Pest Control Tips & Local Guides

From work booked across Tallahassee and Leon County, plus the state's own published guidance where a fact needs a source rather than an opinion. They are ordered by what is actually moving at a given point in the year, because a swarm window that opens in late winter and is still open in September does not fit the spring-to-autumn shape most pest writing assumes.

Most of the prevention, and it is worth doing. Keep the gutters running and the ditch clear, tip out anything holding water after a storm, pull mulch and pine straw back off the siding, fit door sweeps, and keep the ground under the floor as dry as you can. The state adds two numbers worth remembering: exterior woodwork wants at least six inches of clearance above the soil, and beams under a raised floor want eighteen inches so the space stays inspectable.

At the structure, and at anything breeding indoors. Subterranean termites need soil treatment and somebody who can read mud tubes, and Florida requires the agreement behind that work to be in writing anyway. Bed bugs return if one room in a block gets skipped. Shop-bought roach spray usually pushes a population deeper into the voids rather than ending it. An animal under a floor is a safety job. And bats are their own case: exclusion is prohibited statewide from 1 May to 31 July because the young cannot fly yet.

When it comes back after you treated it. When you can hear or smell something but cannot find it. When wood sounds hollow, or a floor gives slightly underfoot. When an animal is already inside the structure. Or when a sale date is set and you need a WDO report in hand. The inspection costs nothing, so finding out where you stand costs you an hour.