Why Are There More Scorpions Out This Year Than Normal?

Scorpions are pretty common in Las Vegas – it’s the desert, after all. This year, though, Las Vegas is seeing a huge increase in the number of bark scorpions that are scurrying around people’s neighborhoods and homes. These creepy crawlers don’t usually cause much a fuss, though, since they’re actually more scared of us than we are of them and only sting a person as a last resort, but their sheer numbers this year means that more people are having unfortunate encounters with them.

The reason there are so many more scorpions out this year than we’re used to seeing is that we had a very mild winter in Las Vegas this year. Bark scorpions try to ride out the cold winters in clusters to keep from freezing, but many of them generally succumb to the cold temperatures anyway. Because the winter was so mild this year, a lot more bark scorpions lived through it.

What Can I Do about Bark Scorpions?

There are some things we can do ourselves to reduce the likelihood of finding scorpions around the home. Putting glue boards around the home can trap scorpions that crawl over them. Scorpions can’t take the heat of the hot summer sun, so they like to find shelter during the day. That’s why people find them in wood piles, thick bushes, or under rocks; the fewer of these kind of hiding places on the property, the more likely the scorpions will want to hang out somewhere else.

Still, bark scorpions are small, and hard to see sometimes without the help of a UV lamp because of their pale color. They can squeeze their way into a home through an opening just 1/16th of an inch wide, so keeping out a scorpion that wants to take shelter in your home is difficult. There’s no substitute for quality pest extermination and prevention service when it comes to protecting your home from scorpions.

An exterminator service for controlling scorpions is two-fold. In addition to spraying a pesticide for the scorpions themselves, it’s also important to another round of pesticide to target the scorpions’ food supply (other bugs, such as crickets, roaches, beetles, etc.). With fewer bugs for them to feed on, any of the scorpions that escaped the pesticide will be more likely to go somewhere else to hunt and live.

If you need help in removing scorpions, call Preventive Pest Control. We provide fast and reliable Las Vegas scorpion control.