It’s never pretty when you need pest control. Richard Stearns of Miche Pest Control knows this and always offers to help Nestor sort out the science and safe modern means of never having ants and spiders (or worse) and realizing that the word “termites” means you need to act right away. And don’t get us started on the mosquitoes…
Nestor Aparicio discusses pest control with Richard Stearns from Miche Pest Control. Richard explains his 20-year experience in pest control, detailing the identification and treatment of different types of ants and termites in Nestor’s home. He highlights the importance of preventative pest control to avoid infestations. Richard describes the use of targeted, environmentally friendly products like Centricon for termite control. He also notes the impact of weather on pest activity, emphasizing the need for regular inspections. Nestor shares his personal experiences with pests and praises Richard’s expertise and educational approach.
SUMMARY KEYWORDS
Pest control, ants, termites, Richard Stearns, Miche Pest Control, preventative pest control, odorous house ants, carpenter ants, termite swarmers, wood-destroying insects, environmental safety, quarterly pest control, spider control, commercial pest control, Maryland crab cake tour.
SPEAKERS
Nestor Aparicio, Richard Stearns
Nestor Aparicio 00:00
Welcome home. We are W, N, S, T, am 1570 task Baltimore. We are Baltimore, positive. We’re positively out here. Beautiful Reisterstown. My first time ever here. We’re readers, crab house. I gave my crab cake away. Izzy’s eat the crab cakes. Back there, I’m going to be getting a crab cake two segments from now. Happy Eddie from curio wellness and happy Eddie products and cannabis space and all sorts stuff. We’re gonna talk about all of that with him, as well as the Real Housewives of Potomac. But this guy here has been a friend of mine over a couple years, helping me out around my house. Is in the woods, and your pest control is not something you know, come the restaurant talk about but he came to my place a couple weeks ago, and I had these little flying things. And it’s a time of the year where it’s really weird spring, right? Richard Stearns is here. He is with mache pest control, and we got to know each other. He’s been in my home and ants, summer, spring, the lightning bugs. The last three days, it’s been incredibly glowy because of the 100 degrees in the humidity. I’m just blown away by how many creatures can live, how many little insects, ticks we hear about, you know, the Lyme disease and all of these things that happen. But it’s just, it says, pest control. I love God’s creatures. You know this, you know I love my raccoons. I love my squirrels. We love the deer. We love the rabbits. We love we love the animals. But there is something about like how pesky one little ant colony can be, or one little spider issue you might have. And I had a spider this big in the place last year, my wife escorted him out, grabbed him by a leash, I think she walked him out of the house and but then you came, and I had these little Midge looking things, and I’m like, Alright, gotta call rich. Get the mache pest control people out. You came out, and you gave me the worst word that week you can give. It was used to be a hockey term they would call the five and six year old kids were called termites, termite hockey, and I remember, so it was a pest control company 30 years ago to scare the hell out of you, right? Termites, and they’d have the house imploding right from the wood, right? Yeah, you didn’t scare me that much. But, and you don’t really scare me. You’re the reason I’m even inviting you on the show is you’re like this crazy educational you know more about bugs and getting rid of them, you’re really like a scientist. So I said you got to come on the show, and we’re going to not brag about this, but certainly just talk about the risk and talk about what a guy like you does, because nobody wants to talk about this. And it’s not rats and alleys. It’s usually just literally ants coming in your place, or something manifesting itself in your root, in your roof, or in my case, my side wall. I had a queen ant, whatever the hell that is. I had 10,000 ants coming into my kitchen.
Richard Stearns 02:49
We had three different types of ants in your house. So see All
Nestor Aparicio 02:51
right, so this is where the edge, this is where I’m gonna let it. I’ve given you a little runway here. So everybody what you do, and where you come from and all that, because I just find you to be a fascinating cat, because whenever you’re at my place, you’re teaching me stuff.
Richard Stearns 03:04
I’m Richard Stearns. Obviously been in pest control for going on almost 20 years now, just January will be my 20th year. I used to be deathly scared of spiders. True story. I used to jump up on the snake. I love snakes. Oh, okay, yeah, inside. So spiders inside freaked me out, like my whole life. My friends used to call it cluster arachnophobia.
Nestor Aparicio 03:27
I just get a cup, and I just not a smuisher anymore.
Richard Stearns 03:33
Mice I was fine with I hated spiders. And you know, outside, I’m fine with
Nestor Aparicio 03:38
them. I hate flies. I hate I hate mosquitoes.
