Pest control

Pest work at Stewards is about the house and the first few feet around it. Older Birmingham houses, slab-on-grade rooms in Troy, garages on wooded Rochester Hills lots, and outbuildings in Oakland Township do not share one pest list. The quote should say what you are seeing and where.

Ants

Pavement ants are the trails along a Troy sidewalk and the sudden line across a kitchen floor in spring. Carpenter ants turn up more often in older houses and around trees with soft wood. Telling them apart matters, and it starts with what the ant looks like and where it is traveling, not with a product named on a website. If you can say whether the ants are in the soil by the slab or coming out of a damp window frame, that is enough to start.

Wasps and mosquitoes

Yellowjackets and paper wasps become hard to ignore in late summer. Nests show up in beds, in grills, under railings, and in wall voids. Mosquitoes gather in shaded, still corners and after wet stretches. On larger lots they also track low ground and ornamental water. Say where people actually get bitten or stung. A whole-yard guess is less useful than the side of the house that stays damp.

The fall invaders

This region has a signature group of insects that move onto buildings when nights cool. Boxelder bugs collect where boxelder and maple are close to a sunny wall. Brown marmorated stink bugs, multicolored Asian lady beetles, and cluster flies do the same on south and west faces. They are mostly a nuisance inside, and they are a reason screens, soffits, and the sun exposure of the house belong in the quote. Stewards does not publish a sealing specification. Describing the gaps you can see is still useful.

Mice, and a note on termites

Mice start looking at garages and kitchens as the weather drops, especially where woods, fields, or a cluttered garage give them cover. Oakland Township outbuildings and the wooded rear lines in Rochester Hills and Bloomfield Hills make this an ordinary fall topic. A Troy garage against a foundation planting can do the same thing on a smaller scale.

Subterranean termites occur in Michigan. They are less often the first request in these suburbs than ants and the seasonal invaders. If you have seen mud tubes or swarmers, say so and describe where. This page will not turn that description into a treatment recipe.

Ticks and the edge of the yard

Ticks are part of the conversation on wooded edges in Rochester Hills, Oakland Township, and parts of Northville and Bloomfield Hills. Finding a tick on clothing or on a pet is a reason to mention the brush line. Questions about illness belong with a clinician. Stewards does not diagnose anyone.

What this visit is not

Raccoons, skunks, bats, and other wildlife are outside the usual scope. So is a carpentry project. If children, pets, or a food garden use the area, say so the visit can be planned around how the property is used. That request is not a claim that any material is risk-free, and it is not a promise that the pest will never return.

Wasps nesting in a shrub, or ants trailing from a honeydew-covered linden, sometimes start as a plant health care question. Grubs tearing up turf are a lawn program question when the damage is in the grass rather than in the kitchen. Both can be on the same quote. Start with the Troy page if you want the local context, or go straight to the quote form.