Will bug-eat-people world be even worse this year? – The Free Lance-Star (blog)
May 15th, 2012 | 
Author: BY EDIE GROSS
THE FREE LANCE-STAR
No tick is a match for Dr. Minh Tran and his tweezers.
During the last few weeks, the Patient First physician has removed one to three ticks a day from visitors to his Fredericksburg-area clinics.
They often hitch rides on construction workers, landscapers and others who work—and play—outside, he said.
“Believe it or not, I just removed a tick from a 4-year-old patient a few minutes ago,” he said Wednesday morning. “She was not real happy.”
Who can blame her?
‘REALLY PECULIAR TASTES’
The bloodsucking hitchhikers normally show up in late April in these parts, but ticks and other bugs came early this year due to an unseasonably warm winter.
Tran said he’s been removing ticks from disgusted patients since March.
“These critters have no wings, no means to fly, but every time you go outdoors, they magically appear on your body,” Tran said.
What’s worse is they often migrate to places where you’re not likely to notice them immediately: on your scalp, upper back or underarms.
“They have really peculiar tastes,” he said.
THEY’RE HERE & HUNGRY
It’s too early to say whether a longer tick season will result in more reported cases of Lyme disease, ehrlichiosis and Rocky Mountain spotted fever, which are transmitted by tick-borne bacteria, said David Gaines, state public health entomologist with the Virginia Department of Health.
But there’s another complicating factor this year. The fall acorn crop was flimsy, which means the rodents who depend on those acorns also dropped in numbers, said Gaines.
That might sound like a good thing, but black-legged ticks feed on those rodents. And if the ticks can’t find rodents, they may go looking for people, he said.
“They’ll be out there, and they’ll be hungry,” Gaines said. “They’re going to bite whatever they can.”
Your best bet is to wear closed shoes, long sleeves and pants in wooded areas and to tuck the pant legs into your socks, he said. That way, as ticks travel from your shoes on up, they don’t find any exposed skin.
Tran also recommends wearing light-colored clothing so ticks are more visible.
Bug repellent can also help keep ticks at bay. Gaines recommends creams over sprays when it comes to warding off ticks.
DEET is one of the more common repellents on the market, but Gaines mentioned several others, including picaridin; BioUD, made from an extract of the wild tomato plant; IR3535, which is found in Avon’s Skin So Soft; 2-undecanone, which can be manufactured but is also found naturally in bananas, ginger, strawberries and wild tomato plants; and oil of lemon eucalyptus.
WATCH FOR WASPS, BEES
In addition to ticks, mosquitos and wasps also arrived early this year.
While you can steer clear of a wooded tick habitat, mosquitos can fly, so they’re harder to avoid, said Gaines.
Most folks know to empty containers of standing water, he said. But mosquitos can breed in hidden habitats too, like inside corrugated downspout extensions and internal drain trays within decorative flower pots.
Ultrasonic devices and bug zappers aren’t effective against mosquitos, he said.
Wasp stings tend to increase in late summer and early fall when the nests are more crowded and inhabitants are defending their queens, said Gaines.
But those nests could be much larger much earlier than usual this year, so outdoor enthusiasts should be careful, he said.
“If you stir up a hornet’s nest with 20 hornets, it’s not as bad as if you stir up a nest with 2,000 hornets in it,” he said.
Wasps won’t leave behind a stinger, but bees will, said Tran. It’s important to remove it with the blunt edge of a knife and apply a cold compress and hydrocortisone cream.
Be especially vigilant about stings near the nose, mouth, neck and eyes because inflammation can affect the respiratory system, he said.
Of course if you experience any serious reactions, like nausea, vomiting, diarrhea or dizziness, seek medical attention, Tran said.
CHECK YOURSELF
If you’re bitten by a tick, use a pair of tweezers and pinch the bug as close to its head as possible before pulling it straight out of your skin, Tran said. If you don’t have tweezers, try covering the tick with masking tape and peeling the tape back from your skin slowly, he said.
Don’t handle it with your bare hands.
If you’re worried about whether any of it was left behind, freeze the specimen and bring it to a doctor, who can make sure all its parts are accounted for, Tran said.
