Summertime is the perfect time for outdoor activities, especially barbecues. What better way to gather family and friends around, have some fun, and enjoy great food? It’s hard not to enjoy a barbecue, but there is one thing that frequently puts a damper on the fun of a barbecue – pests.
Mosquitoes, ticks, wasps – they constantly interfere at barbecues. From the smell of the food to the large number of people, it’s extremely difficult to keep these pests at bay when there’s so much to attract them to one place. But there are ways to minimize the pests at your barbecue. By doing a few simple things, you can make sure that you and your guests are free from annoying pests.
How to Have a Pest-Free BBQ
Keep Your Grill Clean
Something you should always do when cooking on the grill, whether or not you’re having a large barbecue or not, is to keep the grill clean. Pests like wasps are attracted to smells of meat or rotting food, and if your grill isn’t clean, it could have both smells on it. The dirtier your grill is, the more likely you are to have pests hanging around you while you cook on the grill.
Of course, keeping your grill clean is also important for safe cooking. A dirty grill could have all sorts of bacteria or bits of old food that could make someone sick. Not to mention, your food will just taste better if it doesn’t have flavors of old meals on it. So between cooking safety and pests, keeping your grill clean is one of the best ways to have a great barbecue.
Wear Insect Repellent
A really simple thing you can do to keep pests away during a barbecue is to wear insect repellent. This will especially help with mosquitoes, and if your barbecue is in the evening, you will definitely need protection against mosquitoes. Make sure that the insect repellent covers your body well so you can avoid any harmful bites.
It’s also helpful to have insect repellent on hand for any guest to use at the barbecue in case someone forgot to put it on before coming. If more people have insect repellent on, the insects are less likely to be a problem at your barbecue. But make sure that the insect repellent is set away from the food so anyone applying it won’t accidentally spray some on the food that people are about to eat. As useful as insect repellent is, it can be dangerous if ingested or blown into someone’s eyes.
Protect the Food
You can’t have a barbecue without great food, and since the food is the star of the party, you want to make sure that pests aren’t getting into the food. To make sure you don’t have ants and flies and wasps crawling all over your food and getting people sick, you want to make sure that the food is covered or, even better, served inside and eaten outside. The more you can keep the food away from pests, the safer and more enjoyable your barbecue will be.
Of course, keeping pests off the food is only part of the problem. Whether or not the pests end up on the food, the smell of it is enough to attract a lot of pests. So if you can limit how much the pests can smell the food, you will also limit the number of pests that show up in the first place.
Set Out Traps
When you’re getting ready for a barbecue, consider setting out traps for pests beforehand. This would be especially important if you have rodent problems in your area, but there are plenty of traps for pests other than rodents. There are ant traps, wasp traps, and so many more, so if you want to decrease the number of these pests in your yard, set up the traps a few days beforehand so you can begin shrinking the population of pests in your yard.
Traps can be very useful, but they’re not 100% effective, so if you have a significant pest problem in your yard, you may want to look into some professional home pest control. Additionally, you need to be careful about where you set out the traps if you have children or pets because the poisons in the traps can be harmful to them. Consider environmentally friendly mosquito control for parents. However, as long as you are careful about the placement of the traps and teach your kids to stay away from the traps, then you should be fine to use them without issue.
Cover the Trash
We’ve already established that food attracts pests, so it should be no surprise that the trash from a barbecue can be a major attraction for pests as well. Because no one is going to be eating whatever is in the trash, people don’t always think about the importance of covering it to keep the pests away. But when food is in the trash, it can attract the pests even more as the food begins to rot.
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It may seem like a bit of a hassle to have a lid when you’re trying to throw away your plates and cups, but it’s worth the extra effort. And if pests get in the trash, it makes it much more difficult to take the trash out later. So the simple solution is to keep the trash covered as much as possible during the barbecue and after.
The Top Tip for a Pest-Free BBQ
If you have a barbecue coming up in the next couple of weeks, it’s important to do all of the things listed in this article. But there is one more thing you should do that is even more important – hire professional home pest control services. Home pest control treatments done by professionals will ensure that your yard and home are protected against most pests. While you still may have the occasional pest, particularly if you have food sitting out to attract them, pest treatments will go a long way toward exterminating pest problems in and around your home, making it more enjoyable for people to gather together there with you.
