Winter Pest Myths: What’s Actually True About Pests in Cold Weather?

Winter brings a lot of changes to our homes, often forcing us to spend more time indoors where it’s warm. These often extend to changes in pest behavior as well, creating new and exciting pest issues for us to deal with. In today’s blog we will be looking at the various myths that surround pests in winter and discovering what’s actually true about pest behavior in cold weather.

Myth #1: Winter Kills Most Pests

While it is true that cold weather kills many pests it forces most of them to seek shelter so they can enter a period of dormancy until spring. However, that shelter can often take the form of your home as it is a large, heated place that will keep them out of the weather and might even provide food for them. Pests like rodents, cockroaches and spiders are especially good at finding their way inside to survive the winter.

Myth #2: Raising the Temperature will Kill Indoor Pests

Heat treatments are useful in eliminating certain pests, however this is a specialized system that applies an unbearable level of heat to a specific area, not an entire house. In order to eliminate those pests with heat you would need to raise the temperature in your home to such a degree that it would be completely uninhabitable, even to the humans who live there.

Myth #3: Pests only enter houses to look for food

You may think that keeping your house spotless is enough to keep pests from entering your home in the winter but unfortunately this isn’t the case. The main reason why pests enter a home during the winter is in search of shelter and warmth, with food being a tertiary concern. So, while keeping food mess to a minimum will deny pests an incentive to venture out of their hidey holes it doesn’t mean that they aren’t present.

Myth #4: Winter Pests are less destructive

This is often an “out of sight out of mind” issue as during winter most pests will make their nests in quiet, out of the way areas that are out of view of the home’s inhabitants. This leads to the false belief that those pests aren’t doing anything when in reality they can cause some of the worst damage to your home while they are unseen. Within your walls they can chew on structural components, tear insulation and chew wiring all of which is expensive damage to repair not to mention dangerous to the health of the home.

Myth #5: Do It Yourself Traps are enough to control Winter Pests

While do it yourself traps will eliminate some pests they do nothing to address the actual source of the problem. Most winter pests try to remain hidden and make their homes in areas like attics, crawl spaces and in your walls where you are less likely to notice them. This may lead you to believe that the few pests you have eliminated has solved your pest problem, however this may not be the case, you might actually be dealing with a much larger infestation that is completely invisible to you. This is why it might be a good idea to contact a professional pest control service; they have the expertise and experience to identify the full extent of a pest infestation and eliminate it.

We hope that we have been able to clear up some of the myths that surround pests in the wintertime. If you have any questions about professional pest control services, please feel free to contact us.

Gilpin’s Pest Control is a family-owned business operating on the Lower Mainland in Greater Vancouver and the BC Interior including Kamloops, Revelstoke, and Sicamous. After 35 years in the business, we do a stellar job and are proud of our rapid response time. 

If you have any questions about this article or you would like to talk to us about pest control needs, please call us toll-free at (800) 770-2428.