Do not use alcohol or a match to try and loosen the tick’s grip. You may cause it to salivate or regurgitate the bacteria-laden contents of its stomach into your bloodstream, which can make you sick.
Symptoms of Lyme disease or Rocky Mountain spotted fever can show up as long as two months after a bite, Tran said, so it’s important to note on a calendar when you removed the tick. In addition, symptoms of ehrlichiosis may take a week or two to appear.
If you experience unexplained fever, fatigue, chills, a rash, joint or muscle pain, dizziness, nausea, vomiting, diarrhea, confusion, red eyes, a change in vision or a skipping heart beat, see a doctor, Tran said. Patients can still be successfully treated with antibiotics even if the bite occurred weeks beforehand.
Better than treatment, though, is prevention, Tran said. So keep your eyes peeled after you—and your pets—have been outside.
“Make a habit of when you go outdoors, come home, shower off and check yourself over,” he said.
PLANTS BETTER OFF THAN PEOPLE
A longer bug season doesn’t necessarily mean that farmers and gardeners are in for a frustrating summer, said Guy Mussey, an agent in the Virginia Cooperative Extension’s Stafford County office, specializing in environmental horticulture.
“Yes, insects and pests will come out earlier but so are their predators, and the good guys as well,” he said. “Sort of a balance is going to occur.”
Insects that feed on people, like ticks and mosquitos, have a ready food source.
But insects that feed on plants are programmed to emerge when it gets warmer because that’s when the crops are ready, he said.
If those bugs come early because of the warmer winter and there’s nothing to eat yet, they could starve, driving the numbers down, he said.
“I would not expect things to be any worse this year than any other year,” he said.
Edie Gross: 540/374-5428
egross@freelancestar.com
Will bug-eat-people world be even worse this year? – The Free Lance-Star (blog)
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Tessa Farmer’s Installations of Sinister Fairy Skeletons (PHOTOS) – Huffington Post
Insect corpses, taxidermy, tree root and superglue are the primary components of London-based artist Tessa Farmer’s intricate sculptural installations. Known as an “enchanted entomologist” who considers her work to be a representation of both science and art, Farmer creates scenes of darkly gothic fairy skeletons made from insect remains she finds on the roads near her home.
But her fairies hardly resemble the Disney-friendly characters you might be used to you. Farmer’s fantasy world is comprised of nightmarish beings striving for survival, savagely hunting large prey in acts of Darwinian violence. Although the delicately constructed bodies of the fairies stand at less than 1cm tall, they are infused with savage power and force as they brutally overpower animals more than ten times their size. In Farmer’s “Nymphidia” show last year at Danielle Arnaud Contemporary Art in London, the miniscule humanoids were constructed into an epic battle set inside a hornet’s nest. The fairies had seemingly taken over the nest, riding atop their soldier ants and fighting off the defending hornets.
Farmer’s love of both science and art took her to the Natural History Museum in 2007, where she participated in a contemporary arts program meant to bridge communication between the two disciplines. There she studied the behavior of insects with a team of scientists and created an installation called Little Savages that was shown in the museum’s central hall.
And her present pursuits in the fairy world are approached from this very scientific platform. Her warfaring creatures are meant to transcend the myth of fantasia by presenting scientific “evidence” of a more sinister and dark realm of fantasy. She presents the installations as if they were museum displays portraying the behavioral habits of an ancient species. And each scene that she creates provides the viewers as well as herself with more knowledge into this mysterious and evolving world.
You can see more of Tessa Farmer’s work at an upcoming exhibit at Tatton Park Biennial in Cheshire, England. Her installation, entitled “Flights of Fancy,” will be on exhibit from May 12th until September 30th, 2012.
Related on HuffPost:
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Wasps Nests Destroyed in Trafford Borough £32.00 Fixed Price
Wasps Nests
Destroyed in
Trafford Borough
£32.00 Fixed Price
0161 930 8814
Wasp Nest Control Trafford Borough eradicate wasps nests in the areas of Manchester, Trafford, Lancashire, North Cheshire and Merseyside with a fixed rate of just £32 or £44.50 for customers dwelling in postcode areas L, CW and CH.
