Earwigs, millipedes, and clover mites are three of the odd little invaders Bellingham homeowners find creeping around baseboards, windowsills, and damp corners. The good news: all three are essentially harmless nuisance pests. They don’t damage your home’s structure, they don’t bite or sting in any meaningful way, and they aren’t dangerous to your family. What […]

In the Pacific Northwest, flea season runs hardest from late spring through fall, peaking in the warm, humid stretch of late summer and early fall — often August through October. But here’s what most Bellingham pet owners miss: fleas don’t truly disappear in winter. Our mild winters and heated homes keep them breeding indoors year-round, […]

Summer is peak season for commercial pest pressure in Whatcom County, and the stakes for a business are higher than mere nuisance. A single pest sighting can mean a failed inspection, a bad review, or a health-code violation. Warm weather drives ants, flies, wasps, rodents, stored-product pests, and birds toward commercial buildings all at once. […]

When pests show up in a Bellingham apartment or rental this spring, the fastest fix is to report it in writing immediately, treat the whole building instead of a single unit, and coordinate between tenant and landlord rather than pointing fingers. Spring is when ants, spiders, and rodents wake up across Whatcom County, and multi-unit […]

Removing a wasp nest yourself is one of the riskier projects a Bellingham homeowner can take on. Wasps and hornets sting repeatedly, defend their nests in swarms, and can trigger dangerous allergic reactions — and most people can’t tell how big a nest really is until it’s too late. Store-bought sprays often make things worse […]

The best time to prevent spring pest invasions in Bellingham is before they start, ideally in late February and early March, before carpenter ants become active, ant colonies begin foraging, rodent populations peak, and queen wasps start building nests. This room-by-room checklist walks you through every category of spring pest prevention for Pacific Northwest homes, […]

Winter in Whatcom County isn’t a break from pest pressure — it’s a shift in which pests are active and where they concentrate. Between November and March, commercial properties face rodents seeking warmth, stored product pests thriving in dry goods, overwintering insects looking for harborage, and the ongoing need to document pest activity for compliance. […]

Most black spiders you’ll encounter in Washington State and Bellingham homes are completely harmless. The giant house spider — one of the most commonly seen large black-to-dark-brown spiders in the Pacific Northwest — is not medically significant. However, the western black widow is present in Washington, and a black spider with a globular abdomen in […]

Ants come inside in spring because warmer temperatures trigger colony expansion. Queen ants restart egg-laying, workers fan out to find food and moisture, and your home, with its warm walls, kitchen crumbs, and plumbing leaks, looks like a buffet. In the Pacific Northwest, this surge typically begins in late February and peaks between March and […]

Two of the most common ant complaints we hear from Bellingham homeowners sound like this: “I have big black ants that keep showing up,” or “I have tiny ants all over my kitchen counter.” They’re both frustrating, but they’re completely different problems that need completely different responses. “Sugar ant” is a casual catch-all Pacific Northwest […]