The most common household pests in the UK are mice and rats, ants, wasps, flies, spiders, fleas, clothes moths, carpet beetles and silverfish, with bed bugs and cockroaches turning up less often. Which of them you meet depends on the time of year. Ants and wasps belong to the summer, while autumn and winter bring mice, rats and the cluster flies that settle in lofts to sit out the cold.
Working out which one you have is the useful first step, because the right response is different for each. Some need a professional treatment, some need nothing more than a clear out of the food cupboard, and a few of the creatures people take for pests are protected by law or best left alone. Below is how to recognise each one, where it turns up and what it means when it does.
Mice and rats
On the farmland edge, calls about mice and rats climb from autumn, when harvest and ploughing strip food and cover from the fields and rodents move towards buildings. Mice usually give themselves away with scratching in the walls or ceiling at night and droppings in cupboards or behind the cooker. Rats are often noticed outside first. Two of our customers found theirs living under the decking beside a bird feeder.
The droppings tell you which you have. Tower Hamlets Council's guide to rats and mice compares a mouse dropping to a grain of rice and a rat dropping to a baked bean. The animals differ in the same proportion, a mouse body 5 to 7cm long with a tail longer than its body, a rat 13 to 15cm with a shorter tail and small ears. Across Romney Marsh the dykes and drains give rats a ready made route to gardens and outbuildings, so homes beside a watercourse are the ones to check first. Our guide to the signs of a rat infestation goes into more detail, and our rodent control page explains how we deal with both.
Ants and wasps in the summer months
Ants nest outside, in soil, under paving and in walls, and once a worker finds food indoors it leaves a scent trail that brings more of the colony after it. On the newer estates around Ashford, block paving laid on sand and fresh mulch heaped against the walls make close to ideal nesting ground. As for winged ants, the Royal Society of Biology's flying ant survey found they emerge on warm, calm days between the start of June and the start of September, at different times in different gardens, rather than on one flying ant day. Why ants are coming into your house covers what draws them in, and our ant control page explains how a treatment reaches the nest.
Wasps nest in surprisingly small spaces. Customers' reviews of our work mention one nest inside a house air brick and another high in a soffit gap. Our wasp control page covers the treatment, and before anyone goes near a nest it is worth checking it is wasps at all, because bees can be mistaken for them.
Flies, and the cluster flies of autumn
House flies and fruit flies are drawn to food waste, moisture and anything decaying, and lay their eggs on it, so finding the source is how you stop them. Cluster flies behave quite differently. English Heritage's fact sheet on cluster flies explains that their larvae develop inside earthworms in grassland, and the adults look for somewhere to spend the winter in autumn. They gather on warm, south facing walls, crawl in around windows and eaves, and settle in lofts in clusters that can number more than a thousand. Turning the heating on can wake them, which is when they appear at upstairs windows.
Homes beside fields and paddocks on the farmland edge around Canterbury and Ashford see the most. Our post on cluster flies in the loft explains what can be done about them, and the fly control page covers the other species.
Spiders
Calls about spiders start in the first week of September, when the spiders wandering across living room floors are mostly males looking for a mate. Most are harmless. The one people ask about is the noble false widow. The Natural History Museum says only around 12 of the more than 650 UK spider species are recorded as having bitten people, and that a false widow bite usually causes pain at the site which seldom lasts more than a day and is often no worse than a wasp sting.
False widows favour warm, south facing walls and the conservatories, porches and garages attached to them, which makes the coast from Folkestone to Dover good territory for them. Our guide to dealing with spiders explains when a spider problem is worth a visit, and our spider control page covers what we do.
Fleas
Fleas usually arrive on a cat or a dog, but they can also be waiting in a property when you move in. Hastings Borough Council's flea advice notes that flea pupae can lie dormant for up to nine months in a property before it is occupied again. As one customer put it in their review, "We had just moved in and woke up to find a flea infestation."
The NHS says flea bites are usually found in groups below the knees. If you have pets, treating every one of them with a product from the vet comes first. Can fleas live in carpets explains where the rest of the population hides, and our flea control page describes the treatment.
Clothes moths and carpet beetles
Holes in a wool jumper or bare patches along the edge of a rug come from one of two insects, and in both cases it is the larvae that do the eating. The Natural History Museum's guide to clothes moths names the common clothes moth and the case bearing clothes moth as the two found most often in UK homes, and explains that the larvae feed on keratin, the protein in wool, silk, fur and feathers, and prefer dark places and fabric that has not been cleaned.