If you reside outside our area of operations check out our Locate A WASP NEST CONTROLLER page to discover a firm in your town.
Wasp Nest Control Trafford operate seven days per week across the wasp season of June – November and we don’t charge more for call outs in the evening hours or at weekend.
If you wish to get rid of a wasp nest call Wasp Nest Control Trafford we answer our telephones from 8.00 am to 10.00 pm including weekends.
In Great Britain Wasp Nest Control Trafford Borough deal with three major varieties of wasps. The Common Wasp (Vespula vulgaris), the German wasp (Vespula Germanica) and the so called ‘Euro Wasp’ (Dolichovespula media), a recent arrival from the continent.
In practise there is no need for Wasp Nest Control Trafford to determine the kind of wasp we’re working with since they all respond to the exact same procedure.
Contrary to urban myth Wasp Nest Control Trafford Borough definitely don’t work on hornets (Vespula crabro) in the North West as we simply do not get them this far north. There is a local myth in this area that hornets are much smaller than wasps when in fact they are many times bigger.
The biology of all kind of wasps destroyed by Wasp Nest Control Trafford is the same.
The wasp nest commences from a single wasp queen in early spring. On awaking from her hibernation in late March or early April she will feed herself on aphids and grubs before starting to build the nest.
She forms a cocoon slightly smaller compared to a golf ball using ‘wasp paper’, made by chewing rotten wood and combining it along with her saliva.
Within the rudimentary nest she’ll lay a small number of eggs, usually under 20 and tend to these baby wasps until there’re able to fly. The moment the first group of wasps are flying she goes inside the nest and never appears again. Her job now is to lay eggs and she is maintained by the workers.
Wasp Nest Control Trafford will receive many calls at the beginning of summer from people who see these early nests in outhouses and garden sheds. Even these small nests really need to be treated with care as even the queen can sting.
The construction of the nest picks up pace in June and early July as the nests can double in dimensions seemingly every single day.
The eventual size of the nest appears to be governed as a result of weather but typically is going to be about the size of a medicine ball. Wasp Nest Control Trafford have however seen wasp nests greater than Borough Council wheelie bin.
Wasp Nest Control Trafford will are often asked ‘what good do wasps do?’. The truth is for most of the summer they prey on garden pests particularly greenfly and caterpillars, hence they are in fact friends to the gardener.
For the majority of the summer the wasps generated by the nest are sterile females but as autumn draws near the nest will begin to turn out new queens and males. Generally a nest will turn out about 2000 new queens.
Because the wasp stinger is a modified ovipositor, male wasps are not able to sting, but even Wasp Nest Control Trafford are unable to tell a male from a female, so far better to avoid.
The males mate with the new queens and after that as the autumn months turns to winter time the males as well as the sterile workers all die and the newly mated queens locate a hibernation site to spend the wintertime before starting the entire process again in the spring.
Wasp Nest Control Trafford are often asked to remove old wasp nests. This really is neither desirable nor appropriate. The wasp nest is spent and it will not be used again. There exists simply no reason to remove a wasp nest, even when it’s possible to access it, which they rarely are.
As soon as a worker wasp feeds a wasp grub in the nest the wasp grub makes a sweet sticky substance which the worker wasps crave. However once we move into late summer the nest no longer creates grubs and then the workers cannot have their ‘fix’ of this sweet substance. It’s always at this stage of year that they now begin to be annoying, switching from a protein diet of aphids and grubs to a diet of sweet foods for instance fruit.
This is the reason that they cluster around your barbecues and beer gardens, seeking sweet food as well as becoming an over-all nuisance.
It is not advisable to try to remove a wasp nest by yourself as it is easy to sustain numerous stings in a short time. Wasps tend to be at their most dangerous while in the immediate vicinity of their nests.
Wasp Nest Control Trafford will destroy your nest for you by adding an pesticide in to the entrance hole. The returning wasps will carry this powder directly into the nest and then the complete nest should be dead very quickly.
