Stink Bugs are Sinking Up Birmingham Alabama

Welcome to another episode of pesky pest control podcast here in Birmingham, Alabama with Michael and Travis. We do this podcast as a community service for Birmingham, Hoover Vestavia, hills, mountain Brook Halina, Alabaster, Pelham, and all other surrounding areas. Hey, so today we’re going to talk about another very aggravating and somewhat invasive pest for your house. And that is the brown marmorated stink bug. So these little creatures are accidentally introduced from Asia, into the US, as you know, most pests are that we didn’t have up until a couple of years ago or so several years back, you know, and due to shipping, and due to things like that, these pests tend to find a way, you know, even across oceans and across continents, to places that, you know, they weren’t normally indigenous to. So these little, these little aggravating bugs tend to show up right here at the end of summer and into fall, and then going on into winter. And they’re, you know, most of the time, they’re actually attracted to your house because of the heat from the sunlight. They look at it as a place to just bask until to warm up. And then lo and behold, of course, they find these cracks, crevices or on your doors or in your windows around your at eaves up into your attic. Anywhere that they can go. And they start to look for a place to Oh, to do what we call overwintering, which is to find a place to basically hang out that’s warmer out of the weather, up until the point where they can reemerge, you know in the spring when it warms up. So, but what’s the significance of this brown marmorated stink bug, one of the main significance is of it is it’s damage to actual crops, it’s agricultural damage, you know, they, they can damage anything from fruits, apples and things like that to other vegetable crops like corn and tomatoes, soybeans, and then other ornamental plants and things like that. So they can cause significant damage in large enough numbers to agricultural products. But you as a homeowner, that’s probably not what you’re worried about, you’re probably worried about their significance in your house and then to your health or your family’s health. And they can cause some allergic reactions for you and your family. They can cause you to have runny noses, and conjunctivitis, they can also flare up anybody who is sensitive to bad odors, which living up to its name, the stink bug, it can actually have, you know, an influence on someone who is very sensitive to odors. Um, they typically don’t cause a lot of damage to your home. You know, maybe if they’re crushed or sucked up into a vacuum or something like that, they can really kind of have an odor that you would really notice. But more so more often than not, they’re actually just a nuisance. I had one customer at one point, who swapped to us from a different company just because the other company could not figure out a way to get rid of these pests. And we ended up determining that they were coming in to the house from the outside through the attic, and then of course getting into the living space of the house. So we were able to treat the attic of the house and much to the customer’s happiness, they were gone. They didn’t have any more issues with their stinkbugs getting into the house, and basically crawling all over everything, and flying and getting into their face and landing on their food and things like that. And like I said it was just more of a nuisance and it wasn’t an allergy or something like that. So of course what do we do the best method, seal them out before they come in. Knowing that this time of the year they become more prominent, they start to look for a place to hide for the wintertime that’s warmer or somet