A carpenter ant satellite nest is a smaller nest that is established by carpenter ants in addition to their primary nest. Carpenter ants are social insects that live in large colonies, which typically consist of a primary nest and one or more satellite nests.

The satellite nests are established by worker ants, which are responsible for locating suitable locations for new nests. Satellite nests are typically smaller than the primary nest and are usually located within a few hundred meters of the main colony.

Carpenter ant satellite nests are important for the survival of the colony, as they provide additional living space and allow the colony to expand its territory. Satellite nests also serve as a backup in case the primary nest is destroyed or becomes uninhabitable.

However, satellite nests can also be a problem for homeowners, as they can cause damage to wood structures in and around the home. If you suspect that you have a carpenter ant infestation, it is important to contact us at 778-886-4111 so we can identify the location of any satellite nests and develop an effective treatment plan.

Carpenter ants do not actually consume wood like termites do, but they can still cause significant damage to wooden structures. These ants excavate wood to create nesting galleries and tunnels, which they use to live in and rear their brood. Over time, this excavation can weaken the structural integrity of the wood, causing it to become hollow and brittle.

Carpenter ants are attracted to damp and decaying wood, so they often infest areas where there is moisture or water damage. They can enter a home through small cracks or openings, such as gaps in window frames or doorways, and then make their way into the wood structures.

Once they have established a colony, carpenter ants will continue to excavate wood to create more living space. This can cause significant damage to wooden structures, and in some cases, can even compromise the safety of a building. 

Seal all openings that are bigger than ¼ in.
A mixture of steel wool and caulking may be used
for smaller holes.  Regularly inspect and repair entry points by
covering with heavy gauge screening or 5 mm
hardware cloth or metal mesh, ideally woven and
galvanized to prevent edges from being gnawed
and to prevent rust. Use elastomeric sealants to seal long gaps, such as
those between walls and floors. Seal gaps anywhere pipes meet walls with
escutcheon plates, securing to the wall with screws
or sealant. Install sheet metal kick plates on door exteriors. Consider industrial door sweeps designed for exclusion (not just weather stripping).
 Build outbuildings like sheds on concrete pads,
not bare ground. Native plants like wild mint are used by some
Indigenous peoples to discourage rodents. Prune back branches at least 2 meters from
balconies, eaves and roofs. Inspect and seal all structural lines that connect with
or enter buildings at any level, such as utility lines
and vents, pipes, electrical lines, sewer lines and
drains, cable lines, dryer vents and exhaust vents. Consider hiring a professional to identify problem areas and design a long-term IPM strategy.
Gaps under doors may allow rodent entry.  
Inspect and repair any holes or gaps around your home that may create
rodent entry points.  
Mice can gain access through a dime sized opening, while rats only need a
quarter-sized hole

Be prepared to leave the home during treatment and for 6 hours afterward.

Remove all pets from the home during the time of treatment except for fish tanks. Fish tanks are to be covered with plastic wrap, and pumps turned off until you are allowed to reoccupy the home.

Remove all sheets, covers, dust ruffles, or any other bedding covers from the mattresses and box spring in all bedrooms. Wash all bed linens in the hottest water possible. Do not replace the bed linens until six hours after treatment.

If any mattresses, box springs, or other furniture are in poor or ripped condition and infested, they should be placed in large plastic storage bags (available from moving or storage stores), then removed from your home and discarded.

Remove all personal items including clothes, toys, shoes, stored materials, etc., from the furniture and floor area throughout the home.

Remove everything from all closets. Completely empty all bedroom drawers and empty all books and items from bookcases prior to treatment.

Clean or launder all clothing in the hottest water possible and store in clean storage bags for up to two weeks after treatment. Any stuffed toys or other fabric-based personal items should be run through a pre-heated, hot dryer cycle for at least 15 minutes.

Vacuum all carpeting, bedding, bed frames, backs of pictures, and other areas where bedbugs have been seen. Immediately empty the vacuum cleaner bag and dispose of it in an exterior dumpster or trash.

To give the treatment time to work, do not shampoo or clean floors or carpet for at least three weeks after the treatment. The vacuum should be used regularly.

Move all items and furniture away from walls, access is required for all baseboards and behind all furniture. (Everything may be returned to its original location after the treatment is completed.)

The bathtub, kitchen counters, dining room tables, and coffee tables can be used to place items during treatment.

