Common Pests in Maple Plain, MN

Mice

Ants

Wasps

Spiders

Boxelder Bugs

Stink Bugs

To protect your home from insects, join our Insect Protection Plan (IPP)

If you have questions, concerns, or want to schedule an appointment

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Mice in Minnesota have two main jobs. One job is to breed, and the other is to forage and store food for winter. Mice are unique in that they do not have a breeding season. If their nests are located in temperature-controlled environments, they will continue breeding all year. Mice are nocturnal, so they are active at night. To find their way back to their nests, they leave scent trails while they move around. Over time, when mice use the same entry points, the scent trails leave rub marks, which are a mixture of urine, mud, and grease rubbed off their fur.

Each seal-up service we provide is customized for each home. Every home is built differently from the next. So each home can have a variety of different entry points. The service starts with an inspection. During the inspection, we walk around the exterior of the home. We take photos of entry points, signs of mouse activity, and limitations. Limitations consist of areas around the home that block us from reaching 100% of the foundation or roof. After the inspection, we come up with a price and a warranty. During the seal-up service, we use products that contruction grade materials that make sure each entry point is sealed to last and is impossible for a mouse to chew through. 

Minnesota Mouse Identification

Ants that live in Maple Plain, in the spring and summer, their number one goal is to expand and grow their colony. They do this by mating and foraging. They mate in nuptial flight. The male and female ants both have wings. The male dies soon after mating, and the female locates a place to make a nest. Once the nest has worker ants, they start to forage. They forage for protein-based foods and feed them to their larvae and pupae. The worker ants feed on foods with sugar and carbohydrates for energy. In the winter, their behavior changes. They no longer work on growing the colony. They either hibernate or build nests inside homes. If they are active, they only forage for sugary foods over the winter.

The ant service we provide uses products that only licensed pest control technicians can use. The product works by not killing the ants on contact. They cross over the treated surfaces and carry the product back to their nest. Once inside the nest, it spreads throughout the rest of the colony and kills the queen. After each ant treatment, it takes 30 days for an entire ant colony to be eradicated. We conduct interior treatments in the winter and exterior treatments in the spring and summer.

Minnesota Ant Identification

Wasps in Maple Plain spend each spring and summer building their nests from scratch. In winter, most worker wasps die off. But the queens locate a place to overwinter and wake up in the spring. In the late spring, after feeding on nectar and insects, they start building a new nest in May-June. The first workers of each nest start foraging for food and nesting material. They find their nesting material by chewing thin layers off dried-out wood. They mix the layer of wood with their saliva, which makes the papery material that all their nests are made out of. 

Our wasp services vary between being preventative and reactionary. Our preventative wasp nest service takes place around the exterior of the home. We spray along the soffits, corners, gutters, windows, and doors. We focus on areas that allow wasp nests to stay dry when it rains. As the wasps land on the treated surfaces, they die before building a new nest. This product stays effective for 2 months. Our extermination service is meant for nests that are active. The product we use for most active nests doesn’t kill the wasps on contact. Instead, the product has a delayed affect to allow the foraging wasps to spread it inside the nest. It can take between 1 and 2 weeks to exterminate an active wasp nest.

Minnesota Wasp & Bee Identification

Spiders are capable of surviving through the cold Minnesota winters. They don’t hibernate; instead, they produce antifreeze proteins (AFP). This allows them to stay active in temperatures as cold as 23 degrees Fahrenheit. If it gets colder, they enter a dormant state to conserve energy. Besides this ability, spiders also play a very important role in our ecosystems. They feed on insects that would otherwise become overpopulated.  In Minnesota, spiders most commonly feed on mosquitoes, ticks, flies, and moths. These insects mostly live near bodies of water and wooded habitats.

Our spider service can either take place on the exterior of the home, the interior, or both. In the spring and summer, we focus mostly on the exterior. We start each exterior service by knocking down as many spider webs as we can reach. Next, we treat around the foundation, under soffits, gutters, corners, and around doors and windows. The product sticks to the home and stays effective for 2 months. Because all spiders get inside from the outside, our interior treatments are not as effective. When we do treat inside, we focus on basements, unfinished rooms, and corners. If a home is built close to a body of water or wooded habitat, it’s recommended to schedule multiple spider treatments.

Read Our Blog: “We Love Living Near Water and so do Spiders!”

Stink bugs and boxelder bugs can be found inside homes in the winter. They get inside by swarming outside homes and buildings in the fall. They get inside through gaps in windows, cracks in the foundation, and siding. In the winter, most bugs stay dormant. Except on sunnier days, some bugs may warm up enough to become active again. They don’t breed or lay eggs when inside the home. Both bugs breed outside in spring and summer. Boxelder bugs lay their eggs on boxelder trees. When they hatch, their larvae and nymphs eat the helicopter seeds that the trees produce. Stink bugs lay their eggs on the leaves of various plants. The most common include: sweet corn, apples, grapes, and tomato plants.

Stink bugs and boxelder bugs start flying toward homes and buildings in the fall. The most effective time to treat the home is before the first frost. There is most likely a population of bugs already living inside after the first frost happens. During the service, we focus on the exterior of the home. We treat the majority of the exterior from the foundation to the roof line. Both insects fly and can enter the home through soffits and chimneys that are high up off the ground. The bugs land on the home and die before they are able to get inside. 

Read Our Blog: “Minnesota Fall Pests”

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To protect your home from insects join our Insect Protection Plan (IPP)

If you have questions, concerns, or want to schedule an appointment

Call Us Today! 952-404-BOGO (2646)

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