Why the influx of spring pests in Las Vegas?

How pests survive the icy winters

• Insects migrate seasonally

  When the chills roll in, many insects will buzz off to warmer weather, like the snowbirds from the Northwest to Arizona during the winter. One of the most known Monarch butterflies migrates for thousands of miles every turn of winter and spring. Cicadas and locusts are migrating species, always buzzing from one warm and lush ecosystem to the next. They seemingly arrive en mass when our time comes. Often after a long and quiet winter, their noisy business is more noticeable. 

• Bugs and vermin move indoors

  The ever-hungry rodents will fatten themselves up during the summer in anticipation of being less active during the winter when they settle down in the hidden corner of the house. Most spiders will move indoors to avoid exposure to nippy weather. Given ample time for pests to settle in your home, come spring, unpleasant surprises lurk behind storage boxes and clutter when you move things around for cleaning.

• Communal living

  Social insects like bees will cluster with their hive, fluttering their wings and using soundwaves to keep each other warm throughout winter. When spring arrives, bees are well starved for fresh nectar and pollen. At the same time, some bee colonies split up the hive, one having to migrate to establish a new colony elsewhere. It’s the primary reason we stumble upon hives of bees more often in the spring and summertimes. 

• Dormancy (Diapause)

  When the weather is too cold and hardly anything available to eat, specialized insects will pause their physiological development by resuming a state of diapause, or dormancy. Like hibernation, diapause drastically lowers a bug’s metabolism, allowing it to survive the winter without needing to expend energy. Many species can enter diapause in various forms. A caterpillar implements the cocoon, for example, and the eggs of the mosquitoes can remain dormant while embedded in frozen grass blades and soil. Then when spring arrives, they spawn from the earth and hunt humans and other warm-blooded mammals. Many temperate-climate insects can remain dormant as egg, larva, nymph, pupa, or adult forms to survive the winter. Hence when spring arrives, innumerable insects rouse and go directly into hunting mode. Humans are merely one source of nourishment they crave. 

• Torpid state

  The weta of New Zealand is a flightless cricket that lives in high peaks and blizzard cold. When the temperature is subzero at night, the crickets completely freeze, solid as a pebble of ice. On days when the temperature rise, the weta resumes activity like tiny robots on a timer (Resource section #5). This peculiar torpid state is usually temporary, lasting overnight in the temperate zone. 

• Bugs produce antifreeze.

  Freeze-susceptible insects accumulate sufficient glycerol to lower their bodys’ freezing point by 10 °C (Resource #2). This capability allows the insects to roam on the snow and ice, hunting through the scarcity of winter, thus ensuring their survival until spring, when the urge to reproduce is high. Because many bugs can produce within weeks, springtime can hatch pests by the billions.