Experienced Freehold, NJ Pest Control & Attic Insulation Installer

As far as insects go, all of those nasty stingers out there stinging have had plenty of time to build their nests and are now at their peak populations. We were sent out on a service call for a resident who had a wasps nest build right on his front door! We inspected the area and identified these stinging insects as bald-faced hornets. 

Bald-faced hornets are actually more closely related to yellow jackets than hornets. These social insects are black in color with white markings on the front of the head and the tip of the abdomen. Come early spring, the queen selects a suitable location, constructs a small nest and begins establishing a colony. The workers take over the duties of enlarging and maintaining the nest, foraging for food and caring for the offspring while the queen functions only to produce more eggs. A fully mature colony consists of a queen, 200 to 400 workers, brood and, in late summer, males and reproductive females.

Fortunately, the nest here was small and still in the early building stages, so it's not as active as a fully mature nest. We applied an aerosol application directly on the nest. This application immediately knocks down the bald-faced hornets on contact. Once all the hornets are gone, we properly disposed of the nest.

As the soil starts to warm, termite populations emerge in search of a new structure to invade. Termite infestations can compromise the structural stability of a home, and cause thousands of dollars in damage, without anyone even knowing — which is exactly what happened to a homeowner in Freehold, NJ.

As the homeowner was replacing his welcome home mat by his front door, he noticed that the entire door sill was damaged. He thought maybe his kids damaged it, but as he took a closer look he found termites inside! Worried, he contacted Cowleys to eliminate his newly discovered termite infestation.

I began my inspection and did find several subterranean termite workers making a meal out of the homeowner's door sill. This termite species lives in underground colonies or in moist secluded areas aboveground. They build distinctive "mud tubes" to gain access to food sources and to protect themselves from open air. I then continued my inspection to uncover any other areas in the home that termites may be hiding — fortunately, I did not find any.  

Since termites live beneath the soil and enter your home below the ground level of the dirt, I drilled into the concrete and around the entire exterior of the home and then injected a liquid application into the ground so that the termites will come into contact with the product. This application binds to the treated soil and creates a protective zone that termites cannot detect. Termites will either ingest the application or come in contact with it as they go about their normal routines. Within a short amount of time, the termites are eliminated.

I scheduled a follow-up appointment with the homeowner to make sure that the termites are gone for good and, if not, apply additional treatment methods. 

Today, I was performing some preventative treatments for a restaurant in Freehold, NJ that has been a long-time commercial customer of Cowleys. Pest control in restaurants is a cooperative effort with the pest control technician and the kitchen staff. There must be daily, weekly, and monthly sanitation and hygiene protocols in place, and the kitchen manager must ensure that they are being followed. Food debris and organic film accumulating on the floor or in drains often lead to insect and rodent infestations. Restaurants must have a zero-tolerance policy when it comes to pests.

While doing my work, I came across an unpleasant surprise. There was a mass of fruit flies in the kitchen. For such little gnats, they can be one giant pain! A heavy fruit fly infestation can be tricky to resolve and using pest control products can only assist in eliminating these little pests. The best way to eliminate one of these infestations is to find the source where they are breeding and eliminate the breeding material. Here, I tracked the fruit flies back to a sink and an adjacent recycling bin.The sink had a significant amount of food debris that hadn’t been cleaned out for some time. That decaying food debris is a major fruit fly attractant. In fact, fruit flies can identify food debris from over 100 yards away. Yes, over 100 yards away — farther than a football field!  The recycling bin nest to the sink had a sticky film of soda coating its bottom. There is nothing that fruit flies like better than a film of sweet, sugary soda.

I diplomatically asked the shift manager if she would be able to have the sink and recycling bin thoroughly cleaned as soon as possible. She was anxious to accommodate my request. The kitchen staff was going crazy with the gnats. Working in a kitchen with fruit flies hovering all around, getting in your eyes, hair, nose, and mouth is quite unpleasant, to say the least. 

