If prevention is the best cure, it pays to do what you can to avoid harmful creepy crawlies in the first place. Below are suggestions on how we can keep them away from our home - or at least reduce their desire to hang around - without needing to use
dangerous and expensive insecticides.
PREVENTING ATTACKS FROM CREEPY CRAWLIES BY KEEPING THEM AWAY IN THE FIRST PLACE...
spiders
There is no practical method to preventing spiders from coming around and having a look for an insect to eat, but there are a few things we can do to reduce their desire to stick around. Firstly, try to reduce the number of tasty insects that hang around your home. Keep outdoor lights turned off as often as possible to reduce the attraction of moths and other light-loving bugs. Using different coloured lights such as green or yellow can help a little bit, as bugs are more attracted to white light than any other colour. Keep your house clean and don't leave anything laying around for insects to eat, so they won't want to hang around. Less insects around for the spiders to eat means they will be more inclined to stay outdoors. You would also do well to regularly clean up places where spiders might hide, such as behind cupboards. In places where you are contending your territory with really nasty spiders like the Sydney Funnel Web, never leave clothing on the floor, and stuff your boots and enclosed shoes with newspaper or a sock when you aren't wearing them to stop these little 8-legged horrors from climbing inside.
Outside, clean up places where spiders are inclined to nest, such as junk piles. Regularly check places that spiders are likely to hide and remove every spiderweb you can find as soon as you find it. If they get tired of having to re-build their webs all the time they may decide that moving further away from you might be a better option. Be wary about having dense garden growth close to the house. Where possible, make the denser parts of your garden closer to your fences. This will encourage spiders to stay that little bit further away from the house.
Make friends with the harmless ones. As I said previously, most spiders are harmless. If you allow the harmless spiders to roam free in your garden, they will do a lot for you in regards to keeping the harmful spiders away. If you find your shed is over-run by redbacks, let the daddy-longlegs spiders move in with your blessing. They are completely harmless to humans and they find redbacks to be a good tasty little snack.
snakes
Snakes, like spiders, predominantly come around searching for food. Small birds and rodents - especially mice - are their favourite meals. If we can keep away the snake food, we are less likely to encounter snakes. Make any bird cages, averies, guinea-pig hutches, etc; mouse-proof. If mice can't get in to eat the pet feed, the snakes can't get in to eat the mice, guinea-pigs or birds. Where possible, raise the cages off the ground. Clean the cages regularly, as this will make them less likely to attract mice from trying to get into the cage in the first place.
Clean up junk piles and any other places that snakes might hide and nest. Keep lawns mowed and weeds down around the house. If possible, keep the denser areas of your garden around the boundaries of your property and as far from the house as possible. Snakes are relatively timid and aren't particularly keen on crossing open ground if they can find a more sheltered route.
ants
One of the great ironies of life is that if you want to protect your home from being invaded and eaten by termites, allow your property to be defended by ants. Ants and termites are natural enemies, and they both live underground. If you want to find and elliminate a termite nest, send ants to do the search and destroy mission. The hard part is that if we allow ants to defend our home from termite attacks, how do we stop the ants invading the inside of our home? There are not many ways that work effectively, but one thing that does work is worth a try - but it can be a bit of work to maintain and can take some experimentation.
Ants do not like walking over talcum powder (baby powder). If you place an unbroken line of talc on the ground, the ants will march for miles around it rather than attempt to walk over it. The problem is keeping that line from being washed or blown away, or being stepped on by bigger creatures that aren't worried about it. Otherwise, the next best thing is to keep the house clean and refuse to feed them. Keep all food containers sealed, keep the rubbish bin sealed and away from the house, feed pets away from the house and use feed bowls with a water moat to keep ants out of the bowl - or place the bowl in a tray of water.
mosquitos
This isn't any fail-safe method, but for some reason apparently mosquitos are not particularly keen on pelagonias. Growing a pelagonia plant by a window may encourage mosquitos to find another entrance into your home. Of course, there is no real way of stopping them completely from getting inside, as they will find that other entry point eventually, and once inside they will hunt you down.
Nothing you put on your skin will stop them biting you except chemical-laden commercial sprays and lotions. It is theorised that eating garlic will deter mosquitos from biting, but it never worked for me and who wants to spend every summer reaking of garlic all the time? Ultimately, if you are in a place where mosquitos are a problem, staying indoors or wearing well-covering clothing as dusk starts to set in and mosquitos start coming out, is the best protection from being bitten.