Richard Stearns 03:42
Mosquitoes are, yeah, they’re rough, you know, but they’re here for a reason, just like all God’s creatures are here for a reason. And pest control, like you said, You love the bunnies and all that, a lot of pest control now, in this day and age, targets just the pests. So it’s a lot of it’s safe for other animals and things like that. So, but with you, you had three types of ants, like we said, you said you had a little pesky, pesky ants in your kitchen,
Nestor Aparicio 04:08
regular ants, as I call them, the marching kind, the kind that Dave Matthews wrote about. So
Richard Stearns 04:12
yeah, so the ones in your kitchen were odorous house ants, so they’re a little more complicated than your regular pavement ants. And you had pavement ants upstairs, the ones by your vent that we took care of last year, the ones in your kitchen, are odorous house ants. So when you squeeze them, smish them, they smell like rotten coconuts. Never smelled a rotten coconut, but that’s what they always say. They smell like. I didn’t smush any up, but keep going. So those are a little harder to take care of, because they have multiple queens. Unlike your carpenter ants, which is a third ant that you had, which has like usually one that’s the big black, yes, the big black ones that dig into the wood, but the ones in your kitchen you want to use bait for, because they have multiple Queens. And you one colony can become 15 colonies.
Nestor Aparicio 04:57
They come in, they go in the little house, and then they go back out, all. Straight line, just like Dave Matthews wrote. And sometimes they get smushed, and sometimes they come back in a week. Yeah, it’s crazy, yeah.
Richard Stearns 05:06
So we got rid of them for a while, right? You haven’t eradicated you’ve
Nestor Aparicio 05:10
that’s why you’re here for misshapen you. I don’t have a problem anymore because he solves my problems. But when I call you to solve these problems, you do educate me on all of this and some of it, and you educated me the last time you tried spanking me, but then you realized we’re pretty clean people, yeah, but it is unbelievable. I said to my wife, I was having you on today, and I vacuumed the kitchen floor, and I found all sorts of like, even like our cat, yeah, she eats, and there’ll be an ant, a spider, a fly, whatever comes in the house, they seek food, and they go after it’s it’s wild to me to see how nature works in that way, how aggressive and non stop and never ending nature is. When you live in the
Richard Stearns 05:55
woods, you won’t see any ants, and then all of a sudden, you’ll see a million of them, because they found that crumb on your force
Nestor Aparicio 06:01
Rich, I gotta tell you, by the way, Rich is from mache pest control. Tell me how to find you and all that. If, if, if you need an, if you need an expert that’s gonna come out and take care of whatever that problem is that you’re like your wife’s yelling at you. You’re afraid of spiders. In my case, I’m the ones afraid of spiders my house. But like, you come out. And literally, there’s a science involved in this that you’re going to be successful. And that’s the part that I didn’t know. Because when I moved in and I saw things and bugs and realized there’s a basement and realized it hadn’t been tended to, I thought this is going to be for ever a problem. No, no, no. I mean, you really, in this day and age, this is a solvable problem. You don’t need ants in your kitchen,
Richard Stearns 06:44
right? You don’t need them. You don’t want them, and you want to protect your house. And you know, when you hire a pest control company, when you don’t have bugs, it’s better, because then you won’t get bugs in your house because they do a cut. We do a comprehensive
Nestor Aparicio 06:56
we only call you when we it’s like going to pizza. You only go when I’m hurt, yeah, but people should call you if they don’t have a problem, then they’ll never have
Richard Stearns 07:04
a problem. Yeah, and we’ll talk about that with termites too. But pest control, you should always have a preventative pest control. That way you never get the pest it’s when you stop having that preventative pest control, all of a sudden you start getting the ants coming in and all that. So which we’re gonna be, you know, we do in your house? Well,
Nestor Aparicio 07:19
the termite thing is, you, the next thing for me, you came out a couple weeks ago, and I was like, I have cancer. You know what I mean? Like, I was like, oh, and you’re like, dude, dude, dude. We there. Your house isn’t falling apart. They haven’t eaten it that we you know, I’m not down, like those old TV commercials that scare the hell out of you and show you like all the root would rot it out. You’re like, that happens when I come to you and tell you you have termites and you don’t do anything about it, right? So you tried it. You taught me.
Richard Stearns 07:49
I was hoping they were flying ants and but they turned out to be flying termites.
Nestor Aparicio 07:52
Yeah. I mean, you identified that pretty quickly. Yeah. You’re a doctor.