Ants are showing up all over, invading homes and gardens and annoying people who see them crawling everywhere. “They’re looking for sweets; they’re looking for carbohydrates, they’re looking for crumbs. Anything they can take back to their nest and store it for the winter time.” explained Randy Bilesky of Go Green Pest Control in Delta B.C.
Bilesky says he’s been staying busy with calls from customers who want to get rid of ants. He says spraying around foundations outside– and baseboards inside can get rid of the pests. It’s important to locate the nest. “To find the nest, feed the ants and follow the ants,” Bilesky said. Sugar will attract the ants, and then people can see where they go and take steps to get rid of them. Finding the nest lets you target the entire colony, which can contain hundreds of thousands of ants. You can also buy ant baits at the store or use recipes from the internet that utilize ingredients available at home such as borax, sugar and warm water. Recipes recommend that you dip a cotton ball in the mixture and put it in the path of the ants.
Remember to keep ant bait away from children and pets.

Oh those rats and mice and other furry creatures can give you all kinds of nasty issues: 
Hantavirus Pulmonary Syndrome is a serious illness caused by a virus that may be
transmitted by rodents. The virus is only found in one type of wild mouse – the deer
mouse – that can spread the virus in their urine, droppings or saliva. House mice, Norway rats and roof rats are not known to transmit the virus. People can be infected when they breathe in contaminated air or, rarely, if they bitten by a deer mouse with the virus. To protect yourself, avoid contact with deer mice and take extra care if living, working, or playing in areas near deer mouse habitats. If cleaning up rodent infestations that may be deer mice, additional precautions should be taken to avoid potential exposure.  

Often when a issue comes up that we can not handle ourselves; we turn to the computer to find a solution, run down to the local hardware store and purchase what needs to fix the problem. Then there are the more complicated problems: ” I have rats in my attic”  Back to google to find someone to fix the problem right now.  Sure we “Google”  pest control and what pops: all the “google ads” that the big corporate pest control company have paid for. I personally skip these and look for a local company. You type in Delta B.C. and the type of company that can help: in this case “pest control” . Boom, a dozen company pop up. Are they local, don’t know, so we click on the website and it’s a corporate franchise company whose call center is in Toronto and their dispatch comes from the deep heart of Surrey. Back to “google” to find a local company. So let’s keep jobs and business local. Need pest control and want a local company; then call Go Green Pest Control. Go Green Pest Control is Delta’s only owned and operated pest control company: specializing in local knowledge, prompt friendly service with a noticeable Delta twang. Go Green Pest Control does residential service. We can set up a contract to keep the rodents at bay all year long. Go Green Pest Control & Exterminators  778-886-4111

Raccoons and Skunks and Crows  are turning up the turf again, and its because they are hunger and your lawn is loaded with chafer beetle grubs.  It’s a common sight in Delta—lawns decimated by birds and animals that desperately dig for chafer beetle grubs. 
Damage is done during the grub, or larvae, stage. The grubs feed on the fibrous roots of grass, which crows, raccoons and skunks quickly rip up each spring and fall in search of the tasty pests.
Water is key to controlling grubs without pesticides. Microscopic round worms, known as nematodes, are the most effective defense against the chafer beetle. Nematodes—available at garden supply stores—are applied to infested lawns at the end of July when the beetle is beginning its grub stage. Effective treatment involves two weeks of regular watering.
Watering exemption permits would be good for 21 days inside July 15 to Aug. 15, and would be available free to homeowners with water meters and proof of nematodes purchase. Homeowners without a meter would pay $33.50 and be required to sign up for water meter installation.
Even city boulevards, which homeowners are responsible for maintaining, haven’t been left unscathed. Lawns with moss are more susceptible to damage, along with turf that’s mowed short.

It’s that time again when working in the garden looks like it’s about to begin, have you ever noticed small blue black wasp flicking its shiny wings as it dashed across the dirt, searching here and there, looking for a spider. The chalybion californicum is an impressive wasp, which can be identified by its blue and black sheen, a narrow waist between thorax and abdomen. Though Yellow jackets, paper wasps and bald faced hornets are the very model of teamwork, the solitary wasp have an incredible variety in their lifestyle and shapes, but one thing binds them together injecting eggs directly into their victim while larvae consume its innards.  The larva, having molted five or so times, will be at full adult weight and pupate (form a cocoon), emerge as an adult and continue the cycle.

