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The ants of Delta are the most successful of all existing insects. There are approximately 8,800 described species of ants in the world of which approximately 570 species are found in North America. Ants perform numerous important ecological and ecosystem functions. Their occurrence is staple food for birds to bears. Of course our notorious Carpenter ants are know for physically breaking down wood on the forest floor or 2×4 studs in your house walls. Six interesting things about our ants:

1. The ant is one of the world’s strongest creatures in relation to its size as one single ant can carry 50 times its own bodyweight.

2. Most ants you see are female, as the queen is the founder and her the workers are females. The queen lays the eggs and the workers care for the queen and the young, gathering food, and waste disposal. A female ant will become a queen if she receives a diet richer in protein (not genetics).  

3. Okay, the guys job is simple, they are born to fly and mate, and once they mate they soon die but their sperm can live on for years with the new queen. 

4. Flying ant day / nuptial flight  – When the conditions are warm and damp, the winged virgin queens and males fly into the sky and mate. After mated queens drop to the ground they shed their wings and find a nest site. The new queen don’t eat for weeks after the mating.

5. The new queen ants can live for decades laying egg, the female workers live for a year and the male for a couple weeks. This is all due to the way their genes are switched on and off.

6. Sometimes there can be several queens in one nest but eventually they fight so only one survives. Some colonies will steal brood from their neighbours, putting them to work as slaves. 

https://gogreenpestcontrol.ca/six-interesting-…s-about-our-ants/

gogreenpestcontrol.ca insectandrodentexterminators.com Delta Ladner Tsawwassen B.C., Randy Bilesky BsF CPA RPF

https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/six-interesting-things-our-ants-randy-bilesky/?published=t

Blog: Flying squirrels? Just the facts

Randy Bilesky / Delta Optimist

JUNE 19, 2019 11:35 AM

#DeltaBCThe flying squirrel is a type of squirrel known for its ability to glide through the air. Usually found in deciduous, coniferous or mixed type of forest they are thankfully not endangered. Males and females look alike and their tail is flattened and large used as a rudder when they glide through the air. A special type of the furry membrane stretches between wrists and ankles serving as a parachute while jumping from tree to tree to the ground. They can make 180 degree turns during gliding and use their thick paws as cushion for landing. They are active at night using their large eyes to see in the dark. Main predators of flying squirrels are raccoons, coyotes, owls, foxes and birds. Flying squirrels are highly social animals living in a woodpecker hole in groups of squirrels and sometimes share their dens with other animals like as bats and screech owls. The average lifespan up to five years. 

Go Green Pest Control owner Randy Bilesky is a long-time South Delta resident. Trained and certified, Bilesky has first-hand knowledge of the pest problems that local homeowners and business owners encounter

What really is going on down-under. If you are one of those people that like your lawn to look like a golf course, then here is a collection of rodents that try very hard to make your putting green style lawn vanish.  So down under the ground we have moles, voles, shrews and pocket gophers (and a lot more). So often confused with moles, voles are entirely different. A mole tunnels underground, lifting the soil upwards and making your yard squishy when you walk on it. Voles tunnel creating super highways under the grass. Like the vole, the pocket gopher is a rodent and looks like a mouse, but with bigger teeth. They burrow into the ground, leaving behind unsightly mounds on your lawn that are horseshoe-shaped. The shrew is a small mole-like long-nosed mouse, but a shrew is not a rodent. Shrews have sharp, spike-like teeth, not front incisor teeth like rodents. Shrews will reuse the tunnels made by moles and voles.

https://gogreenpestcontrol.ca/moles-voles-shre…ers-vs-your-lawn/

gogreenpestcontrol.ca insectandrodentexterminators.com Delta Ladner Tsawwassen B.C., Randy Bilesky BsF CPA RPF

https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/moles-voles-shrews-pocket-gophers-vs-your-lawn-randy-bilesky/?published=t

The flying squirrel is a type of squirrel known for its ability to glide through the air. Usually found in deciduous, coniferous or mixed type of forest and thankfully they are not endangered. Males and females look alike and their tail is flattened and large used as a rudder when they glide through the air. A special type of the furry membrane stretches between wrists and ankles serving as a parachute while jumping from tree to tree to the ground. They can make 180 degree turns during gliding and use their thick paws as cushion for landing. They are active at night using their large eyes to see in the dark. Main predators of flying squirrels are raccoons, coyotes, owls, foxes and birds. Flying squirrels are highly social animals living in a woodpecker hole in groups of squirrels and sometimes share their dens with other animals like as bats and screech owls. The average lifespan up to 5 years.

gogreenpestcontrol.ca insectandrodentexterminators.com Delta Ladner Tsawwassen B.C., Randy Bilesky BsF CPA RPF

Small black pavement ants, thatching ants and the large black carpenter ants seem to be everywhere this year and some of the mating ants with wings have already been out. They are flourishing in the usual sunny locations — cracks in driveways, under patio pavers, and of course in wood mulch (their number one built in home). If you find that they put the “p” in pest, then try reducing their numbers with borax, diatomaceous earth or any number of those gimmicky retail ant solutions – by spraying on the anthill or in the cracks were they are sending up sand. To help deter them from coming inside, spray a little diatomaceous earth near doorways. Many ants are actually coming inside for water, so eliminate any leaks or drips and of course don’t leave pet food out after they have eaten. Now the only way to actually kill of a nest is to illuminate the queen (or queens as many ant nest will have multiple queens) which usually requires ant specific pesticides. Use caution when using pesticides, read all instructions for use and location.