Wasp Nest Control Trafford can do this treatment from outside your home regardless if it is possible to view the nest from inside. Only on very rare circumstances will Wasp Nest Control Trafford have to go in your loft or attic.
Wasp Nest Control Trafford are often called to wasp nests in which home-owner has tried to seal the entrance to the nest will expanding foam or mastic. This is actually a very bad idea as well as making things significantly more challenging for Wasp Nest Control Trafford, it will probably force the wasps straight into the house.
It is recommended to call Wasp Nest Control Trafford to destroy the nest the instant you notice it. Wasp nests treated after mid-September have begun to make the new queens and further extra-cost work for example smoking or fogging the loft area might be necessary to destroy these.
Because of the biology of wasp nests it really is unlikely that you will see wasps before late May or early June unless it’s been an exceedingly warm spring. ‘Wasps’ seen flying around your home in April or May will usually turn out to be bees.
Wasp Nest Control Trafford will not harm solitary bees because they are harmless and can’t sting.
Any time a ‘wasps’ nest all of a sudden appears in your garden, usually hanging on a branch of a tree, then they are not wasps but honey bees. If this happens to you call Wasp Nest Control Trafford as we will almost certainly have the capacity to re-home them with a beekeeper. We charge £75 for this service as we must break our day to get the bees to their new home as quickly as possible.
Wasp Nest Control Trafford charge £32.00 to get rid of a wasp nest or £44.50 for postcode areas L, CH and CW.
For comparison outlined below are charges charged by some local local authorities correct as at May 2012.
Blackpool Council £40
Fylde Borough Council £63
Preston City Council – Do Not Offer A Service
Blackburn Borough Council £53
Bolton Council £52
Wigan Council £49
Salford City Council £46.96
Manchester City Council £54
Trafford Borough Council £55 beneath gutter level, £75 higher than gutter level.
Stockport Borough Council £42.00
Tameside Council £56.64
Rochdale Borough Council £51
Cheshire East Council £56
Cheshire West Council £57
Wirral Borough Council £46
Liverpool City Council £60
Sefton Council – Don’t Supply A ServiceTrafford Wasps Nest
Altrincham Wasps Nest
Sale Wasps Nest
Old Trafford Wasps Nest
Trafford Park Wasps Nest
Carrington Wasps Nest
Dunham Massey Wasps Nest
Partington Wasps Nest
Warburton Wasps Nest
Ashton on Mersey Wasps Nest
Bowden Wasps Nest
Broadheath Wasps Nest
Brooklands Wasps Nest
Dunham Town Wasps Nest
Flixton Wasps Nest
Hale Wasps Nest
Hale Barns Wasps Nest
Stretford Wasps Nest
Timperley Wasps Nest
Urmston Wasps Nest
Sale Moor Wasps Nest
Trafford Borough Wasps Nest
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Army Ants: Natures most powerful Insect
Army ants are relentless when on the march.
They have no mercy and feel no remorse for destroying everything in their path. Among army ant soldiers they are special scouting units that go out looking for food.Army ants have amazing digestive system which can dissolve almost any living creature, including humans.
Army ants have two different phases of activity, the Nomadic phase and the Stationary phase. A carpet of army ants can be as large as 20 meters wide. As destructive as they seem, they are an important part of their natural environment as they help to keep other insects populations under control. If viewed from above, the ants would look much like a tree, with the ant spreading on from the main group like branches.
This is called a bivouac.
They are resourceful and determined when it comes to finding food and will climb trees, invade homes and even build bridges to get to a food source.
Most army ants colonies live in South and Central America.
Army ants soldiers attack in extremely large groups, covering their prey completely as they begin to cut the flesh into tiny pieces.Workers army ants are usually prohibited from reproducing.Army ant queen can lay up to 120,000 eggs.Army ants usually have brown color, though some army ants are also black.Army ants diet usually includes other insects, smaller snakes and small animals such as baby birds.Army Ants have a lifespan of 3 to 13 months.
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When army ant queen dies colonies quickly disappear, and while some ants are being attacked by other colonies the other luckier ones (usually the workers) are being accepted in other colonies.
However, genetic evidence found in 2003 show that they came from one common ancestor that lived 100 million years ago.
