Durban: Dust Mite, Bed Bug & Flea Pest Control

As pest managers, we have to ensure we effectively manage nuisance pests that can cause major damage to our properties, or certain health risks and diseases among humans and animals. We need to remember that pests are dependent on three primary factors to survive:

There are a few blood thirsty creatures out there that have an important job to play in cleaning up our planet, but too many of them in your home and office could start to make things pretty uncomfortable.

Dust Mites feed off human and animal skin cells, and other particles that are found in common household dust. If your home or office is not cleaned regularly, you can be sure to have thousands, if not millions, of dust mites crawling around you, your family and colleagues.

Bed Bugs are very versatile little creatures and can sneak in through the tiniest of cracks. They are only here for one reason, your blood!

Bed bugs have mouth parts that saw through the skin and inject saliva with anticoagulants and painkillers, so that they don’t wake you when they are feeding. The anticoagulants prevents blood from clotting to allow your blood to flow freely for a real dinner treat. Believe it or note, but bed bugs can drink up to three times their own body weight in one sitting. Human’s sensitivity can varies from extreme allergic reaction to no reaction at all.

Even in the cleanest of homes, it is very difficult get rid of ALL bugs, such as dust mites and in some cases, bed bugs. However, in less hygienic environments, we can often find hundreds of thousands, if not millions when it comes to a bug count… The videos below may just get you a little more vigilant when it comes to house cleaning?!

Fleas found on dogs or cats are actually cat fleas. If you have experienced a flea infestation, then you will know the extreme discomfort they can cause and the very reason why people never what to experience it again.

More About Dust Mites, Bed Bugs & Fleas

Dust Mites: House dust mites (HDM, or simply dust mites) are a large number of mites found in association with dust in dwellings.

The main species are identified as:

• Dermatophagoides farinae (American house dust mite)
• Dermatophagoides microceras
• Dermatophagoides pteronyssinus (European house dust mite)
• Euroglyphus maynei (Mayne’s house dust mite)

Source: wikipedia.org

Bed Bugs: Are parasitic insects of the cimicid family that feed exclusively on blood. Cimex lectularius, the common bed bug, is the best known as it prefers to feed on human blood. Other Cimex species specialize in other animals, e.g., bat bugs, such as Cimex pipistrelli (Europe), Cimex pilosellus (Western United States), and Cimex adjunctus (entire Eastern United States).

The name bed bug derives from the preferred habitat of Cimex lectularius: warm houses and especially near or inside beds and bedding or other sleep areas. Bed bugs are mainly active at night, but are not exclusively nocturnal. They usually feed on their hosts without being noticed.

A number of adverse health effects may result from bed bug bites, including skin rashes, psychological effects, and allergic symptoms.[6] Bed bugs are not known to transmit any pathogens as disease vectors. Certain signs and symptoms suggest the presence of bed bugs; finding the adult insects confirms the diagnosis.

Bed bugs have been known as human parasites for thousands of years At a point in the early 1940s, they were mostly eradicated in the developed world, but have increased in prevalence since 1995, likely due to pesticide resistance, governmental bans on effective pesticides, and international travel. Because infestation of human habitats has begun to increase, bed bug bites and related conditions have been on the rise as well.

Source: wikipedia.org

Fleas: Are small flightless insects that form the order Siphonaptera. As external parasites of mammals and birds, they live by consuming the blood of their hosts. Adults are up to about 3 mm (0.12 in) long and usually brown. Bodies flattened sideways enable them to move through their host’s fur or feathers; strong claws prevent them from being dislodged. They lack wings, and have mouthparts adapted for piercing skin and sucking blood and hind legs adapted for jumping. The latter enable them to leap a distance of some 50 times their body length, a feat second only to jumps made by froghoppers. Larvae are worm-like with no limbs; they have chewing mouthparts and feed on organic debris.

Over 2,500 species of fleas have been described worldwide. The Siphonaptera are most closely related to the snow scorpionflies (Boreidae), placing them within the endopterygote insect order Mecoptera.

Fleas arose in the early Cretaceous, most likely as ectoparasites of mammals, before moving on to other groups including birds. Each species of flea is more or less a specialist on its host animal species: many species never breed on any other host, though some are less selective. Some families of fleas are exclusive to a single host group: for example, the Malacopsyllidae are found only on armadillos, the Ischnopsyllidae only on bats, and the Chimaeropsyllidae only on elephant shrews. The oriental rat flea, Xenopsylla cheopis, is a vector of Yersinia pestis, the bacterium which causes bubonic plague. The disease was spread by rodents such as the black rat, which were bitten by fleas that then infected humans. Major outbreaks included the Plague of Justinian and the Black Death, both of which killed a sizeable fraction of the world’s population.

Fleas appear in human culture in such diverse forms as flea circuses, poems like John Donne’s erotic The Flea, works of music such as by Modest Mussorgsky, and a film by Charlie Chaplin.

Source: wikipedia.org