Here is a complete list of how-to’s for rodent proofing that you won’t find on google. The number one piece of advice I give, empty out your garage of storage and use it to hide your vehicles from rodents. Next, call us and get professional grade Tier 1 Rodent Bait Boxes to eliminate the pests. Consider getting metal mesh and or capsaicin-infused tape (Honda) wrapped around wiring harnesses, hoses, or openings that rodents could enter. Electrical tape around wiring or cables may deter rodent chewing. Hint: rodents use vehicle air filters for nesting material and mice like to nest on a car battery. Rodents often clog up filters or engine intakes with food or nesting materials. All this rodent damages can cause serious damage and here’s the big ouch, EXPENSIVE to repair – $50 – $2000 + expensive. Rodents are attracted to the warmth of vehicle engines and certain materials used to make car parts. Pop the hood open after parking to dissipate engine heat faster.  Park away from garbage bins, dumpsters, gardens, leaf piles or thick vegetation (rodents like to observe and master plan from shadows). Don’t always park in the same spot. Don’t keep food, drinks or food wrappers, in the vehicle. Start up and move the vehicle regularly. If vehicles are parked outside for long periods of time, check for rodent activity, monitor for signs of rodent activity to catch problems early. Looking for nesting materials like leaves, sticks, plastic bags, fabric, droppings, chew marks, or the smell of urine (rodent pee is very pungent). Next step – call Go Green Pest Control and Exterminators.

Vancouver’s airport and don’t expect things to get much better

Richmond B.C. — The invasive fire ant continues to spread in the Lower Mainland, wreaking havoc on Vancouver airport runways and forcing CP Rail to burn the soil on the Arbutus corridor in attempts to eradicate them.

Last summer, several planes hit birds feeding on the fire ants at YVR, forcing a series of short runway closures.

And the pest problem is no longer confined to the common European fire ant.

It has branched out to include a lesser-known species dubbed the “impressive fire ant,” according to Thompson Rivers University entomologist Rob Higgins.

“We’re talking of two different types of fire ants,” said Higgins, noting both fire ants appear to be on the move. “We’ve got them in virtually every municipality.”

We’ve got them in virtually every municipality

Higgins has been conducting surveys of known fire ant infestations and doing random sampling throughout southwestern B.C. to assess the extent of these tiny aggressive insects, which possess a painful sting and swarm very quickly when disturbed.

The investigation initially focused on the European fire ants, which spread naturally over short distances by budding off new colonies in which a queen and a group of worker ants leave a nest to form a new colony.

His research took a turn, though, after a Burnaby entomologist sent Higgins a sample a few years ago of a fire ant discovered at his home. Higgins, who was heading back east to compare his collection, took the ant along and determined it to be the Myrmica specioides, a lesser known species from Europe, that undergoes mating flights every summer.

But it wasn’t until later that fall — after a call from Vancouver International Airport’s wildlife program — that Higgins started researching the impressive fire ant.

Airport officials were worried about a spate of collisions between small birds, mostly barn sparrows, and planes on the runway during July and August, which forced them to close the runway for five to eight minutes each time to clear away the mess.

“They wanted to know what they’d been eating,” Higgins said. “I looked at their gut contents and they were full of impressive fire ants. They’d been eating a lot of them, especially the winged queens.”

Higgins said it appears the impressive fire ants, who nested in the grasslands around the airport, were attracted to the end of the runway for their mating flights. The swarm of ants then attracted the birds, most of them barn swallows. In one month last summer, he said, there were 50 collisions between birds and planes. One day, there were five runway closures.

David Bradbeer, a runway wildlife specialist at YVR, confirmed the situation. “It is a service inconvenience, but we do close the runway to remove the carcass because we don’t want another bird to be attracted and get hit.”

Bradbeer said the situation only became a problem in the past year. He noted the YVR wildlife management branch has been trying to understand the ecology of the many species around the airport, including the swallows and fire ants, to figure out how to deal with the problem. The investigation has just started, he said.

Fire ants are difficult to control or eradicate, even with pesticides.

Higgins acknowledged the impressive fire ant is “just emerging as an invasive species here” and while he and Bradbeer are looking at running an experiment at YVR to control the ants, he expects it could take a year to get the permits.

Darryl Dyck CP has been fighting a scorched-earth campaign against the fire ants along the Arbutus Corridor rail line that runs from False Creek to the Fraser River in Vancouver.

Meanwhile, the Canadian Pacific Railway, which is tearing up its tracks along the Arbutus corridor on Vancouver’s westside, has been incinerating the soil along the tracks and said it will now also burn the rail ties to ensure the ants aren’t transported to another location.

“I just got confirmation we will incinerate the ties in that whole area,” said CP spokesman Jeremy Berry, noting the move will likely happen next week.

Although Higgins has yet to tally the numbers he has collected through his research, in the past four years, the ants have been introduced to at least 25 locations on Vancouver Island and the Lower Mainland through the movement of landscaping materials, soil and potted plants.

He noted the most common areas for fire ants tend to be Vancouver and Chilliwack, but they were recently spotted in West Vancouver, Burnaby and handful of spots in the District of North Vancouver.