flies
Essentially harmless, relatively clean despite popular belief (humans are actually amoung the most disease and bacteria carrying creatures on the planet) but rather annoying regardless - and a great food source for other creatures that you want to keep away, such as spiders. Like ants and mosquitos, ultimately, if they want to come in, they will. Keeping rubbish bins sealed and away form the house, keeping the house as clean as possible, and keeping pet food away from the house will reduce their presence somewhat. Once inside, the best solution is a fly swatter. Flies tend to be attracted to sunny windows, and that is a good place to splat them as windows are easy to clean - just don't hit them too hard as you don't want to break the window. As tempting as it may be to own a venus fly trap, the plant is a boon and a bane rolled into one. Sure, they catch and devour flies, but they are what attract flies in the first place. If you want to grow a plant to deter flies, try mint. I don't know why, but just like mosquitos apparently prefer to avoid pelagonias, flies apparently tend to avoid fresh mint plants.
bees
The most common problem bee is the domestic honey bee. These little critters have a nasty tendancy to enjoy taking up residence in the most inconvenient places, such as wall and roof cavities in homes, and they start looking for places to create new hives in spring and they can keep searching until mid-summer. Of course this can vary according to the weather patterns. As well as trying to find new homes, they also come around after honey, and nectar from flowers. If you have a flowery garden, either keep your children away from the flowers that the bees go for, remove the plants and replace with plants that are less attractive to the bees, or remove the blooming flowers from the plant. Keep honey indoors in sealed containers and make sure that if your children have been eating honey, they have properly washed their hands and face before going outside.
Bees will usually take a few days to decide whether or not their new potential home is a viable place to live. If you see bees snooping around a place where there is no honey or nectar, such as a wall vent in your house, you need to act fast or they will move in, and become more difficult to get rid of. The environmentally friendly solution is to put a small amount of kerosene on a rag, and then in the early evening after the bees have returned to their current hive, place or hang the rag at the entrance of the place they are threatening to invade. Be very aware: Kerosene is a poison and it is flamable, so be very careful. You don't want to soak the rag and have it dripping, don't place it near a source of heat or flame, and keep children and pets away from it. Bees don't like the smell of kerosene, and will come to the conclusion that their potential new home is too smelly to reside in, and after a few days they will move on. Check the rag regularly, as on hot days the kerosene will evaporate rapidly and be ineffective. You will need to keep replenishing the rag with a few drops of kerosene to keep it active.
If bees are a constant annual problem in your area, or you can't safely use kerosene in the place of their proposed hive, use a piece of flyscreen to cover all vents that they try to get into at a time they are inactive (such as early evening when they have returned to their current hive). It can easily be stuck in place just by using a suitable silocone sealant to "glue" the flyscreen to the wall. The silocone will seep out of the little holes in the flyscreen as you press it down, to hold it in place. This also works for chimneys, roof cavities, and any other little hidy-hole.
If you are too late and the bees have already set up their hive, with care, persistance, and time, they can be removed without the need to pay an exterminator a ton of money to pump insecticide powder into the hive. It also has the bonus of not turning your home into a scene from a horror movie. We don't notice one dead bee, but put a hive full of dead rotting bees into wall cavity, and it absolutely reaks! The smell seeps through the wall and the room becomes unbearable. With the bees no longer there to maintain the temperature of the hive, the honey melts and seeps down the walls, oozing out every little crack and crevace. The leaking honey and the smell combine to attract ants, flies, and numerous other creepy crawlies that suddenly invade that area of your home. The only solution is to remove the wall lining and completely remove the hive, cleaning up every drop of honey - trying to not breathe in the insecticide powder in the process.
The better solution is to block off all potential exits the bees can use while they are asleep of an evening, except one: the main one they use to enter and leave. Place a piece of piping over their little escape hole and attach a 2 Litre (half gallon) plastic bottle to the end of it in a way that the bottle can be easily removed, but won't fall off. you also need to make sure the bees can't escape from any little gaps in these connections. Half fill the bottle with mild soapy water. The bees will leave the hive through the pipe and will become stuck and drown in the water. Each evening the bottle needs to be emptied and the soapy water replaced. The baby bees take approximately 6 weeks to hatch and fly out of the hive, so to be certain, keep this going for about 8 weeks. Then you will be left with an abandoned hive. Call around and find an apiarist (bee keeper) with a young hive that is willing to bring his hive to your home for a short time to feed his bees. The bees won't be interested in setting up a new hive as they haven't fully established the one they are in. They will however, be very interested in robbing the old abandoned hive of all the honey and taking it back to their own hive. They are very efficient at doing this and will likely finish the job within an hour - unless the abandoned hive is huge, then it might take a day. All that will be left after that is a wax comb inside the wall. This is harmless and light weight, doesn't drip or smell bad, and won't cause any problems. Eventually, wax moth will invade and eat out the wax as well, leaving no evidence that a bee hive was ever there in the first place.
wasps and hornets
Hornets are easily mistaken as wasps and tend to live in very similar ways, however most hornets are harmless to humans. The biggest problem wasp is the European Wasp, which live in huge hives like bees, and look a lot like honey bees. However, most of their hives are underground and they are difficult to detect. They enjoy taking free feeds of cold meats, and often hang around pet food and annoy people at picnics and bbqs. Keeping pet foods away from the house and keeping meats covered outdoors will reduce their presence. All wasps tend to feed off of other insects, particularly insect larvae such as caterpillars, so doing things to reduce the presence of other insects will help reduce the presence of wasps.