Richard Stearns 07:56
You had a, you know, wood destroying insects. So answer one thing, there’s different ways. You had two different kinds. We got rid of those, and we’re doing a preventative to keep them from coming back in now. But then, with your carpenter ants, they are wood destroying, so they eat the wood. Well, carpenter ants don’t actually eat the wood. They tunnel through the wood to make their tunnels, and then termites eat the wood. Both of them are destructive, and both of them aren’t covered under your homeowners insurance.
Nestor Aparicio 08:21
How long would it like? It’s give me the worst termite thing you’ve ever seen. We’re like, it’s destroyed how you’ve seen, I’ve
Richard Stearns 08:27
seen that in Baltimore City because I come from a commercial pest control background. So Baltimore City, we’ve done, you know, like, 10 story buildings, five story buildings, where the termites intended to, yeah, termites are on the fifth floor. I mean, they’re just about, you know, the floors are falling out because they nobody’s touched
Nestor Aparicio 08:43
them for they just a year way up and nobody knew it. You can’t see it. It’s in the wall. Scary. Yeah,
Richard Stearns 08:48
very slow. The swarmers usually come from a colony that is over five years old. So you’ve had a colony near your house, it’s at least five years old that’s found your house. Now, I don’t see any damage. So basically, they’re probably just found it and they released the swarmers inside cancer early detection. And
Nestor Aparicio 09:06
that’s another thing about how the whole thing on colonoscopy this week. I’m just saying I did, but go ahead, it’s Men’s Health Month. You 45 I am 50.
Richard Stearns 09:15
Oh yes, I have, yeah, my wife makes sure I get all that done.
Nestor Aparicio 09:19
GPMC, new sponsor, I love you. You’re coming. But
Richard Stearns 09:23
you know, with when you have pest control on a preventative pest control on a quarterly basis, we look for termites while we’re there, so it also gives you a head up. Like you said, you find it early detection. So it’s always good to have pest control. But with termites, there’s an average of five to seven colonies per acre in this part of Maryland and United States, one happened to hit your house, and we’re gonna do a pest control to take care of them
Nestor Aparicio 09:49
for you, little bomb cyclone from a termite mache pest control. Now we use
Richard Stearns 09:53
a green pest control called centricon. It’s a very safe for the environment and. It doesn’t hurt other insects or animals. It targets the termites. Pretty much. It targets there. It’s a chitin inhibitor. So it keeps them from shedding their skin. Basically, a lot of bugs shed their exoskeleton and grow a new one. It keeps them from, oh, geez, scientist, so the product we use doesn’t infect the groundwater, and it doesn’t doesn’t doesn’t kill other creatures normally, so, but that’s what we’re gonna use to help with your termites. You keep my snakes alive, yeah, keep your snakes alive, right? I love snakes. Snakes. Get rid of the mice. You have more snakes, and you probably have more mice.
Nestor Aparicio 10:37
What are the other things that that are foundationally true about animals we don’t like. And one way, because, like, I saw a fox take out a squirrel a couple weeks ago, and, you know, the fox are always kind of, you know, hunting things or whatever. But when it comes to if you have spiders, you won’t have ants, right? Because the spiders, you know, I am, when I have a spider, they’re eating the end, like,
Richard Stearns 11:00
literally, well, there’s a Woods ant colonies have like 100,000 ants in them. But if you have a lot of spiders, it means you have a lot of bugs getting in your house. So you can always tell and put spiders are your natural pest control. They eat the bugs that are coming in, so a few spiders and a few bugs coming in, they take care of it for you. Then you don’t
Nestor Aparicio 11:16
see them. Well, this was, this is how dumb I was. I came out and first off, we had bushes in front of our place, so that really allowed a lot of bugs to kind of live. So we kind of got rid of that. But more than that, had light right over top of my door. And at nighttime, the light would attract whatever, the moths, and then the other things that eat them, like it’s just but the light itself, yeah, attracts and then it tracks the sliders, and then it attracts more creatures. And so the light itself that, you know, brought things to my door, but then bring moths in the house, and then bring over the door. Yeah, I think all of that this time of the year, it’s just, it’s buggy right now. It just is the air. I mean, we talked to the lightning bugs and all that time to have you lightning bugs. If you, if you have a bug problem, today’s day, you have it right, like, literally, because everything is just, was 50 degrees for two weeks,
Richard Stearns 12:12
it’s 100 degrees this week, very mild spring, which looks like it caused a lot of the bugs to be able to procreate faster. And we have tons, tons of lightning goes my dog is two and a half years old. She’s kind of a puppy, and last year we didn’t have a lot of lightning bugs. This year, they’re everywhere, and she’s going crazy like she’s
Nestor Aparicio 12:31
never seen them before. My cat has stood at the window, yeah, and just stares at them
Richard Stearns 12:35
all, yeah. And I live in the middle of nowhere, like you, and it’s our field going down to our pond and stuff is just it lights up at night. It’s crazy beautiful. It really
Nestor Aparicio 12:44
is awesome. It’s I would go out if it weren’t for the mosquitoes.
