Most Common Household Pests in UK

Do you know the most common household pests in the UK? Pests are considered a nuisance that can make your property so uncomfortable to dwell in.

Having a garden is going to attract a whole host of insect life from pollinators to pass to the carnivorous insects that feed off of the pests, like praying mantises, and wasps, and the carnivorous ladybugs.

In this article, you’re going to discover the most common household pests in the UK.

 

What Are The Most Common Household Pests in the UK?

Below are the most common household pests in the UK;

 

Squash Bugs

Squash bugs are sap-sucking insects, and they mainly attack squash hence the name, but they’ll also attack your cucumbers and melons.

Squash bugs overwinter as adults in your garden debris and then they come out in the spring and lay eggs on your new plants.

So, they could do a number of damage to your young squash plants once the plants get bigger. They can handle the damage a little bit better.

In some circumstances, we might want to break the cycle and eliminate as many of the adults as we can so they don’t get the chance to lay eggs frequently.

 

Read also: Pest Control for Food Processing Plants

Wood Chips

The wood chips and are really hard to find if they are not on the leaves. They look just like a wood chipper garden debris. They will be very still and you will never see them.

These are some hatchlings they don’t look anything like the adults right now. They’re just black with these green round butts.

Normally, the wood chips lay their eggs on the underside of leaves and most often on the lower leaves of the plant.  Their clusters are about 20 and there a shiny copper color. They are hard. So I usually just scrape them off of the leaves and toss them in my bucket.

I usually spend about an hour in the evenings picking up these bugs and eggs off my plants, I fill the buckets I put them in with water and dish soap, the dish soap keeps the bugs from being able to crawl back out.

 

Read also: Small White Worms In House | Identification & Riddance

 

Cabbage Worm

The cabbageworm is a caterpillar that attacks a cabbage. They grow usually into white butterflies, have you ever seen those little white butterflies flying around in your garden?

Do you think they are cute? Yes, they are, but they are probably laying eggs on your brassicas. These are brussels sprouts that I have kind of neglected. However, these damages are not caused by cabbage worms but they are caused by slugs.

These slugs usually come out at night. It is why you don’t see anything on these plants during the day. You can either go out at night and pick them off.

 

Read also: How Do I Treat a Pest Infestation in My Hotel Room?

 

Ladybugs and Squash Lady Beetle

Ladybugs is not carnivorous. Unfortunately, it is a plant-eater and it is kind of a dull coppery color with small black dots. This is squash lady beetle and it looks a lot like the Mexican bean beetle except is more orange a little shinier and it’s got bigger black spots and it’s got one extra big black spot kind of in the middle there.

Now, the larger of these 2 beetles look the same, they are both yellow with black spines that are very tiny when they hatch.

They molt are few, they are very easy to see and very slow-moving. So this is an easy one to catch and keep under control.

Their larvae proceed into the pupil stage, right before they turn into a beetle will attach themselves to one spot for a few days while their pupating. The eggs also look the same for these two beetles and unfortunately they look the same for the red ladybugs.

 

Japanese Beetles

Japanese beetles are bugs that you find easily pick off of the leaves, they lay a lot of eggs. All these things have the grubs that live under the ground in the dirt.

The Japanese beetles are very destructive pests that can destroy plants causing them to die. They prefer to live underneath the soil.

 

Squash Vine Borer

The squash vine borer is kind of an orangish-red with black wings, and they lay their eggs at the base of your squash plants and their larvae bore into the vines.

You can see the hole anywhere they are found, I guess it kind of suffocates the larvae that are in there. They lay a single egg on the stems of your plants. They can be really hard to find.

 

Cucumber Beetle

The cucumber beetle mainly attacks your cucumber plants but they’ll also attack your beans in your squash and I have seen them on pretty much everything.

These suckers are able to transmit bacterial wilt between your plants and they are very fast-moving and very hard to catch. They are yellow with black stripes.

 

Flea Beetles

Flea beetles are tiny black beetles that hop and they leave little holes in your plants and when they come they seem to come in the thousands.

So picking them off is not really going to work. You have to use a spray to get rid of them. They will attack pretty much anything.

 

Conclusion

As a gardener or farmer in the UK, these bugs listed above are the common pest you will find infesting your farm or garden. Moreover, most of these bugs are harmless to humans but can be hazardous to plants. Keep visiting Pestclue for the latest update on how to get rid of various pests.

About The Author