If there is a fruit fly infestation in your home or business, the sure fix is finding and removing their breeding source. Sometimes, it takes some investigation to locate the source and thoroughly clean the area. If the problem is a drain coated with food debris, cleaning out the drains may require a bioenzyme drain gel and a long, flexible drain brush. The breeding source can be anywhere — from a hidden spill underneath an appliance to a dirty mop in the utility room. However, once their source is gone, the fruit fly population will soon die out.

Recently, we were contacted by one of our larger commercial customers, a large residential community in Freehold, NJ. One of the homeowners complained to the property manager that his home was being invaded by “little red bugs,” and I was sent out immediately to resolve the problem.

I immediately identified these bugs as boxelder bugs. These destructive pests are named after boxelder trees, one of the trees that they commonly infest. Although these bugs seek out the seeds of boxelder trees, we also find them infesting maple and ash trees.  These oval, black bugs with reddish-orange markings on its back are about 1/2" long. Boxelder bugs molt numerous times on their way to adulthood and the nymphs look nothing like the adult bugs. The tiny baby nymphs are often completely red in their early stages. No doubt, it was these little red nymphs, which are often found in huge clusters, that caught the attention of this homeowner.

During the spring and summer months, you’ll often see these bugs “sunning” themselves on the tops of rocks for warmth. However,  once cool temperatures move in during the fall, they look for warmer places to overwinter and escape the harsh outdoor elements. This is when we find these bugs inside our homes. Often, they escape notice for quite awhile. However, problems start when homeowners start turning on the heat as temperatures continue to drip during the fall as winter approaches. Insects naturally respond to temperature changes and are stimulated into activity by the artificial warmth. Believing that spring has arrived, they become active once again, and enter the living spaces of the home in search of food and water. 

The homeowner did the right thing by notifying us of the boxelder problem in the summer. It is far better to deal with bug infestations found outside of your home in the summer before they start looking to overwinter. With insects, because of their size, it’s relatively easy for them to find ways to access your home where they can become a major nuisance. For example, boxelder bugs  may stain your furnishings with their wastes and feed on certain types of house plants.

For this outdoor boxelder bug infestation, I treated all of the areas where these bugs congregate including the rocks in the landscape bed, a maple tree growing close to the home, and as a precaution, I also treated underneath the adjacent siding. I wanted to be sure that this infestation was eliminated while the bugs were still outside. The infestations will become more complicated to treat in a few months once temperatures drop and the pests find their way inside.

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Recently, I was sent to one of our commercial accounts, a medical office in Freehold, NJ. Based on the description of the infestation given to us over the phone, we suspected carpenter ants, a major pest problem this time of year. Sure enough, during my exterior perimeter inspection of the building, I observed numerous trails of carpenter ants. These large ants, up to 1/2 inch in length, are wood-destroying insects (WDIs). Although there are numerous insects that either consume wood or bore holes in it for nesting, the most common invaders are carpenter ants, carpenter bees, and the “kings” of property damage — termites. Carpenter ants excavate galleries in wood, most often untreated, moist, water-damaged wood. Outside, carpenter ants commonly nest in trees, tree stumps, leaf litter, and firewood. Inside, they are often spotted around doors, window sills, sinks, and areas around roofs and chimneys.  

To resolve this infestation, we treated the exterior of the building with a termidor (fipronil) application. Although this application is mostly widely known for use with termite control, we use it for other pest control situations as well, including as an exterior perimeter treatment for property-damaging carpenter ants and plain old nuisance ants. Termidor works exceptionally well for carpenter ants as a foundation or perimeter spray. Just like with termites, the workers pick up the product as they travel back and forth from the nest, soon contaminating the rest of the colony. The objective with these types of social pests is to kill the egg-producing queen. Killing isolated foraging ants will not resolve the infestation. 