New world Army ants mostly come from the Ecioninae sub-family, while Old world Army ants come from Aenictini and Dorylini sub-families. The other hunting technique is called a swarm attack. The Nomadic phase is when the ants hunt for their prey. The term “Army ant” is actually applied to 200 different ant species. Army ants can march around 65 feet in an hour.
One is called the Column raid. The majority of them eat other insects, large spiders, small mammals, reptiles, birds and their eggs, larvae of other insects and some even eats seeds. During a swarm attack, the ant will set a trap for their prey by forming a carpet of themselves on the jungle floor. Instead, they make a living nest with their own bodies. The name “army ants” refers to over 200 ant species characterized by huge numbers of ants foraging simultaneously over a certain area, attacking prey in vast numbers.
They usually move from one place to another.Army ants are usually antagonistic to each other, attacking soldiers from rival colonies in border disputes that keep the army ant colonies separate from each other.The big boss of the army ant colony is the large ant queen who produces the eggs from which all of the colony’s ants are born.
Army ants colonies consists of queen, workers, and soldiers.
Long ago, Scientists believed that these ants evolved independently. They can be found in South America and Africa.
Army ants do not just kill for food, they kill anything in their way. Scavengers will follow the horde, taking advantage of the dead left behind by these aggressive ants.
Army ants
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How to Control Pharaoh Ants
Pharaoh ants are about 2 mm longs, and have a two-segmented petiole. Antennae are 12 segments and with a three segmented club at the end. They are yellowish or light brown to reddish. They do have a stinger but are unable to sting. The queens are similar in color to workers but about twice the size. Most ants are omnivores that feed on a wide variety of foods. The light yellow or reddish Pharaoh ant nests inside of buildings and isn’t picky in its choice of foods. Sanitation is the one essential element to deter the Pharaoh ant.
Their diet can change based on availability and colony needs such as egg production and larval growth. They rarely nest in walls of buildings, as the Pharaoh ant. Summer months the ant colonies dietary needs will shift to carbohydrates, a primary source of energy.
Due to the small size of the Pharaoh and they are often confused with the Theif Ant. The nesting habits of ghost ants are similar to Pharaoh ants. These ants are notorious for the fact that these ants are know to create satalite colonies. An application of a residual insecticides, often triggers a separation of colonies into numerous satalite colonies. These ants also forage long distances, and forage both day and night. Their trails are often hidden behind baseboards, cabinets and walls where they are using wires and pipes to travel.
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Argentine and Pharaoh ant colonies have many queens and millions of workers in an enormous conglomeration of interlocking nests. Pharaoh ants are monomorphic meaning the workers are all the same size. Their size is determined by the quantity and quality of the food they receive as larva. They will have multiple queens and she lives for approximately 200 days. Larvae that are sufficiently fed can become queens in a pharaoh colony.
The light yellow or reddish Pharaoh ant nests inside of buildings and isn’t picky in its choice of foods. Sanitation is the one essential element to deter the Pharaoh ant.
Effective control of the Pharaoh ant is often long term, using a baiting solution in every area where the ants are known to forage. Unlike most ants, the Pharaoh ant is polygynous, meaning its colonies contain many queens.pest control of Pharaoh ants are usually much harder to control than other ants because of their ability to disperse.
The Pharaoh ant will forage night or day and are a common problem in hotels, grocery stores, hospitals and apartment complexes. Also, the foods eaten by this ant are similar to those of the Pharaoh ant. College campuses are excellent breeding grounds for the Pharaoh ant, especially the kitchen or dormitories.
The Pharaoh ant, also called sugar ants and other trailing house ants can come into your house in search of sugary foods. There is only one sure solution to Pharaoh ants and that is to use the insect growth regulator methoprene in ant bait.
Ant Control is difficult and can be time consuming, but by knowing their characteristics and foraging habits one can effective control any Pharaoh ant colony no matter what the size.
There are many websites which offers a full line of professional pest control services including glue traps, mouse traps, animal traps for squirrels, moles etc. for all your Do It yourself Pest Control needs. Now you can use the same products the professional pest control technicians use at a fraction of the cost.
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