Hear from Our Customers
Most people who call us have already tried something else. A spray from the hardware store. A cheap service that came once and never followed up. The problem came back sometimes worse because nothing addressed where the pests were actually living. That’s the difference between treating what you can see and treating what’s really going on inside the walls, under the floors, and behind the baseboards of a Richmond Hill home that’s been standing since before your grandparents were born.
Richmond Hill’s housing stock is genuinely older than most of Queens. The Queen Anne and Shingle-style homes along the side streets off Jamaica Avenue and near Forest Park were built in the 1880s and 1910s beautiful homes, but homes with original wood framing, aging foundations, and decades of accumulated gaps that mice, termites, and cockroaches know how to use. A surface treatment doesn’t reach any of that. A thorough inspection followed by targeted treatment does.
When the job is done right, you stop finding droppings in the kitchen. You stop hearing movement in the walls at night. You stop worrying every time a family member spots something. And if you’re in a multi-generational household grandparents, parents, and kids all under one roof, which is the norm in Richmond Hill you stop wondering whether what was sprayed is safe for the two-year-old who plays on the floor and the 75-year-old with breathing sensitivities. That peace of mind is the actual outcome. Everything else is just steps to get there.
Kingsway Exterminating Company has been a licensed, family-owned pest control business since 1971. That’s not a marketing line it’s just a fact that matters when you’re choosing who to let into your home. Every competitor serving Richmond Hill is a younger company. Some are national chains. None of them have been treating homes in this corner of Queens as long as we have.
We know Richmond Hill. We know what the housing stock looks like on the blocks south of Forest Park. We know what Liberty Avenue’s food corridor does to pest pressure in the surrounding residential streets. We know that Richmond Hill isn’t just another Queens zip code it’s a community where families have lived for generations, where your neighbor notices the exterminator van, and where the job had better be done right the first time.
We use Integrated Pest Management principles, which means we use the least toxic effective treatment for each situation not the heaviest chemical available. We explain what we’re doing and why. And we back our work.
It starts with a free inspection. Not a sales call an actual inspection. In a Richmond Hill home, that means we’re checking the basement, the foundation gaps, the pipe penetrations, the wall voids, and anywhere else that a century of settling has created entry points. We look at what you’re dealing with, how established it is, and where it’s coming from. You get a clear picture before anything is recommended or priced.
From there, we put together a treatment plan based on what we actually found not a package pulled off a shelf. If it’s rodents, that means identifying and sealing entry points in addition to trapping, because exclusion is the only thing that keeps them from coming back. If it’s termites in the wood framing of an older Richmond Hill home, that means a targeted treatment and a WDI report if you need one for a real estate transaction. If it’s cockroaches near one of the commercial corridors on Liberty Avenue or Atlantic Avenue, that means treating the harborage areas inside the structure, not just the visible surfaces.
After treatment, we follow up. The timing depends on what was treated and how severe the infestation was some situations need one visit, others need a monitoring schedule. Either way, you’ll know what to expect before we leave. Preparation instructions are given ahead of time and explained clearly, which matters especially in households with young children, elderly residents, or pets.
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Richmond Hill has a specific pest profile, and it’s shaped by real local factors. The Victorian-era housing stock creates termite and rodent vulnerability that newer construction simply doesn’t have. The food-service density along Jamaica Avenue and Liberty Avenue with the restaurants, markets, and grocers serving the Indo-Caribbean and South Asian communities generates persistent cockroach and rat pressure that radiates into nearby residential blocks. And Forest Park’s wildlife population, which borders the neighborhood to the north, means squirrels and raccoons are a genuine fall and winter concern for homes on the park’s southern edge.
We handle all of it. General pest control, rodent control and exclusion, termite inspections and WDI reports for real estate transactions, bed bug treatment using heat or chemical methods, mosquito and tick control, stinging insect removal, flea and mite treatment, and wildlife removal. For Richmond Hill landlords and property owners, we also provide commercial pest control and service documentation that helps you meet your obligations under the NYC Housing Maintenance Code which places legal responsibility for pest-free housing on the landlord, not the tenant.
If you’re buying or selling one of Richmond Hill’s historic homes where median sale prices now exceed $800,000 a licensed WDI inspection is financial protection, not an optional step. We issue WDI clearance certificates accepted by lenders and real estate attorneys throughout Queens County.
This is the question we hear most often in Richmond Hill, and it’s the right one to ask. Multi-generational households are common in this neighborhood it’s not unusual for a grandparent with respiratory sensitivities and a toddler who crawls on the floor to be living in the same home. That changes how treatment should be approached, and any exterminator worth hiring should be able to explain exactly what they’re applying, where, and what the re-entry timeline is.
