Common Pests

Here in Northern Illinois and Southeastern Wisconsin, there are a variety of COMMON PESTS that invade people's homes.  While this page doesn't list every pest, it does shed light on some of the more COMMON PESTS:
 
CARPENTER ANTS: (Camponotus pennsylvanicus) Without question, the #1 economic pest in the Midwest is the Carpenter Ant.  Carpenter Ants do not eat wood.  They burrow into the wood and creat chambers for the nest.  Many homeowners discover these large black ants when they are remodeling their homes or putting in new windows.  Carpenter Ants generally live in trees around the home but they can also live in your walls, crawl spaces and rail road ties.  Living in wood is not a necessity for carpenter ants (they can be found in hollow doors and behind insulation) but they do prefer making their homes in trees and water-damaged wood.  They can cause thousands of dollars of damage to a home.

• The average mature carpenter ant colony can range from eight thousand to 15,000 ants.  Carpenter ants do most of their feeding at night and their foraging range is about 300 yards.  They prefer sweet foods but will eat just about anything in order to survive.

• Home owner tips: Do not stack firewood next to your home, keep tree limbs from touching your house and remove old railroad ties that are breaking apart.  Also caulk cracks and crevices around the exterior of your home.

Schopen Pest Solutions, Inc., uses residual pesticides around the exterior of the home and odorless pesticides on the interior.  We also use dust products (when necessary) in the wall voids and ant baits (when necessary) around the interior and exterior.  Under normal conditions, Schopen Pest Solutions, Inc., can usually eradicate a carpenter ant problem in just two-or-three visits.  On-going, preventative treatments are recomended after the initial ant problem has been controlled.

SPIDERS: The Yellow Sac, Wolf, Cellar, Funnel Web, Garden and Orb Weaver are the most common spiders found in our region.  None of the aforementioned spiders are harmful to humans.  In fact, the two most well known -the brown recluse and black widow- are not native to Northern Illinois or Southeastern Wisconsin.  Occasionally you might find a brown recluse in a crawl space or in a storage unit but they live primarily south of Joliet, Illinois.  
 
Schopen Pest Solutions, Inc., can stop spiders from entering your home by applying pesticides around the exterior of your home during the summer and treating your interior on a quarterly basis.  Schopen Pest Solutions, Inc., uses a webster to remove cobwebs and spider eggs, odorless pesticides in areas where spiders wait for prey and glueboards in unfinished parts of your home to catch and monitor spiders.