Most wasps and hornets live either underground, or build mud nests. Many are solitary creatures and don't tend to build hives. The best way to prevent them building a home is to reduce the presence of bare patches of mud and dirt. Using lawns, mulch, stones or bark ground covers can help reduce the availability of suitable places to build nests or find the materials to build them with.
fleas and bed bugs
These evil little creatures are hard to get rid of, their bites are horrifically itchy, and they attack by the thousands. They also breed extremely fast. They feed off the blood of animals and humans, and are quite capable of surviving without a host to feed off for some time.
For fleas, once you have a major infestation, to get them under control, the first step is to have your pets treated. The most effective and safe way to do this is to use one of several brands of dropper treatments that are put on the skin of the animal between the shoulder blades. These not only get rid of the fleas from your pet, but keep them away for one to three months (depending on the brand). The prices vary, but they are available from veterinary clinics. You do not need a consultation to buy them. These do cost a bit more than powders, collars, and shampoos, but they are far more effective and far safer to use. Then the clean up begins. You will need to vacuum every floor, carpeted or not. You will have to vaccuum every crack and crevice, don't forget the skirting boards, and also do the lounges, including under the cushions. Move every ounce of furniture and vacuum underneath. As soon as you are finished, empty and wash or dispose of the bag in the vacuum, you don't want the little blighters getting out again. It is a painful job, but it must be done in every part of the house, and done thoroughly. Remove and wash anything the fleas might get into such as bedding, teddybears, any clothing that has been left on the floor, and once clean, keep these things off the floor. Fleas can jump as high as 60 centimetres (two feet), so once you get the house cleaned properly, keeping things that far off the floor or higher will help reduce the chances of fleas getting back there. Once that is done, your flea population will have been reduced, but to keep it down you will need to keep vaccuuming thoroughly everyday to pick any that were missed as well as get any newborns. They have a monthly cycle, so if after a month you still have a big problem, I suggest that you surrender and buy some flea bombs or you will drive yourself crazy fighting a loosing battle. This is the only time I will go out of my way to release such toxic chemicals in my home. I fought fleas for months - I even removed most of the old carpet in the house - before finally giving in. It's one surrender I haven't regretted.
Outside, keep lawns mowed, weeds down, and if your pets have infested bedding or kennels, clean the same way you cleaned inside. Also sweep up or vacuum all loose pet hair from around the yard.
However, if you haven't got a major infestation, stopping such an infestation from occuring in the first place is far easier. If you just vacuum the floors once a week, thoroughly brush your pets once a day - do it outside, and if possible do it before letting them inside, sweep up all loose pet hair, and keep bedding and kennels clean, you shouldn't become over-run by them. If your pets are going into a boarding kennel, give them a dropper treatment before they go.
Bed bugs are just as bad. When they infest a home, the method of disposal is the same as for fleas - except that you won't really need to treat your pets, and you need to concentrate very hard on cleaning the beds and mattresses - getting new mattresses and using an insect bomb is often the end solution if you are fighting a loosing battle. To avoid getting them in your home in the first place, any time you are spending a night away from home, check the bed and the floor around it, particularly the edges of the mattress, thoroughly for signs of bed bugs. If there are any signs of them being present - even if you can't find any live ones, find somewhere else to stay. If you are given a second-hand bed or bedding, check it thoroughly before accepting it. There are times when looking a gift horse in the mouth is very wise indeed - and this is one of them.
head lice
The best way to avoid lice is to encourage everyone on the planet to get rid of them - but that is like asking for world peace. Keeping hair short or tied up and wearing a hat helps reduce the chances of lice spreading from one head to another. Regular brushing two or three times a day with a fine brush will often shake loose any strays that were recently picked up. Other wise, check hair everytime you brush it, and it doesn't kill anyone to have their hair treated using the conditioner method once in a while just to be sure.
snails and slugs
Again, they won't hurt us, but they make food sources for other creatures we would rather avoid. Regularly searching the garden for snails and slugs and physically removing them is a good method for reducing their presence. They have a major problem with salt, so if you want to keep them away, you could sprinkle salt around the edges of the garden. Be aware that as soon as the garden is watered or it rains the salt will disolve and seep into the soil - which might not be agreeable for the plants. A fantastic snail and slug trap is a small black plastic tub, such as a pot, placed upside down in the garden in a shaded sheltered damp area. Cut a few little half-circle "doorways" around the top edge of the pot before placing it upside-down (so the entrance points are actually at the bottom of the trap). Before watering the garden, lift the pot to see if there are any snails or slugs hiding under there. They will use it as a shelter to protect themselves from drying out - because they don't know that you are going to come along and dunk them in salt while you water the garden.
