 |
Bat Houses on Your House-NOT! |
By Whitney Cranshaw, Colorado State University Cooperative Extension, Entomology
There is a lot of interest in promoting local bat populations for control of insects. Bat houses, specially constructed to provide sheltering cover for bats, are featured widely in catalogs and are even showing up in some nurseries.
Bat houses should not be attached to dwellings occupied by humans. The reason is that bats often support parasitic bat bugs. These are close relatives to bed bugs, although bat bugs are far more common in Colorado. Bat bugs developing on bats will often scatter from bat roosts and bite people. Problems can be very annoying and can only be prevented by eliminating bat roosts on homes and residences.
Photo: Judy Sedbrook
