking about a little bit of water,
you don't have to have a giant pond for mosquitoes
to breed.
Speaker 4 (00:43):
Yeah, our most calm mosquito will be the eighties mosquito
and they need very little bit of water to breed.
You can study show you could take a bottle cap
off of a water bottle, fill it with water, and
those mosquitoes will actually lay their larvae in that small amount.
Speaker 2 (01:00):
There's plenty of that lately.
Speaker 4 (01:00):
You can think about underneath your flower pots where you
have water all the time. Your neighbor might have a
tire out back with water. Your goaters might be holding
water anywhere at all. They're going to find it and
they're going to lay their their larvae. They're gonna start
breeding very rapidly.
Speaker 1 (01:15):
That that is just crazy that that, You know, you
almost feel like you're defeated. If they can breed in
a thimble of water, you know, then it's like, well,
how can I find all the thumbles of water to
throw a mosquita dunk in or something. Yeah, it's hard
to win that game, isn't it.
Speaker 2 (01:31):
We got some great products that will will find it
for you.
Speaker 3 (01:33):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (01:34):
Well, I talk about the buckets a lot here and
people are always interested in that. But I would like you,
I like you to tell us about the bucket system
and how it works and what makes it unique and
what your experience has been. Of course, you're you're putting
those out of people's places. In fact, I have family
members in Houston that I think called you and got
(01:55):
some some buckets at their house.
Speaker 3 (01:57):
Uh, how does that does that work?
Speaker 1 (02:00):
And why is that a better system than just you know,
getting a crop duster and flying over and nuke and
everything that has six legs.
Speaker 2 (02:07):
Yeah. So this system is called into Care.
Speaker 4 (02:10):
It's developed by Enview used to be Bayer, now it's
called Enview. But this product is designed to use the
mosquito itself to go out and infect all those other
breeding sites. So has two two active ingredients. One is
an insect growth regulator and one is actually a fungus
that develops onto the mosquito. So we put these buckets out,
(02:32):
they fly into there, they lay their larvae, they get
that fungus picked up on them. Once they get that
fungus on them, it takes about two days to kill them.
The reason for that is because we want it to
kill them slowly so they can attract that and spread
it to all the other breeding sites.
Speaker 1 (02:47):
Yeah, there's a little screen in there that they land
on naturally and that it has that powder on it
and they pick it up. Yes, sir, It makes me
deeply happy inside to think of a mosquito dying of
a body fungal infection within a couple of days.
Speaker 2 (03:02):
Yeah. Absolutely.
Speaker 1 (03:02):
But in the meantime, during those two days, that mosquito
is going to go to work for you.
Speaker 4 (03:07):
Yeah, that mosquit is going to go to work. It's
gonna fly out all the other breeding sites that you
can't access and you can't treat. Maybe you can't put
a mosquito dunk in it because your neighbors hold a
bunch of water. You might even have a pool down
the street that's full of mosquito larvae. So it's gonna
actually infect all those breeding sites.
Speaker 1 (03:24):
It carries a little bit of the product over there.
Speaker 4 (03:26):
Correct. Yeah, this is not an instant knockdown. It takes
a little bit of time to work for them to
get out and spread that fungus.
Speaker 1 (03:33):
Sometimes I'll peek into my buckets and I'll see, you know,
a bunch of debris in there, and then I'll see
some wrigglers. But that makes me happy because those wrigglars
are never going to turn into adult mosquitos, and you
actually want them. Why is it good to have the
wrigglars in those buckets, even to lay the eggs and
have them come up and all this stuff's riding and stuff.
Speaker 4 (03:54):
Yeah, So the more you see in there, that's just
giving you a good sign that that bucket's working. It's
attracting a lot of us mosquitos. But mosquitoes they don't
lay all their eggs in one site. Matter of fact,
they'll fly out to several breeding sites throughout the whole
day and.
Speaker 2 (04:07):
Lay it in multiple areas.
Speaker 4 (04:09):
Okay, So as they're leaving that bucket flying off of
that screen, they're going to take that fungus and they're
gonna infect all those other breeding sites that they're flying.
Speaker 3 (04:18):
So it's good. That's good. So the.
Speaker 1 (04:23):
You put some stuff in there that that bucket actually
attracts mosquitoes to it.
Speaker 2 (04:27):
It does, Yeah, it attracts.