Richard Stearns 12:47
We have a mosquito program.
Nestor Aparicio 12:52
Talk about what you do, mache pest control. I called them two years ago. Richard Stearns is my guest. I’ve been trying to get him on for a while, and I didn’t want to do in the winter. I wanted to do it when it’s like was is when I really wanted to have you on we’ve tried to do this for a month or two. We’re readers grab ass. We’re on a Maryland crab cake tour. And the reason you’re really here today, and it’s so perfect to your point, is there are just more bugs than there have ever been the last two weeks, because it went from 50 to 100 degrees. So if you’re gonna have a problem, and you’re having a problem, I want them to call you because you’re a freaking scientist about all this. What do you see the most? Do people call you the most? About roaches, ants, mosquitoes?
Richard Stearns 13:30
It all, all depends on the time of year, right now, right now? Termites? Yeah, termites, right now is a big call for us in the commercial industry. It’s roaches and mice, you know, in the multi family housing and then, you know, when you move into the later summer, it’s more the mice start getting more active. There’s more different types of occasional invaders, like your stink bugs and your box elder beetles, things like that, that over winter on the side of your house are emerging cicadas, things like that.
Nestor Aparicio 14:01
Pretty much, lady bugs. You know, if you have a ladybug invasion, yeah, you like that? They’re, they’re
Richard Stearns 14:06
pretty Yeah, they do get into around your windows so, but all the
Nestor Aparicio 14:08
rest of them, I don’t want, you don’t want them like a hold on my finger, blow on the wing. Everything else, get the hell out, right?
Richard Stearns 14:17
But I mean, your main interior things are ants and roaches, spiders, people call us about and then your termites. And termites around this time of year is when they’re when they release those flying ones. So ants and termites release flying versions of themselves to go increase the their colonies. They fly away and create new colonies because they’re all it’s
Nestor Aparicio 14:37
kind of like the monkeys in the Wizard of Oz. Yeah. I
Richard Stearns 14:43
But yeah, we do. We offer a quarterly program where we come out every three months, we d web your house of the spider webs around the lights, because the lights attract them all the spider webs build the spider web I mean, spiders build the webs, and then you got webs all over your house. So we. Do. I’m familiar with this. I know Rich. We do de webbing, and then we we prick, set up a barrier around your house to help keep the ants from getting in once we get rid of the ones you have already.
Nestor Aparicio 15:10
If I go to my text threads with you, the first time I saw ants a couple of months ago, it’s pretty hilarious. I’m like, they’re back. They’re taking over.
Richard Stearns 15:18
I’m like, Oh no, luckily I live near you. Why did a
Nestor Aparicio 15:21
sense of humor better now? Because I know it’s not forever, yeah, and as long as I don’t have food out, I’m good. And a lot of times it is my fault, because I left you know
Richard Stearns 15:29
they’re going at something, even I get ants and I don’t leave food out. Listen,
Nestor Aparicio 15:33
I’m gonna be honest with you, is, yeah, happy Eddie’s here. Eddie, you got gummies? Do you do gummies? So the gummies, I had ants. I’m not lying. I had ants get into my gummies because they got sugar. I’m not kidding you. Yeah, they didn’t eat the gum because it’s sugar free. But in the damn bag, curio happy, adding the whole thing, I had ants coming after mustache. I mean, come on. So this is why we can’t have
Richard Stearns 16:01
this rich. Yep. You gotta keep them out of your house. That’s why you got us in there. Give the
Nestor Aparicio 16:05
number, tell everybody how to find you. If you find rich, you find her friends at mache pest control, yeah, this reason I brought you on that’ll do a lot of segments on pest control, certainly not at restaurants and my friends. But it’s an afternoon, and it could not be a better time to have you want just eat to talk about how beautiful the lightning bugs are. Oh yeah, it’s awesome. So they call you, you come out, what you just exactly what you did for me, and I get anything special, you just came out to the house. So talk to me, and I’m like, This guy knows a lot about bugs, man, you know, like, it’s crazy.