During our inspection, we observed that the rear of the building faced a wooded area. An inspection of the trees close to the building revealed that many of them were infested with carpenter ants. I treated the trees with a waterproof long-term residual dust using a bellow hand duster to apply the product in the numerous holes bored out by the ants. Since these ants were nesting outside of the building, I wanted to see if we could knock down the ant population by treating the exterior first and delay applying product inside the building, especially since it was a doctor’s office. There was no sense in unnecessarily treating the inside if the infestation could be successfully resolved outside. I’m confident that those foraging carpenter ants that manage to find their way inside the building will soon be gone once the outdoor nests are eliminated. 

While conducting a servicing at one of our accounts, a large residential community in Freehold, NJ, the property manager informed me that one of the residents had a wasp nest above her front door. Stinging insects, especially aggressive, territorial wasps, are a high priority infestation, and I immediately attended to this problem.

When I arrived at the resident’s unit, I observed active insect activity around the nest. I treated the nest with an aerosol and waited until all insect activity stopped. I then removed and bagged the nest so that I could transport it away from the premises. Fortunately, no one, including me, was stung. Whenever I am dealing with a wasp, yellow jacket, or other stinging insect infestation, if I am able to kill the insects and remove their nest without being stung, it’s automatically a good day for me! 

New Jersey is one of the top states for reported Lyme Disease cases, and most of tick bites happen in May, June, and July. Ticks cling onto vegetation, and when a host brushes by, the tick climbs aboard and looks for a place to attach. Many sufferers of Lyme disease have been bitten by ticks right in their own backyards. 

Fortunately, homeowners can dramatically reduce the chance of tick bites and Lyme disease. First, any of us who live in New Jersey and enjoy the outdoors should always be aware of ticks. We should routinely do tick checks on ourselves and on our children whenever returning from the outdoors. Second, you can actively reduce tick populations around your own home. 

I recently serviced a homeowner in Freehold Township who requested our tick-reduction program, a series of well-timed, targeted treatments to knock down ticks at all stages of their life cycle. First, I conducted a property analysis to determine the tick activity level and design an appropriate treatment plan for that home's specific landscaping and surrounding environment. There are numerous ways to make your yard less attractive to ticks, from placing  a wood chip barrier along wooded areas to to simple steps like frequent mowing and yard debris removal. By restricting tick migration and tick harborage, tick populations drop dramatically. 

In addition to this "habitat modification," I apply a tick treatment to those areas where ticks are likely present such as tall vegetation as well as the lawn perimeter, paying careful attention to forest lines. This targeted approach is most effective for long-term tick control. And for households with children and pets, this approach is far safer than blanket treatment of the entire lawn. 

With tick-reduction programs, early spring is the ideal time to begin treatment. Spring is a peak time for eggs and tiny nymphs. Reducing these younger tick populations in the spring means less adult ticks down the road. Also, because of their size, nymphs are difficult to detect and these tiny ticks can just as easily transfer diseases through their bites.

As a home protection technician, one part of my job I especially enjoy is helping families enjoy their property during the spring and summer. For me, looking forward to these precious months is what gets me through our tough New Jersey winters. For me, there is a lot of satisfaction helping a family and seeing their kids enjoy their own backyard without the threat of biting, disease-carrying ticks. 

This picture was taken in an apartment in freehold today. This book to the untrained eye would seem harmless. It was in fact a mystery novel but that's not the point of this story. This particular book was from the public library. The black stains on the pages are fecal stains from a bedbug. This resident informed me that she's had the book for quite some time and always reads in bed. If she had returned this book what's to say she wouldn't also transport bedbugs as well. Just be careful of what you bring into your home not knowing where it was before. Used furniture, borrowed items, even belongings of close friends are harborage areas of bedbugs.

This past week I was scheduled for a termite treatment in Freehold, N.J. I explained to the customer that the treatment for termites is a chemical treatment to the soil which included digging a trench around the exterior foundation of his home. The customer was concerned that his landscape that he prides was gonna look horrible after the job was done. I assured him I'd do my best to make it look like I was never there. Another happy customer.