Speaker 4 (04:29):
And one bucket will cover about five thousand square foot,
so you're your average city lot, you know, we'll install
about two buckets on average.
Speaker 1 (04:38):
Okay, good, Well, we've been really happy with ours and
talking to family and dyking to people on their I've
had several people tell me, you know, how they love it,
you know, and I think it's important you know that
people understand that this isn't like every mosquito in your
city is going to fly to your house and die there.
Mosquitoes can come from a lot of places, and you know,
(05:00):
if one comes from the neighbor down the street, that
won't empty their kiddie pool and it ends up at
your house. Well, I mean, it can bite you, but
in general, what I found is it suppresses the numbers
down to a very manageable, very What.
Speaker 4 (05:16):
You're gonna see the next, you know, a week or
so is the eighties what we call a tiger mosquito.
That's the really aggressive one. Those are the daytime biters.
So those will be coming out soon, so get ready
for that.
Speaker 3 (05:28):
A lot of them.
Speaker 1 (05:29):
I've experienced her biting typically late in the day when
I'm out through at dusk time. That seems to be
a real popular time. Because we have more than one
kind of mosquito, I guess we do have some different behavior.
Speaker 2 (05:42):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (05:42):
And then you know, down in Galison County you get
a lot of the marsh land and the marsh mosquitoes.
Those are the bigger ones and very aggressive ones.
Speaker 3 (05:49):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (05:50):
Okay, all right, So I'm gonna just quick message here
to my producer. Check those check that chat for me
if you will. So in the past, I had a
little fogging machine and I didn't like to use it
(06:11):
because I got a garden and things. I didn't want
pesticides going in on stuff I was gonna eat. And
I knew that when you kill everything, you kill good
things as well as bad things. And I just kind
of put that thing up and don't have to use
it anymore. But I know a lot of people use
a lot of different systems to try to just knock
mosquitoes out because they're they're everywhere, They're coming in from everywhere,
(06:33):
and boy, with that bucket, once they get going, it's
just not a problem. You may have a couple of
little peaks in the summer where you know, with all
the rain and stuff, you get a few more. But
if everybody in the neighborhood had buckets, it'd be a
nice place to live.
Speaker 4 (06:47):
Yeah, And these these into care buckets are what they're
using a lot of the Third world countries, you know,
fighting malaria. They're very well studied.
Speaker 1 (06:55):
I've been amazed at that because they can't they don't
have access to all the chemical stuff that we do here. Correct,
when you're living in places where zeke and I'm trying
to think of some other mosquito diseases.
Speaker 4 (07:09):
Mosquitos, Yeah, they're the number one killer in America or
in the world, almost almost a million des a year.
Speaker 1 (07:16):
One folks, I want you to hear that again. The
number one creature killing humans is not sharks or tigers
or whatever. It's mosquitoes around the world, the number one
killer of humans. A second, little break here and we'll
be right back with random. If you've got a question
on mosquitoes, give me a call and we will talk
(07:37):
insects in and around the house. That is basically what
we're focusing on. So I tell you what we're going
to go to George in Jersey Village. Hey, George, welcome
to garden line.
Speaker 5 (07:49):
Yeah, good morning you skip. Good morning, mosquito man. So
I've got those dumps that they use, but I never
wonder how much to put in a like a five
gallon bucket. So that's my first question. The second question
is when you are walking out in the garden with
my wife, She's to attack her more than me, and
I feel sorry for her sometimes. So what can I
do about that with anything?
Speaker 1 (08:11):
She's she's a much much sweeter person than you. Any
of your neighbors could tell you that.
Speaker 6 (08:17):
Maybe, yeah, okay, we're going to We're going to stop
right there and not digging any old now seriously, Uh,
the mosquito.
Speaker 1 (08:27):
One mosquita dunk covers one hundred square feet of surface area.
So a little five gallon bucket, you could break a
mosquito dunk into pieces, a little chunk in there, or
just get some of the granules that they have. You
could do that. They're called mosquito bits. Same, Yeah, you
can do that. Yeah, all right, But I'm trying to
(08:49):
talk in to get some of these mosquito buckets too.
Speaker 5 (08:53):
I don't know what those are. Our will work.
Speaker 3 (08:57):
Well.
Speaker 1 (08:58):
The fellow here at past we just talked about a
little bit. But give him like a reader's digest version
of Randall if you would, of the bucket.
Speaker 2 (09:05):
Yes, sir.