Richard Stearns 16:34
Yeah, we do a quarterly pest control. It protects your house. Well, we do Northern Virginia, all of DC, all of Baltimore, all of Maryland. And we actually have someone that does parts or all Delaware, Pennsylvania, like Philadelphia, and then up to New Jersey. So
Nestor Aparicio 16:53
amazing comes out to the house half an hour, 3040 minutes, leaves. I don’t smell it. That’s another thing. When I was a kid, we had not mache pest control. We have one of those big companies over in Dundalk cockroaches in my house when I was a kid in Dundalk. And they would come out. Whenever they would come out, it would smell like cheese, you know? I mean, it would have that, it would have that yuck smell, you know what? I mean, it would smell like pesticide. I don’t want to say modern pesticides aren’t
Richard Stearns 17:20
as they’re very targeted now. And like,
Nestor Aparicio 17:23
I’m worried about my cat when I met you, I’m like, this looks like a guy might eat my cat. I don’t know so. And then my cat liked him, but, um, but I’m thinking, this is safe for my kitty cat. That’s the thing. If you don’t spring in here, man, three outside, my cats in here, and you’re like, No, no, no, this is this. We’re gonna be okay. She’s not gonna get sand
Richard Stearns 17:40
with the ants, we used a gel. Oh, yeah. You know how much I love my can’t do products that they have now. Unlike back in the 70s, with DDT and all that, that’s still active in some apartments, no, no, no, but it’s it’s very low toxicity and very targeted to the specific bugs, like the the term termite product we use called dovaflumeron, pretty much only affects chitin inhibit we don’t produce chitin, so it doesn’t affect us really at all. So it’s that kind of thing. They very try to target it to each individual.
Nestor Aparicio 18:12
Well, I trust you that you know, that I know. Is it okay, that I trust you? Yeah, he’s trustworthy. I’ll tell you that right now. Richard Stearns is my friend. He’s with mache, M, I, C, H, E, mache pest control. You can find them online. You can reach to me, you can hit the segment, you can but if you’re having this problem, it’s not something we brag it’s kind of like the colonoscopy. We don’t talk about it every day, but we’re gonna talk about it right now, because it is important and and it’s affected me, and I have termites, and I’m not proud of it. Get rid of damn things.
Richard Stearns 18:39
I’ll take care of it for you, definitely. All right. And you can also call our 800 number, which is 888-695-7722, or machepascontroll.com
Nestor Aparicio 18:49
or find me, and I’ll send you out. You throw an email his way.
Richard Stearns 18:53
Have advertising on YouTube well, and it also
Nestor Aparicio 18:55
happens quickly, you know, I mean, like, I mean you call on Monday, and when you’re having this problem. It feels like, when they were into my gummies, it was a problem. I’m like, I gotta text rich now, because we’ll have this but, oh man. All right, we’re out here at readers, I’ve had some crab cakes. Izzy has left the building. Luke and Alan were here doing baseball. It’s all star week. I have the Back to the Future scratch offs from the Maryland lottery. We’re gifting these out out here. Readers, matter of fact, I’m gonna take a break. I’m gonna give it every it everybody I see here of Maryland, because I gotta get some winners. We gotta get lucky around here, because we’re up here in Reisterstown, reaching my friends at mache pest control. The next segment is gonna be happy. Eddie SFO, he is a powerful curio wellness, foreign daughter now down in Pikesville, over at simmonium, up in Elkton as well. He is also his wife is one of the stars of the Real Housewives of the Potomac. So we’re going to talk reality TV. We’re going to talk about the cannabis industry. We’re going to talk about the law, because he’s a lawyer as well, but he’s also Ravens fans. I know we’re going to make some football into this as well. Thanks you rich. Appreciate you, man. Thanks for helping me, man, anytime you. Most people don’t like their Bug Guy, but I like you enough to invite you on the show. So give Rich a call if you’re having that problem, and if you have lightning bugs outside, don’t call rich. Just go out and enjoy them. Enjoy them. They’re not here for it’s like gold watermelon. It’s only here for a little while, like eggnog. I am Nestor. We’re out here. Readers, crab ass. We’re doing the Maryland crab cake tour. It is presented by curio wellness as well as our friends at Liberty. Pure solutions. We are back for more in Reisterstown, Baltimore County, USA. Stay with us. It’s the Maryland crab cake tour. You.
