Bugaboos : Ignore the Big, Scary Insects; the Little Ones Cause All the Trouble

Fred Beams was at the beach in Dana Point when he noticed a mother and her daughter near hysterics about a giant, flying green bug.

“They were just panicked,” he said. “They were waving their arms up and down trying to get it. They thought it was a bee.”

But Beams, the assistant manager of the Orange County Vector Control District, knew the bug was a harmless green fig beetle.

“I said, ‘Please don’t be alarmed by what they are,’ ” he said.

But Beams admitted the creature is “one of the scarier beetles. They have that green color. In fact, in Egypt, they once used them as money.”

Summer is the prime time for spotting the green fig beetle. At this time of the year, when the ground gets warmer and the winds are calm, beetles, bugs, spiders and ants seem to be everywhere.

“What makes the climate so attractive for people here makes it attractive for bugs,” Beams said. “All insects are temperature dependent. Here it is warm year round so they can survive.”

Although bugs are more active and reproduce at a greater rate in the summer, many do little to harm people except to scare them.

“They’re all big and scary and look like they’ll take a small child,” Beams said.

This year, the Vector Control District’s worries are over smaller bugs: mosquitoes. Almost any still water outdoors can be a breeding ground. Vector Control workers have been spraying areas such as the San Joaquin marshes near UC Irvine and salt marshes near Huntington and Seal beaches.

They have a more difficult time tracking places such as unkept pools and golf course hazards, which are on private property. So far this summer, they have found 3,500 such pools in the county.

“We don’t have a lot of control over people’s back yards,” Beams said. “It’s really up to the homeowner.”

Unkept pools can produce 150,000 to 200,000 mosquitoes a week, Beams said. Mosquitoes even have enough room in a coffee can of water to breed 700 to 1,000 offspring a week, he said.

For exterminators, most of the problems this summer have been indoors. Fleas and ants have been especially prolific.

“It really kind of hit this year,” said Phil Naman, the acting manager of Terminix’s Costa Mesa branch. “When it’s hot and dry, they just go crazy. Everybody who calls us says they’ve got the worst cases in the world.”

Roger Rankin of Santa Ana, owner of Freckles the dog and Frosty the cat, said he has battled fleas with pesticides for so long, “I figure my yard is a toxic waste dump by now.”

But Rankin’s problems go beyond fleas. His big problem this year has been June bugs. Rankin recently planted some cherry brush trees, and soon the June bugs were out to attack. They created blister-like bumps on the the trees’ leaves.

“We’ve had (lots of) June bugs,” he said. “They suck all the goodness out of the trees.”

Time of the Year for Ants

This also is the time of the year when ants move from back yards and into homes. Lee Clifton, the vice president of Hydrex Pest Control of California, said his company is receiving more calls from hot, dry areas such as Anaheim Hills, Placentia and Yorba Linda, where ants are fleeing their normal habitats for the cool indoors.

Cockroaches also like to infest homes. One of the most common, the Oriental cockroach, also known as the black beetle or black water bug, is found in cool, damp areas such as water meter boxes and dense vegetation. And Orange County has plenty of American and German cockroaches, which can destroy food, fabrics and book bindings.

But, Beams said, “I’ll take a cockroach any day over a housefly.” Houseflies carry germs, and can land on exposed food and regurgitate.

Some pests also carry diseases. The most publicized this summer has been the Western black-legged tick, a known carrier of Lyme disease. One Laguna Beach woman was suspected of having the disease, but a recent test proved negative. Even so, the tick has been found in places all over the county that have deer, which are known carriers of the tick.

Ash Whitefly Arrives

Another new arrival is the ash whitefly, first discovered in the county late last year. The ash whitefly attaches itself to the underside of leaves and can slowly kill trees. The flies secrete a honeydew that causes black, sooty mold to form on citrus, peach and other fruit trees.

The ash whitefly, which is native to the Mediterranean region, has grown rapidly this summer because it has no natural enemies in Southern California, said Nick Nisson, an entomologist at the Orange County Agricultural Commissioner’s Office.

“Being new and being exotic, it doesn’t really have the parasites to keep it in check,” Nisson said.

The ash whitefly also is almost impossible to kill without soaking the entire plant in insecticide.

Wasp Will Be Captured

To combat the ash whitefly, state officials are sending an entomologist to France and Italy next month to capture the Encarsia, a smaller than pinhead-sized wasp that is the insect’s natural enemy.

Roger Rankin isn’t particularly fond of any of these creatures. He’s having enough trouble just identifying them.

“We’ve had these bugs that are green and fly,” he said. “Some of these things are bigger than baseballs. They’ll knock you over.

“Lord knows what can live out there.”