Speaker 4 (09:06):
So basically it's a it's about a two gallon bucket.
We put it in your yard. One bucket'll cover about
five thousand square foot. The mosquito flies.
Speaker 2 (09:13):
In there and they lay their larvae.
Speaker 4 (09:14):
They get a fungus on them, and it takes about
two or three days to start killing them. But what
they're gonna do is they're gonna fly out and they're
gonna infect all those other breeding sites that you can't
get a mosquito dunk too.
Speaker 2 (09:26):
And things like that. They are they'll fly right into
that bucket.
Speaker 1 (09:31):
Yeah, anytime you're it's got stuff in the bucket to
track around. Yeah, all right, Chorge, good luck with that you. Yeah,
well you can find them at the dpestbros dot com.
Speaker 3 (09:42):
That's where you go.
Speaker 1 (09:45):
It's d right, yes, sir, the pest Bros. Yeah, okay,
all right, there we go. All right, So we were
talking about mosquitoes and dealing with these things and where
was there was something else I can't remember where we
dropped off our conversation.
Speaker 4 (09:58):
Yeah, we were going to talk about about how long
it takes to work. So, yeah, if we get a
call and somebody had heavy mosquito presents and we come
put these buckets out, they're not going to work right away.
They're not a quick knockdown. It takes time for the
mosquitos to get in there, get the focus on them,
lay their larvae. But thankfully this company, Envow has created
another product called bar core Es Central. So this is
(10:20):
an all natural mosquito control. It's a liquid spray or
a fog howevery want to apply it, and it's it's
basically just all sentral oil. So it sessame oil, sodium sulfate,
cinnamon oil, clove oil, and time oil. It'll it'll control
for twenty one to thirty days and leave your yard
smelling like falseme, it's amazing.
Speaker 3 (10:41):
That just blows my mind that.
Speaker 1 (10:45):
I the part that throws through me was when you
talked about it last in a while. You know, I
could see how spraying and oil on the insect's gonna
kill it. But you're talking about you're putting it. Are
you putting in like on the shrubbery the side of
the house or I mean we're.
Speaker 2 (11:00):
Yeah, we're going to focus on the air.
Speaker 4 (11:01):
You think, like a mosquito, where they're going to be
during the day, where they're hiding, So your shaded areas,
your shrubs, corners, things like that. But if it's a
real heavy presence, the label allows us we can broadcast
the entire lineup we need to.
Speaker 1 (11:14):
Wow, that's that's cool because that's why you know, folks,
you go out in the middle of the day and
it's like they're not that many mosquitoes, and then you
come back out in the evening, right when your guests
are arriving to set out on the patio and you're
having to grab a small child by the ankles to
keep mosquitoes from carrying them over across the neighbors fence.
This stuff is last for at what did you say.
Speaker 2 (11:37):
Twenty twenty one to thirty days.
Speaker 4 (11:38):
And you know the most amazing thing about it is
it only targets mosquitoes. It doesn't harm your butterflies. You're
pollinating bees. That's good your lady bugs. It's really amazing
how they've come up and put these ingredients together to
only target mosquitoes.
Speaker 1 (11:53):
Yeah, that ENVU company refocuses on safer, simpler supplies, Yes, sir, Yeah,
I don't know if you were listening coming in, but
the I have a picture of the kids running behind
the truck spraying DDT, playing in the water barefoot, and
every time I see.
Speaker 3 (12:11):
That picture, it's just like we've come.
Speaker 1 (12:13):
A long way, long way and here we are now
not even having to use a fogger. If we get
out there and get that spray done, it's gonna last
up to almost a month. There that that's effective, and
that's good for that lag time too. You were talking about.
I have noticed that the buckets. You got to get
them going, and again if your neighbors would do them too,
(12:33):
that'd be even better. But you get that system going,
now you got mosquitoes coming to the buckets, which is
what you want. And flying from the buckets, which is
what you want. And they got about two days to
help reduce the other breeding sites that you can't even
get to. So those are two really cool things. And
you know, one thing I've noticed over the years is
(12:54):
we just keep coming up with safer and safer technologies
and ways to deal with past.
Speaker 2 (13:01):
Yeah, it's pretty amazing.
Speaker 6 (13:02):
You know.
