Booklice
The September Pest of the Month

Not all pests are handled with pesticide treatments. When most people think of pest control without pesticides, their minds go to rodent control. Rodent control usually consists of exclusion and prevention: blocking crawl hatches with plywood, screening over caps with hardware cloth, or protecting with expansion foam and copper mesh to prevent chew through. However, there are some arthropod pests that are also managed better without insecticides. 

One of the most interesting arthropods (or insects) that we run into are psocids – also called booklice. They’re often mistaken for termites and are called booklice or barklice because they’re similar in body structure and size to common head lice. Thankfully, booklice are neither termites nor head lice. In fact, they’re harmless and aren’t a danger to your health or property themselves. But they are a nuisance pest, and their presence may be a sign of other problems. 

Independent Pest Control’s first encounter with booklice was in a home just south of our Puyallup shop. The technician on the job was scoping out the front room when he found a pest that didn’t match anything he’d previously seen. The behavior and appearance were both unfamiliar, so our technician brought back a sample for us to inspect. We identified the pest as psocids, then reached out to the customer to ask some questions and find out more. 

The homeowners stored boxes of books in their old detached garage. Over the years, the books became damp and grew moldy. The combination of paper and binding material with consistent moisture and lack of airflow led to the perfect harbor and food source for this particular pest. When the time came to clean out the garage, they brought the boxes into the main house, along with all the pests hiding inside. 

Dousing every box and every page of every book – even down to the binding – in insecticides could remove the pests. Booklice are susceptible to insecticides when they face direct contact with them. But heavily treating with insecticides would not only damage huge amounts of personal property; it would also do nothing to fix the original conditions that prompted the pests to show up in the first place. 

The solution? A $20 dehumidifier. We told the customer to purchase a simple dehumidifier, place it in the area, and empty it repeatedly until the moisture issue was resolved. Booklice can’t survive at a humidity level below 50%. They have trouble controlling water loss through their exoskeletons, so the lower the humidity the faster it will kill them. 

The room itself was probably not at a humidity level above 50%, but inside the boxes of books definitely was. By running the dehumidifier in the room where the boxes were stored and removing the books from boxes by laying them out, they quickly got the issue under control. 

Looking at this case from the outside it may seem like a loss to our business. We provided a free inspection, quote, and explanation on our time and didn’t profit from our insecticide services – but this was a huge overall gain. This solution gained word-of-mouth recommendations in the community, leading to more referrals for pest control projects in the area. More importantly, we were able to save a family from the dangerous health conditions that would’ve developed if they hadn’t treated the issue when they did. 

This is why we are so much more than just “exterminators” — we are pest management professionals. We take care of pest problems at the source and take an individualized approach to treatment by finding the best pest control solution for the client. 

If you are experiencing a Spider problem in Puyallup or the surrounding areas, and need extra help with them, please give Independent Pest Solutions a call for a free estimate