Carpet beetle larvae feed on the same materials. The museum's carpet beetle guide says the larvae of the varied carpet beetle are known as woolly bears because of their hairy bodies, and that the adults are often found on windowsills, apparently trying to get outside. Its advice is regular vacuuming, including behind skirting boards and between floorboards, storing woollens in sealed bags, and freezing affected items at minus 18°C for a day or two. Our guide to the signs of moths and our moth control page cover the moth side in more depth.
Silverfish
Silverfish are slender, silvery, wingless insects with three long bristles at the tail. English Heritage's fact sheet on silverfish says the common species is usually found in damp bathrooms, kitchens and cellars, and grazes on paper, books, photographs and wallpaper paste. A larger relative, the grey silverfish, has only recently been found in the UK and can breed at lower humidity, so it is not confined to damp rooms. The Royal Entomological Society says silverfish are no risk to people. If you are seeing them in the bathroom, silverfish in bathrooms looks at the damp that usually lies behind them.
Beetles and moths in the food cupboard
Small brown beetles around a kitchen cupboard, or moths fluttering out of a packet of cereal, usually point to stored food rather than to the house. The Natural History Museum's guide to the biscuit beetle describes a reddish brown beetle 2 to 4mm long that feeds on bread, flour and even dried spices. It says rarely used dried foods such as flour or spices are often the source, and that removing the old food should end the infestation. The Indian meal moth, whose larvae spin webbing over stored food, is dealt with the same way. Throw out the infested packets, clean the cupboard and keep dry goods in sealed containers. You do not need a pest controller for that.
Bed bugs and cockroaches
Neither is as common in homes as the pests above, but both need a proper plan. Bed bugs are small, flat and oval, about 4 to 5mm long, and they travel in luggage, clothing and second hand furniture. The NHS says it is very difficult to get rid of them yourself because they can be hard to find, and that home measures are unlikely to clear them completely. How to tell if you have bed bugs goes through the signs, and our bed bug page explains how we treat them.
If you have seen a cockroach, the signs of cockroaches shows what else to look for before deciding what to do, and our cockroach control page covers the treatment.
Things that look like pests but are not
Not everything that buzzes or flutters around a house needs a pest controller, and bees and bats are the two most worth checking for before anything is treated.
The British Beekeepers Association says there are around 250 species of bee in the UK and only one of them is the honey bee, and its volunteers collect honey bee swarms so they can be rehomed. One customer called us about what they thought was a wasps' nest. In their words, John "found they were honey bees so put me in touch with his beekeeper friend who was happy to remove the bees & rehome them."
Bumblebees are best left alone. The Bumblebee Conservation Trust recommends leaving a nest where it is, and says nests usually last between two and six months, the bees are generally calm, and they do not damage buildings.
Bats in a loft are a legal matter rather than a pest problem. All bat species and their roosts are fully protected by law, and disturbing them is an offence. Our guide to protecting your loft from pests explains why that check comes before any work in a roof space.
How to work out what you have
You can identify most household pests yourself with a little care.
- Note where and when you see it. Ants at the back door in July and flies at a landing window in November are telling you different things.
- Look at the droppings and the damage. Rice sized droppings mean mice and baked bean sized droppings mean rats. Small holes in wool point to moths or carpet beetles, and grazed patches on paper point to silverfish.
- Catch one if you safely can. A clear jar or a strip of sticky tape keeps an insect intact, and a photo beside a coin shows its size.
- Ask for a second opinion. The Natural History Museum offers identification help for insects and other wildlife.
If it does need a visit, the first pest control inspection starts with confirming exactly what the pest is, because the treatment depends on it.
Not sure what you have found?
At Cinque Ports Pest Control we are a family run business based in Dymchurch, with more than twenty-five years in the trade behind us. We deal with the common pests on this page in homes, rented properties and businesses across Romney Marsh, Hythe, Folkestone, Ashford and Rye. If you have found something and want to know what it is, get in touch and tell us what you are seeing.
Cinque Ports Pest Control Ltd is a family run business based in Dymchurch, Romney Marsh. We are BPCA members, Kent County Council Trading Standards approved, TrustMark registered, SafeContractor approved and CRRU supporters.