Speaker 4 (13:02):
I can remember my early early days in pest control
seventeen eighteen, you know, filling up a fifty gallon tank,
dragging out the hose. Yeah, the lasting the yard with
you know, permethro and her bife and thrown based products,
and you're just you're literally obliterating and killing everything and everything. Yeah,
it's not only the wrong way to do it, it's
just a lazy.
Speaker 2 (13:21):
Way to do it.
Speaker 4 (13:21):
Really, We've come a long way with technology and we
want to be more target specific.
Speaker 2 (13:26):
I don't want to kill all the pollinators.
Speaker 1 (13:28):
Sometimes one solution leads to other problems. When I was
growing up, there was a poem that I know an
old lady who swallowed a fly. I don't know if
you ever heard that poem, and then she swallowed a
spider to catch the fly, and then she swallowed a
bird to catch a spider, and then she swallowed.
Speaker 3 (13:42):
The cat to catch the bird.
Speaker 1 (13:45):
And the point being is that one problem just leads
to another one, and it is good to see that
kind of thing. And I know you don't have to
be like an organic person specifically to appreciate and have
a concern for misuse of pesticides and things. I don't
know if you've ever read that book, you may have
heard me talking about a chemical age, but it is
(14:07):
fascinating it. Yeah, it's a it's a really really good read.
There's there's a couple of books that are like that
that I love. Okay, so let's do this. Well, first
of all, I just want to mention we're talking about
Superturf earlier. Superturf nineteen four to ten from nitrofoss is
a slow release that carries your lawn through summer. It's
(14:29):
like three months, so you know, you put it down, now,
what is it. We're kind of toward the beginning of June,
so you got July, August, September, and then it's time
to put your fall fertilizer on, which is a different
fertilizer ratio that I have on my schedules. For fall.
By the way, if you don't have my schedule, go
to gardening with Skip dot com and you can get
the lawn care schedule and the lawn pest disease and
(14:51):
weed management schedule. They're both there at that website for free,
and they tell you what to do and when to
do it. So Superturf, being a night foss product, is
available at all the Fishers hardwares, the one in Pasadena,
the one on the Port, the one in my Bellevue,
and the one down there in Baytown.
Speaker 3 (15:10):
Well, let's shift.
Speaker 1 (15:10):
Gears a little bit, and let's talk a little bit
about termites. We have a similar story in termites and
that we're getting some technologies that are kind of cool
that avoid You know, with termites, you don't know when
they're going to show up, and they may show up
six months from now, or a year and a half
from now or tomorrow. And there it's not just a
(15:35):
mesquito bite that makes you run inside the house. There
it is the house, correct, and the expense of that
is something no one wants to deal with. We talk
a little bit about the termite. Let's start with the
termites we deal with here. You were telling me one
time about promotion and some other things. Could you tell
our listeners a little bit about termites.
Speaker 4 (15:53):
Yeah, So throughout the whole Houston region, we have only
three species of termites. That would be your drywood termites.
Those are the where you have to femigate the home,
wrap it in a tarp, fumigate it. And you have
your native eastern subterranean termites which come from the soil.
And then you have the most aggressive one. The further
you get to the coast, the more they're going to be.
Those are the foremost and termites.
Speaker 3 (16:14):
Yeah, those are bad.
Speaker 4 (16:15):
Those are the ones that are extremely destructive. In a
very short amount of time.
Speaker 1 (16:20):
Yeah, man, I'm having fun talking. We got about twenty
seconds until I got to go to a break here,
so hold that thought, folks, come back.
Speaker 3 (16:28):
We're going to talk about these termites and.
Speaker 1 (16:30):
The safest, most effective ways to manage termites at your property.
So grab your coffee, come right back. We'll see you
in just a minute. Turn it over to Erica now
for the news. If you got a question about gardening
that relates to specifically the insects and the house and
outside the house, give us a call for those of
(16:50):
you just tuning in. I'm visiting with Randall from Pest Bros.
You hear me talk about pest Bros. All the time
here on Garden Line. They service the area from Texas
City all the way up to the woodlands from Katie
across the Bay Town. Unless you've expanded it up into
other states and countries. I don't think that yet. Not yet.
(17:11):
All right, we're talking termites at this moment. We already
talked about mosquitoes. If you got a question about some
household pest or something like that, give us a call.
We'd be happy to have Randall address those questions. Now
we were talking about termites. So will you pick it
up with termites. You were talking about the down near
(17:33):
the coasts, the formost and being so bad down there.