We use EPA-registered materials and follow Integrated Pest Management principles, which means we use the least toxic treatment that will actually solve the problem not the heaviest chemical available. Before every treatment, we give you specific preparation instructions and clear guidance on when it’s safe to return to treated areas. We don’t leave you guessing. If you have specific health concerns for anyone in your household, tell us before the inspection it affects what we recommend and how we approach the job.
Termites in Richmond Hill’s Victorian-era homes are a real and underreported risk. The wood framing, unfinished basement spaces, and aging foundations in homes built in the 1880s through 1910s create exactly the conditions that Eastern subterranean termites the species most active in Queens are drawn to. The problem is that termite damage is usually invisible until it’s significant. By the time you see a swarm or notice soft, hollow-sounding wood, the colony has often been active for years.
Signs to watch for include discarded wings near windowsills or basement entry points in late spring, mud tubes along foundation walls or basement pipes, and wood that sounds hollow when tapped. But the most reliable way to know is a professional inspection. We conduct licensed termite inspections that check the areas of your home that are most vulnerable the basement, the foundation perimeter, wood-to-soil contact points, and structural framing. If you’re buying or selling a home in Richmond Hill, a WDI report from a licensed inspector is typically required by the lender and protects both parties in the transaction.
If you’re within a few blocks of Jamaica Avenue or Liberty Avenue, this is a frustratingly common experience and the reason is usually that the pressure is external and constant. The food-service density along those corridors creates a persistent cockroach population that doesn’t disappear just because one unit was treated. German cockroaches in particular can re-enter through shared walls, plumbing chases, and gaps around pipes faster than a surface spray can keep up with.
The fix isn’t spraying more it’s treating the actual harborage areas inside the structure and sealing the pathways they’re using to move between units or enter from outside. In Richmond Hill’s older housing stock, those pathways are often inside wall voids, under flooring, and around original pipe penetrations that were never sealed to modern standards. A thorough inspection identifies where they’re living and breeding, not just where you’re seeing them. That’s the starting point for a treatment that actually holds.
If your home is on the northern edge of Richmond Hill on or near Park Lane South, or on any of the streets that back up toward Forest Park you’re dealing with a seasonal pressure that residents a few blocks south don’t face in the same way. As temperatures drop in September and October, mice and other wildlife move out of the park and toward the closest warm structures. In a Victorian home with a century-old foundation, there are usually more entry points than anyone realizes.
Trapping alone isn’t enough. If you seal the mice out without finding where they’re getting in, you’ll be dealing with this every fall. Effective rodent control in this situation means a thorough inspection to locate entry points gaps in the foundation, spaces around utility penetrations, deteriorated sill plates followed by physical exclusion work to seal them, combined with trapping to eliminate what’s already inside. We also check the attic and crawl spaces, because squirrels from Forest Park are a separate but related issue that shows up in the same homes at the same time of year.
Bed bugs don’t come from dirty homes they come from travel, and they don’t care what class of seat you were in. Richmond Hill has one of the highest rates of international travel in Queens, with a large portion of the community visiting family in Guyana, Trinidad, India, and Pakistan on a regular basis. JFK International Airport is just a few miles away, and the combination of frequent international travel and dense housing stock where units share walls, floors, and ceilings creates above-average bed bug risk compared to neighborhoods with less international travel activity.
The most important thing to know is that early detection makes a significant difference in how difficult and expensive treatment is. A small infestation caught in the first few weeks can often be resolved in one or two treatments. An established colony that’s been spreading through a multi-unit building for months is a much bigger job. If you’ve recently traveled internationally or had houseguests who did, an inspection after the trip is worth doing especially if you start noticing small bites, blood spots on bedding, or a faint sweet odor near the mattress or headboard.
Yes under the NYC Housing Maintenance Code, landlords are required to maintain all residential units free of pests. If a tenant notifies you in writing of a pest problem and you don’t respond within 30 days, they can file a 311 complaint with the city. For bed bugs specifically, New York City law places the financial responsibility for treatment directly on the landlord, not the tenant. That’s not a gray area it’s a clear legal obligation that applies to every rental property in Richmond Hill, whether it’s a two-family Victorian on a residential block or a small apartment building on Atlantic Avenue.
The practical implication is that ignoring a pest complaint or delaying treatment creates real legal and financial exposure. We work with Richmond Hill landlords and property managers on treatment plans that address the problem and include service documentation you can use to demonstrate compliance. If a tenant has already filed a complaint or you’re dealing with a building-wide infestation, we can assess the full scope and put together a treatment schedule that covers the affected units systematically not just the one unit where the complaint originated.
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