Clover Mites

The clover mite, Bryobia praetiosa Koch, is a tiny relative of spiders and ticks. Many of us have seen this little reddish looking bug on our front stoop, well this pest is called a Clover mite. They are really small, about the size of a pin head and has a bright red or reddish brown color to it that when crushed the coloration looks like blood, but it isn’t, it’s simply their coloration. These mites, because they are so small they can appear by the thousands. The Clover mites may be spotted around siding, doors, windows, drapes, curtains, and furniture.

Clover mites is not an insect, but they are very closely related to spiders and ticks, otherwise known as an arachnid. These pests usually eat grass, clovers, and various other plants on your lawn and around your home. They usually crawl into cracks and crevices in order to molt and lay their eggs. They mainly hide under loose tree bark, foundation, walls, under siding, and around window frames.

These little pests do not do any damage to buildings, furniture or humans and pets. They simply eat grass and plants found in your back yard. The Clover mite is a plant eater and have been seen infesting over 200 different varieties of plants, sucking the sap. They can also live off of algae and mold. These pests usually live on or near their food sources.

Clover mites travel inside your home they can become a real nuisance and heavy migrations where they travel in your home’s garden usually happens in the early summer or fall. Clover mites normally build up a large population around structured covered with lush, well-fertilized lawns and shrubbery. They often go inside your homes or building in very large numbers close to autumn when all the vegetation begins to die. They may also migrate indoors in the spring because that is typically the result of mulching as well as the result of higher temperatures.

Clover mites at times may be seen in large populations of the roofs of commercial buildings, this is due to moss growth. These pests can get very obnoxious if not dealt with in a timely manner. Each female can lay up to 70 eggs per mite, or they also lay their eggs in masses, usually inside cracks in concrete, buildings, under sidings, and under loose tree bark. The eggs do not hatch under temperatures of 40°F or above 86°F. They usually do this during the spring.

Symptoms: Clover mites seldom cause much damage to plants, but high numbers can cause a “silvered” appearance due to the loss of chlorophyll. They become a problem when they invade homes or other buildings. This happens most commonly in March and April in Oklahoma but has also occurred during the fall and early winter months. They do not feed on anything in the home but can leave a reddish orange stain if they are crushed on curtains, bedspreads, furniture, walls, or carpets.

After the eggs hatch the small clover mites move in order to find their hosts, molt, and, go through two nymph stages. This whole process takes about 30 days, this is called a generation. One generation is usually complete during the spring or early summer and the other is complete in the early fall.

These pests in their egg stages may hibernate over the winter or become dormant throughout the summer underneath the tree bark, cracks of fences and foundations. As long as it is a dry protected site they are fine. These pests are usually more of a headache in the early spring and then again in the fall, usually on the east and south sides of buildings because they are the warmest.

If you ever have any bug related questions feel free to call us either at Beyond Pest Control. Once again, and I can’t stress this enough we are on call twenty four hours a day seven days a week to kill those bugs, we aren’t kidding whether you call us at 9 am or midnight we will be available to take your call and either get rid of the bug infestation, or answer any questions you may have concerning the bug issue. I can honestly guarantee that there will be someone to answer that call. We make it our business to make you bug free!

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Beyond Pest Control.

Our pest control specialists service all NYC boroughs, including Queens, Brooklyn, Bronx, Manhattan, Long Island (both Nassau & Suffolk counties), Staten Island and even both Westchester & Rockland counties.