As you go north in Texas, less and less of it,
But the subterraneans and drywoods are all equally. But tell
us a little bit about what's the latest and turmite control.
Speaker 4 (17:46):
Yeah, So the latest is another BASF product. It's called
termator HG with stands for high efficiency. This is designed
specifically to combat the aggressiveness of for most and termites.
Is a liquid treatment we put around your foundation. This
stuff will bond to your soil for about ten years
and pretty much give you a full protection against our
(18:08):
native eastern subs and our formost intermites.
Speaker 1 (18:11):
It's designed to not just wash away, but to tie
up correct to the soil particles. And when you put
that out, I've noticed you dig a little trench, put
it in the trend, not a deep trench, just a
shallow trench, and then put sod or soil back over
that spot the side you took away or the soil,
put it back over that spot. So if the family
(18:31):
pet goes and lays there on top of it, it's
like they're not getting access to that pesticide.
Speaker 4 (18:36):
Correct, there's nothing topical. We only dig about a three
inch trench right up against the foundation. That product's going
to lead down about six inches close to the bottom
of the footing of the slab. Covered up. You can
have an ant cral across it. Three days later. I'm
not going to kill and there's nothing active on top
of the soil.
Speaker 1 (18:52):
Okay, but it will get those termites and for most
ins are horrible. When I was in Harris County Extension Office,
I worked with some City of Houston foresters. We went
downtown and there were like big old trees and the
whole interior had been eaten out by formotion termites, which
is not our Other termites aren't.
Speaker 3 (19:11):
Quite quite like that.
Speaker 2 (19:13):
Yeah, they can.
Speaker 4 (19:13):
They can consume about sixteen ounces of wood in less
than a week. So you start adding that up.
Speaker 1 (19:19):
Per termite, per per colony or per colony.
Speaker 4 (19:21):
Okay, I mean they can destroy an entire you know,
eight foot two by four in a very short amount
of time.
Speaker 1 (19:27):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (19:28):
So they work very quickly build very large colonies.
Speaker 1 (19:31):
All right, So tell me about some other ways that
we can deal with termites that are less of an
exposure for humans to pesticides.
Speaker 4 (19:41):
Yeah, So we have a baiting system. This is called
This is called Trelona. It's also made by BSF. These
are bait stations that go in ground around the foundation.
So we apply these every fifteen to twenty feet. As
those termites are forging under the soil looking looking for
somewhere to infest, they're going to attack those baits. Theyations first.
It has a cellulose compound inside of it. They'll feed
(20:04):
on that, they'll take it back to the colony and
it doesn't as they start molting, it'll it'll kill off
the colony.
Speaker 2 (20:10):
The workers will carry it back.
Speaker 1 (20:12):
So so like a fire at bait where they pick
up the granule and they take it home and feed
it to the queen and everybody else and it takes
it out. This is like doing that for urmaite. And
for those of you who are golfers and you know
how sometimes you're able to get the ball to go
into that little cup on the green well, imagine something
about that size, but deeper, and then a little plug
(20:34):
put into it so it's flat to the surface of
the ground, but inside it's got the bait and termites.
I don't know if the word smell is right, but
they essentially know it's there and they go to feed
on that.
Speaker 4 (20:47):
Yeah, cellulase material in there is more attracting than the
wood in your wall. They're going to hit that station.
And then, like I said, we put them every fifteen
feet around the entire foundation, so it's basically like a
board protection right your home.
Speaker 1 (21:01):
And if you have a lawn, you don't even see them.
They're not you're not going to hit them with your lawn.
More there at the soil surface, so they're they're down low.
Speaker 4 (21:08):
And then you guys monitor that right, correct, yep, So
the label allows us only requires us to come out
once a year, open those up, make sure they have
fresh bait. Being the heavy president's presence of termites we
have in our reagion, will typically come out twice a
year and check those, make sure they're fresh.
Speaker 1 (21:24):
Okay. And while while we're talking coming out with the buckets,
do you typically come once a month to replenish the
bucket or for.
Speaker 2 (21:34):
The mosquito bucket?
Speaker 1 (21:34):
Yeah, the mosquito buckets.
Speaker 4 (21:36):
Yeah, that bucket gets replenished every four to six weeks,
but we stick those on a monthly basis.
