Why You Need Professional Beetle Pest Control in Illinois

What Carpet Beetles Look Like

These dark brown beetles in Illinois are small and quite annoying when they gather in large numbers. If you’re not sure if you’re dealing with a carpet beetle, check out this visual description. 

• Tan or Black Bands: If you peer closely, they can have tan or black bands around their body. 
• Very Small: Carpet beetles are rarely bigger than one-fourth of an inch, sometimes even smaller. 
• Grubs: Their larvae tend to be very tiny and a bright yellow-orange color. As they get bigger, their color darkens with heavy black stripes and more fuzz. 

Noticed any black beetles in Illinois? There are also black carpet beetles, which tend to be slightly larger than the brown ones, but behave similarly. 

Damage Caused by Carpet Beetles

Carpet beetles are not known to bite or sting humans. However, they tend to shed little hairs that can irritate your skin, leaving itchy rashes or bumps especially for those with allergies. 

They’re infamous for chewing through clothes and furniture, particularly natural materials like cotton or wool. Even if you have a lot of synthetic fibers in your home, that still won’t be enough to protect you from an infestation. Humans naturally shed dead skin, oil, and dirt, and these tiny particles can stick on the carpet or clothes. Since these beetles are so tiny, even a little bit of human residue can become a filling meal. 

Signs of a Carpet Beetle Infestation

You’ll know you’re dealing with a carpet beetle infestation if you see the following signs:

• Multiple beetles roaming throughout the house, especially in cloth-heavy areas.
• Tiny holes in your clothing, towels, rags, or cloth-based furniture.
• Fecal pellets (which are so small and pale you could confuse them for salt).
• Thinned down areas on your carpet or rug that weren’t there before.

Tips for Getting Rid of Carpet Beetles

Getting rid of carpet beetles means you need to starve them of their primary food source as much as possible. Regular vacuuming is one of the best ways to keep them at bay since you’re removing all the little bits of dead skin, lint, and hair they like to feed on. 

If you have a traditional woolen carpet, you’ll need to go a step further and do steam cleaning. However, stubborn infestations should always be handled with professional carpet beetle pest control services.

Japanese beetles are an invasive species. Originally from Japan, they arrived on the East Coast of the United States in the early 1900s and have slowly spread westward. 

Although they don’t usually enter homes in large numbers, they’re a danger to yard plants and gardens.

What Japanese Beetles Look Like

You can recognize Japanese beetles by these features:

• Metallic Coloring: Their heads are a shiny metallic green, and their wing covers are copper-brown.
• Length: Each is about 1/3 to 1/2 an inch long.
• White Hairs: The sides of their bodies have two tufts of white hair near the front and five more near the back.
• Grubs: Their young are from 1/8 of an inch to one inch, shaped like the letter “C,” and have a tan head, white or cream bodies, and visible legs.

Damage Caused by Japanese Beetles

An infestation of Japanese beetles can do major damage to your garden, decorative plants, and/or crops, making beetle pest control a necessity to protect your investment. They eat about 300 different types of plants, including:

• Fruit trees, such as plum, cherry, and apple
• Linden trees
• Rose bushes
• Crabapple trees
• Crape myrtle trees
• Birch trees

Every year, Japanese beetles destroy crops in the Eastern and Midwestern United States. They ‘skeletonize’ leaves, which means they eat all the tissue in a leaf except the veins and leave only a skeleton behind. They also bite into fruits and flower buds.

Japanese beetle grubs eat the roots of grasses, killing them gradually and loosening soil. As a result, you might notice your grass turning off-color. As you water it, it may improve slightly for a time or not improve at all. 

Separate patches may die, and the soil may feel like a sponge when you walk on it. Finally, you can pull up loose turf by hand to see grubs crawling underneath.

Long-Term Effects on Plants

If you have healthy older trees, they’ll likely survive an attack by Japanese beetles. Sadly, younger trees or other plants that were struggling to begin with are more susceptible to permanent damage.

A flowering plant like a rose bush won’t be completely killed by Japanese beetles, but they often destroy their flower buds.

If you have a garden or an orchard, your herbs, vegetables, and fruits can survive a small amount of damage. If the infestation continues too long, your plants may not be able to grow or produce as much food as you would like or expect.

What Are the Signs of a Japanese Beetle Infestation

If you have Japanese beetles on your property, you’ll see these signs:

• Leaves that have been reduced to skeletons while still on the plant.
• The presence of a single Japanese beetle, which often means there are others, because they send out a signal to attract other beetles while feeding.
• Japanese beetle grubs burrowing in your soil.
• Beetles on the ground under trees and bushes.
• Brown patches of grass and/or loose turf.

Tips for Getting Rid of Japanese Beetles

If you have rows of plants, you can protect them with row covers. These are often needed for about two months during the summer, starting in May or June, when Japanese beetles feed on plants. Be sure to let pollinators in, though, if you need them.

If they get through your row covers, you can pull the beetles off your plants by hand, dropping each one into a bucket of water and dishwasher detergent. You can also shake them off onto a cloth on the ground, then empty the cloth into the bucket.

Asian lady beetles look almost the same as ladybugs, leading many to wonder why they would need beetle pest control to deal with them. As it stands, they’re actually a completely different species from Asia. 

They also act differently, particularly by being a nuisance and a pest during the winter.