Insect numbers are declining at an extraordinary rate and this is not a result of all the pests Go Green pest control deals with daily. Most insects are undeniably vital for the existence of many plants and animal species. Insects are vital to our planet’s ecological well-being, which many animals and plants relying on. As the insect numbers continue to fall, the effects are likely to be distressing. Between 30 and 50 percent of insect species are currently endangered with extinction and insect biomass is dropping by 3 percent yearly. The insects role is essential to the planet’s ecological health, with fewer insects the world might see potential extinction. The world’s population of beetles, bees and butterflies has become relatively ominous, as it is now estimated that in a half a century most of the world’s insects will be gone. And the culprit is – agriculture, urbanization, deforestation and climate change. Not all insects are struggling as more adaptable species (the ones commonly classified as pests) still will to thrive. 

gogreenpestcontrol.ca insectandrodentexterminators.com Delta Ladner Tsawwassen B.C. Randy Bilesky BsF CPA RPF

https://gogreenpestcontrol.ca/declining-insect…ge-our-ecosystem/

https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/declining-insects-change-our-ecosystem-randy-bilesky/?published=t

This year has seen a surge in tick sightings and its another pest that is indirectly to blame. With rising temperatures and land development we are seeing more rodents like rats, mice and squirrels coming into contact with humans. Because rodents are the number one source of food for ticks – more rodents more ticks. And those ticks bring diseases. Last year there were a lot of reported cases of tick-borne diseases and a lot of unreported.  Lyme disease is the most common and well-known tick-borne disease but are four others: Anaplasmosis; Babesiosis; Powassan virus; and Borrelia disease. The best way to avoid these things is to use insect repellent with 25 percent DEET, and avoid any tall grass.

https://www.delta-optimist.com/opinion/blogs/blog-tick-sightings-are-surging-1.23853440

gogreenpestcontrol.ca Ladner Tsawwassen Delta B.C., Randy Bilesky BsF CPA RPF

https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/ticks-why-so-many-randy-bilesky/?published=t

“Ladybird, ladybird, fly away home” (children’s nursery rhyme). A amazing phenomenon was seen in San Diego last week, a giant rain-cloud that turned out to be a swarm of lady beetles that measured 135 km by 135 km. Such a cloud of lady bugs is called a ‘bloom’ but is normally not this large. It is thought that the swarm may have gotten swept up with the wind as this massive bloom is highly unusual. The bright red insects are known to hibernate in clusters along California’s foothills and migrate west in the springtime. This mass insect migration which contains trillions and trillions of lady beetles (ladybirds or ladybugs) were flying south over the desert in a large swarm. This huge migration normally happens in late spring due to increasing day length and warming temperatures that surpass 18 degrees C, which trigger these insects to awaken from diapause (insect hibernation).

gogreenpestcontrol.ca insectandrodentexterminators.com Delta Ladner Tsawwassen B.C., Randy Bilesky BsF CPA RPF

https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/ladybug-bloom-randy-bilesky/?published=t

Its that time again when new honey bee queens kick the old queens out and there is a swarm on the run. So what do you do if a swarm ends up in your yard? It is more important then ever that honeybees be protected and unless you want to become a bee keeper, here are a few tips that will help to keep you and your insect visitors safe – re-homed and not destroyed . We get a lot of calls about bees making nests in the soffits of peoples houses when they are actually wasps and hornets – so you need to be able to identify a bee from a wasp or hornet. In Canada, we have in excess of 800 species of native bees, the most notable the honey bees and bumble bees. Honey bees and bumble bees are both thick set with no waists, hairy and have pollen basket or corbicula (plural corbiculae) on their legs. Wasps and hornets have narrow waists and smooth hairless bodies. My suggestion is that you don’t try to take care of the bees yourself, google beekeepers and get them to recover the hive and relocate it.

https://www.delta-optimist.com/opinion/blog-what-to-do-when-a-honey-bee-swarm-ends-up-in-your-yard-1.23850850

gogreenpestcontrol.ca insectandrodentexterminators.com Delta Ladner Tsawwassen B.C., Randy Bilesky BsF CPA RPF

 https://gogreenpestcontrol.ca/honey-bee-swarms/ ‎

https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/honey-bee-swarms-randy-bilesky/?published=t

Here in Delta we have roughly 6 distinctly different ants all going about their business in different fashions. As different as they are in their activities – they all are basically ants, adult ants come in a variety of shapes and dimensions but each will be one of three different colony castes; queens, workers or males. Queens are fertile females that lay all the eggs in a colony, workers are wingless females that get the food and protect and maintain the nest, and the male ants are winged and they mate with the queens throughout the swarming process. So why ants want to be in our homes, the short answer is food, dirty dishes in the sink, food on counter tops, food on floors and in the garbage. Ants leave unseen biochemical trails in which contain pheromones for others to follow. Ants can enter through even the smallest cracks, seeking food and water. A colony can live a moderately lengthy lifetime. Worker ants may live several years and the queen may live as long as 20 years.

gogreenpestcontrol.ca insectandrodentexterminators.com Delta Ladner Tsawwassen B.C., Randy Bilesky BsF CPA RPF

https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/ants-101-randy-bilesky/?published=t