Speaker 1 (21:43):
Okay, good, So all right, every four weeks. Well, those
are two termite solutions that are are big and you know,
how would you put this with termites? There's a lot
at steak and so you know, people like, you know,
we buy insurance for floods, We buy insurance for a
lot of things that happen in our house, and with termites,
(22:07):
it's like, yeah, that's that hugely effects the value your
home and the cost to deal them especially.
Speaker 4 (22:13):
Yeah, it's the cheapest insurance policy you can buy. You know,
termite protection. Everyone kind of overlooks that you think about
your windstorm and your flood. Termites are way more likely
to happen than either one of those. And if you
can do a one treatment and last up to ten years,
and the base stations are going to last a lifetime
of the home assongs are maintained annually.
Speaker 1 (22:34):
Okay, So all right, Like my good.
Speaker 4 (22:37):
Friend Ronnie Holder said, there's only two types of homes
in Southeast Texas, those that have termites.
Speaker 2 (22:41):
And those are going to get them.
Speaker 1 (22:43):
Say that again, I like that.
Speaker 4 (22:44):
Yeah, two types of homes. Homes that have them have turmites,
and homes that are going to get them.
Speaker 1 (22:49):
Right there, You go, all right, well that's that is
a that is a good point. So we're talking about
those controls for turmite. With the formotions and things, you
guys have to sometimes go to great links after they're in.
So it's so much easier to put out the product
(23:10):
that you talked about in the trench, or to put
out the little bait stations.
Speaker 3 (23:14):
And avoid them.
Speaker 1 (23:15):
But when you don't do that and you wait till
you have termites and then you call a pest control
company to come out, now you're spending some money.
Speaker 4 (23:23):
Yeah, once the formotions establish a calling in your home.
The treatment becomes much more invasive. Then we're talking about
going up in the attic looking for what we call
a carton, which is a secondary nest, doing wall injections
with a turmotor foam treatment, sometimes cutting open walls, checking
for high moisture. It becomes much more invasive once they.
Speaker 1 (23:43):
Establish Okay, yeah, that you don't want to have to
do that.
Speaker 2 (23:47):
Yeah, better to protect it beforehand for sure.
Speaker 1 (23:50):
Okay, So when someone is looking at avoiding problems with termites,
can you talk about some of the things they may
need to be conscious of in terms of flower beds
against the house. You had told me about the little
corner pops, So would you talk about some of those
(24:10):
kind of things.
Speaker 2 (24:11):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (24:11):
The best thing you can do as a homeowner is
avoiding what we call conducive conditions. So, you know, soil
too high around the foundation. If you have a brick home,
you're gonna have wheat poles all around the bottom. You
typically want to soil at least two to three inches
below that. You want to slab to be very clear,
keep your molch levels down, trim the trees back, try
(24:31):
to get some sunlight in there. If you have standing
water somewhere you want to correct that obviously, you know,
not stacking firewood right up against the foundation.
Speaker 2 (24:40):
You'd be surprised.
Speaker 4 (24:41):
Sometimes we see that blocking your foundation is the best
thing to do is keep your slab exposed as much
as possible.
Speaker 1 (24:48):
Okay, yeah, those are that's good advice. And check periodically
for those.
Speaker 2 (24:54):
Yeah yeah, definitely have a professional check minimum once a year.
Speaker 1 (24:59):
Okay, okay, all right, well, good advice.
Speaker 3 (25:04):
Uh Chris A.
Speaker 1 (25:05):
Loto the creepy crawleys that bug us in the house,
general general past control kinds of things. Are you gonna
talk a little bit about some of the options there?
Speaker 4 (25:13):
Yeah, yeah, we uh so, we're full service, so we
handle everything from you know, German roach infestations to bed
bugs to fleas are a huge thing right now. They're
they're popping out breeding everywhere.
Speaker 1 (25:26):
You know.
Speaker 4 (25:26):
Fire Ants are always a big deal, and they're they're
really going to come out once the all this rain passes.
Speaker 2 (25:32):
So we have a lot of fire ant options.
Speaker 4 (25:34):
We have a baiting option that we do two or
three times a year that will pretty much keep your
fire ants at bay for the majority of the year,
just doing two or three applications. And then we have
long time applications fipper nail based granules that we put
out once a year and that comes with a three
hundred and sixty five day warranty. So those are great
products to combat fire ants.
