If clusters of orange-and-black beetles are gathering on the sunny side of your Bellingham home this fall and slipping inside by the dozens, you’re almost certainly not dealing with the friendly native ladybug. You’re dealing with the multicolored Asian lady beetle, an invasive look-alike that aggregates on warm walls in autumn and pushes indoors to […]

Bird exclusion is the practice of physically sealing off the spots where birds roost and nest — ledges, vents, eaves, rooflines, solar arrays, and structural gaps — so birds can’t use your building, done humanely and, where the law requires it, legally. It’s the permanent alternative to endlessly cleaning droppings or chasing birds away, and […]

Under Washington’s Residential Landlord-Tenant Act (RCW 59.18), landlords generally must provide a reasonable pest control program at the start of every tenancy and — except in single-family residences — keep controlling infestations during the tenancy, unless the tenant caused the problem. Tenants, in turn, must keep their units clean and sanitary and can be held […]

The clearest way to tell if you have bed bugs is to look for physical evidence — small rust or blood-colored stains on your sheets, dark ink-like fecal spots along mattress seams, shed skins, and live, apple-seed-sized reddish-brown bugs hiding in the seams of your mattress, box spring, and headboard. Bites alone are not proof, […]

The quickest way to tell them apart: bees are round and fuzzy and usually golden-brown, wasps are slender and smooth with a pinched “waist” and bright yellow-and-black markings, and hornets are simply large wasps. That difference matters more than it seems — bees are pollinators worth protecting, while wasps and hornets are predators that can […]

If you’re finding shield-shaped brown bugs on your windows, walls, and ceilings as the weather cools, you’re seeing the brown marmorated stink bug doing exactly what it does every fall in Bellingham: looking for a warm, dry place to spend the winter. As nighttime temperatures drop, these bugs move off plants and gravitate to the […]

Birds nest under solar panels because the gap between the panels and your roof is a warm, dry, sheltered, predator-safe cavity — basically a custom-built cave in a climate that’s wet much of the year. In Washington, pigeons are the usual culprits, and once they move in they bring droppings, nesting debris, chewed wiring, blocked […]

Cockroaches get into Bellingham homes and apartments mainly by hitchhiking in on bags, boxes, groceries, and used items, and by slipping through gaps around pipes, drains, doors, and shared walls. They are drawn in by three things — food, water, and warmth — and once a few get established, they breed quickly and hide well. […]

In Bellingham, wasp queens emerge from winter hiding in April and May, and that’s when new nests begin — usually no bigger than a golf ball at first, holding just the founding queen. Colonies grow steadily through summer and reach their largest, most defensive size in August and September. That timeline is exactly why spring […]

The most effective mosquito control in the Bellingham area comes down to one thing above all others: eliminating the standing water where mosquitoes breed. Pair that with professional treatment of the shady, sheltered spots where adults rest, plus a little personal protection, and you’ll actually notice a difference. The popular gadgets — citronella candles, bug […]