Speaker 1 (25:56):
Okay, okay, Well, fire ants are always a big problem,
you know for people, and the fact that they can
fly up in the air three hundred feet mate and
then land somewhere and start a new colony, that's a
big deal. The thing I always try to get people
remember about fire ants is there's colonies developing that you
don't see. And so, like you see a mound in
(26:19):
your yard, but there could be a colony that hasn't
built up to that point yet. So when you just
go around doing mound treatments, you're playing that whack a
mole game, and another one just pops up correct where
they are, and people say, well, the colony just moved over. Well, no,
not necessarily. It probably was another colony that just hadn't
come up yet. And so the baits are a real
(26:39):
good way.
Speaker 2 (26:40):
Yeah, fire ants are incredible.
Speaker 4 (26:41):
That little mound you see sticking up underneath it can
be up to six feet deep and eight feet wide. Okay,
so when you're just killing the workers on top. All
those ones underneath the ground are not being killed, and
they will just move over.
Speaker 1 (26:53):
I've seen pictures of people that pour hot aluminum down
the holes of fire ants and they create this underground.
It goes in all their tunnels and when you you
got a work of art when they washed your herd
off after and cools off. Yeah, hey, let's go to
a break, Jeff and Hussman. We are going to come
to your call first when we come back. Just learning
a lot about a lot of insects. We spent some
(27:16):
time on mosquitos with the mosquito buckets and is.
Speaker 3 (27:19):
It barricour was at the arcoor central barricoor.
Speaker 1 (27:22):
The essentially essential oils that last about twenty to thirty
days out there that just knock out mosquitos and don't
hurt your good guys out there. The beneficials and things.
We switched over to termites, which is what we're talking
about right now, and then actually we switched over to
indoor pasts and things that we're dealing with render There's
(27:45):
some other things that you know, just are what's keeping
you busy right now? What are the calls that what's
happening in Houston.
Speaker 4 (27:52):
Insect wise, well, everything, but right now it's for most
and termites for most. I think we've been for about
twenty nine straight days we've been doing for most in
termite treatment. So big thing right now. But it's everything.
It's it's fleas, it's fire ants. Unfortunately, a lot of
the outdoor stuff is on hold because of all the
brain so have a lot of interior work right now.
Speaker 1 (28:14):
Okay, lots of things. Well, people are concerned about that.
I you know, thinking about everything that's outside, like the
fleas for example, there's do you do regular insecticides for
the fleas or do you do like maybe insect growth
regulators or what what kinds of approaches do you have
for fleas?
Speaker 4 (28:34):
Yeah, we use synthetic pesticides for those. Sometimes depending on
the situation, how how bad the infestation infestation is, we
may use some i g RS, which insect growth regulator,
but that would be indoors. We have products that we
you know, we spray on the lawn and it's going
to wipe those fleas out in one treatment.
Speaker 1 (28:52):
Okay. Uh. The thing to remember folks too is to
treat your pets too. You know, your veterinarian can give
you stuff that you put on your pets and it
helps control them there. Otherwise it kind of becomes a
whack a mole because you know, a squirrel hops across
the yard and drops some fleas in the ground. The
neighborhood cat does the same thing. So you're treating in
(29:12):
the yard, but if you're not treating your pets coming
inside too, it's well, it's easier to knock out.
Speaker 2 (29:19):
That cycle if you do it, very important to have
your pets treat it.
Speaker 1 (29:22):
Yeah, that's good. He mentioned insect growth regulator. He mentioned
that on termites, the product that went it was like
cellulose and a hole in the ground product that we
talked about. So what an insect growth regulator does is
that it prevents the insects normal development. You know, an
insect act hatches out of an egg and it becomes
(29:44):
a larvae or a nymph, depending on what kind of
insect it is, and then that may go through what
we call in stars where it grows slowly over time
and then eventually it becomes an adult. In order to
do that, the molting sometimes that's in there, the insect
growth regulator stop that process so they're not like a
poison to just fight kill the insect, which we're all
(30:04):
familiar with those, but this is something that prevents the
insect from going to the next stage.
Speaker 3 (30:09):
Those are very effective.
Speaker 2 (30:11):
Fancy term for birth control basically.
Speaker 1 (30:13):
Okay, birth control for insects. All right, well that's good.
Are there some other topics that or other things that
maybe people aren't aware of.
Speaker 4 (30:22):
That you think, yes, sir, how about how about rodents?
You know, oh gosh, very overlooked. You might hear something
in your attic at night or probably going to be
a roof rat. So we always recommend doing it, doing inspection,
looking for ways they can get in, because if there's
a way, they're going to find it, whether it's your
AC line where it goes up to the wall, maybe
some gable junctions, Oversized wheepholes are common. You'd be really
(30:46):
surprised the amount of small holes they can make their
way into.
Speaker 1 (30:50):
Yeah, you were telling me one time, and I've got
a pipe I need to have you look at sometime
out on the side of the house where I don't
know if it's an air conditioning line or something goes
into the wall and there's a little gap where there's
not mortar around it, and so you're telling me how
small of an area that are a mouse can squeeze through?
It is tiny.
Speaker 4 (31:11):
Yeah, you could get an adult Norwegian roof rat about
the size of a squirrel, for example. You give them
a one inch hole and they will squeeze their entire
body through it. Pretty incredible. We have many videos of it.
Speaker 1 (31:23):
That's that's kind of what is it where you kind
of go down low under the limbo limbo stick or
something you gotta squeeze it or that's amazing that they
can can get through like that. So what do you
do when you see those holes?
Speaker 4 (31:38):
Well, first we're going to see if they made their
way into your attic. If so, you know, we have
some baits we can put up there that will flush
them out. Indoor, we can do trapping if we need to.
And then once we know the problem has solved and
all the rodents have been flushed out, you know we're
gonna come back and do an exclusion and seal that
that home up to where it's not going to happen again.
Speaker 1 (31:56):
Okay, Uh, I we got about a minute half or
left here. Uh. You said the term fleshing out. And
when I worked in Austin at the extension office. They
put poison in the attic that killed every rat in
the building and they all went down in my wall
and died an Oh my gosh, it was you couldn't
(32:16):
even walk in the building, much less my office. Right,
So what do you mean by when you say fleshing
about it? Are there things that make them go out,
like looking for water or something.
Speaker 4 (32:23):
Well, the way it happens is we use a second
generation anti koagulant that's the active ingredient, and it makes
them short shorter breadth actually, So an animal's natural instinct
is to get out of that environment. So typically they're
they're going to run off and die outside. Of course,
they can die in the attic. That's that's that can happen.
But the good thing about this product we use is
(32:45):
it doesn't transfer sofa hawk comes and picks it up
or something broke down enough into that bloodstream to where
it's not going to affect that bird, because there's always
a risk they can die in the atticts.
Speaker 3 (32:56):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (32:56):
Well, but that problem is a big thing with some
of the early stuff that we were putting out, where
someone picks up the animal and then you hurt the
bird or whatever.
Speaker 2 (33:07):
That's been adjusted drastically.
Speaker 3 (33:09):
Wow, that's cool. It is really nice. Thanks so much
for coming on and being here.
Speaker 1 (33:14):
I told you to go fast.
Speaker 3 (33:16):
Way. We didn't even get started.
Speaker 1 (33:17):
Here, but all it's exciting for me to hear about
all the better and better ways we're finding to deal
with problems, whether it's six legs or four legs. I
haven't heard you talk about dealing with two legged problems.
When the relatives come over the neighborhood, kids run the
house or whatever.
Speaker 2 (33:35):
Off the books. Everything's got a price tag.
Speaker 3 (33:38):
It's just you come in a clown suit and scare
the children out of the ark.
Speaker 1 (33:42):
I don't know that was stupid, but seriously that the
technologies today are amazing. This is Randall from pest Bros.
You hear me talk about them all the time. Depestbros
dot com if you want to check out those buckets.
Speaker 3 (33:56):
If you won't, check out.
Speaker 1 (33:56):
This really cool herbal mosquito solution that makes your house
makes your outdoors smell kind of cool, uh and works
for twenty to thirty days. Give them a call. The
same with the termites. I just think, why take a
chance on having a termite in it? Don't wait until
you find you have a termite problem. To do with termites.
(34:17):
It is so much less expensive, so much more effective,
so much less hassle to just get it done ahead
of time.
Speaker 3 (34:25):
So give them a call. What's a phone number there
at pest.
Speaker 4 (34:28):
Brounsy Sarah two eight one two zero six forty six seventy.
Speaker 1 (34:32):
I will say that again, two eight one two six.
Speaker 2 (34:35):
Forty six seven.
Speaker 1 (34:36):
There we go. Thanks so much for coming on, man,
I really appreciate it.
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