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Stink Bugs To Cause Havoc To Hudson Valley Fruit Crops CBS New York Randy Pratt, who operates a fruit farm in Yorktown Heights, NY, has dealt with the pests before. “It uses its mouthparts and sucks the juice out, and then what happens is you get what's called a dry or a corky spot,” Pratt said. … The stink bug, a voracious invader from Asia, is poised for crop and tree …The Journal News | LoHud.com all 4 news articles »

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Cicada cacophony coming soon to East TN WBIR-TV During the next few weeks, millions of the underground insects will dig their way out of the soil and invade more than one-third of the state. Most of the cicadas are concentrated in Middle Tennessee, but the noisy bugs will also make an appearance in … and more »

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Should We Use DEET Products on Our Children? Patch.com We get our kids the appropriate sports gear to protect them but we also need to get them the gear to protect them from dangerous insects. Not to instill fear in anyone, but we have heard of the possible dangerous deceases a mosquito bite and tick bite … CDC develops natural pest repellentThe Coloradoan all 2 news articles »

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Emerald ash borers infect 60 Vernon Hills trees Chicago Sun-Times Vernon Hills public works crews have begun cutting down ash trees along village parkways that are infested with the insects. Crews are expected to remove more than 60 trees over the next three weeks. Village Engineer David Brown said village foresters … Purple traps set to catch destructive emerald ash borersStaunton News Leader all 8 news articles »

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QUESTION:

How do you find pallet mice in a warehouse, with proper traps and and bait stations in place that seem to be ignored by the mice?

ANSWER:

By “pallet” mice I am assuming you mean House Mice that are living in amongst palleted product. One factor that puts things in your favor is having the ability to get to all sides of those pallets, so if this warehouse has the pallets stacked right against the walls, prohibiting you from getting to the wall itself for inspection, this must change. You need to get the cooperation of the warehouse personnel to enable you to help them. There probably should be a painted line in yellow, two feet out from each wall, and no product should be stacked inside this perimeter. Since mice and rats instinctively stay against vertical surfaces, their most likely route of travel much of the time will be immediately against that wall, and this is where most of your stations and traps should be set.

It also is a fact that peridomestic rodents just hate changes. They become very comfortable in a setting if things stay in place, and when they first enter a new environment they spend a great deal of time investigating and marking things to get a good picture in their mind of where food and shelter are found and where safe pathways exist. Just in case there is any clutter sitting for long periods in this warehouse it should be removed or at least moved and placed onto pallets. It would be of value to use a UV flashlight during your inspections, and some very convenient portalbe UV lights are available now from Univar. In a darkened warehouse the UV will cause fresh rodent urine to fluoresce, with the most recent urine a light blue and older urine a yellowish color. This could be helpful in determining where their little pathways and other activity are, and you may find that your stations are simply not where the rodents are spending their time.

All of this rambling is to suggest that you may have traps and stations in place but they and the mice are just not encountering each other. As Dr. Corrigan tells us in his rodent control seminars, we need to avoid a cookie-cutter approach to rodent control. They may travel 100 feet to find food or only 3 feet if that is all it takes. They travel vertically just as well as horizontally. If these mice are hiding in the pallets and finding food there they may not have any reason to leave, and thus will not encounter your stations. Inspect the environment there carefully to decide where the mice are harboring and where they are finding food, and place your traps between these two points in locations where the mice will likely travel. And, use LOTS of traps to increase the chances of catching them.

Of course, simply managing a mouse problem by trying to kill each of them after they enter is a never ending solution – maybe good job security, or maybe not. Ultimately you should find as many ways as possible to keep the mice outside where they can be dealt with in a less-sensivite situation. This includes habitat management both inside and outside, exclusion, and the use of perimeter stations around the outside of the buildings as well as the perimeter of the property.

But, on the inside it may be that you need to verify where these rodents are actually living and traveling, increase the numbers of traps and other stations, and enhance the attraction to them with attractants such as Provoke or Trapper jacks or other really tempting goodies that mice will detect and investigate. Make sure the customer is cooperating and doing what they can to disrupt the environment inside so that the mice are not comfortable and are forced to move as much as possible. Place snap traps inside covered stations, as this may even encourage the mice to enter to investigate this little burrow.

View past Ask Mr. Pest Control questions.

QUESTION:

My neighbor has a bird mite problem from handling a sick pigeon. I told her to take benadryl. How do we get rid of the mites themselves?

ANSWER:

I can’t resist the temptation to toss out a couple of thoughts. First, just be careful when you offer medical advice, since we never know how someone might react to a medication, even as simple as benadryl. I guess this would be an appropriate medication for relieving itching from bites, but if this lady did have an allergic reaction to it she might decide you were to blame. Just a thought. Second, and I try not to be smug while saying it, this points out one more reason that those lovely, cute little “rock doves” can be nasty pest problems that we should evict from our homes and businesses. They routinely carry large numbers of parasites and are happy to share them with people.

There is good news. First, bird mites do not vector any diseases to humans, so it is just the biting and itching that are the consequences. Second, these mites apparently cannot sustain themselves if no birds are available. They may bite humans when hungry, but will not produce more generations of themselves, so in a sense the infestation would die out on its own. However, this could take longer than the neighbor chooses to allow, and to have them annoying him in the meantime.

Control begins with eliminating the source of the mites, which is birds, and if these mites came only from a single bird he was handling then it could be that there is no infestation within his home. He may only have gotten some mites that transferred onto him when he was handling this ill rat-with-wings……… I mean, pigeon. Showering and laundering all clothing he was wearing at the time could do the trick. If the bird or some of its friends were nesting in his home somewhere, or roosting outside, then perhaps the mites did begin to move about inside the home, and this gets tough to eliminate. Consider how small an opening is needed for those microscopic mites to move around and through, and you see they could be anywhere inside the structure – attic, wall voids, interior rooms, etc. Thorough vacuuming of every surface helps remove many of them, and you could apply a residual insecticide along likely travel routes to intercept the mites.

I suggest you place a lot of insect glue traps throughout his home and inspect them very carefully with good magnification in about one week. If you find no mites then hopefully the problem was very localized, and if you do find mites then it tells you where to focus your attention. You could fog or dust the attic (a desiccant dust especially) or fog within wall voids using a void injector.

View past Ask Mr. Pest Control questions.

QUESTION:

Please explain the obvious differences between mouse scat and water bug droppings. What should we look for other then hair? Fibers can easily be mistaken for hair. Can you suggest an observation that can be determined while servicing, without any magnification?

ANSWER:

I guess I would start with the suggestion that magnification would be something you should always have available as you do inspections. This can be as simple and convenient as a hand lens magnifier that you can carry in your pocket, and these can be purchased for just a few dollars online, from some Univar offices, and from scientific suppliers like BioQuip (a link to them is on PestWeb). The best one I have seen in awhile I recently acquired, and it is 30X power with a built in LED light that makes it ideal for use in darkened settings, such as you might encounter in a warehouse. These are not just for looking at animal droppings, but necessary anytime you find some small insect, such as food or fabric pests, or need to examine a glue trap to see what those little spots really are. Are they bugs or dirt? Are they mites or beetles or springtails or psocids? Being able to properly identify what you encounter is critical to going about control procedures in the proper manner, and if you can do this in the field it saves time and effort.

Just for your info, and I don’t mean to advertise someone else’s product, but this hand lens is called Illuminate Loupe (Ledlight) 30X-25mm, and I found it online under that description for very low cost. With this, then, you can break apart something like a fecal pellet and examine its makeup, and this is the best way to determine the likely previous owner of that pellet. There are other hints with regard to the appearance, such as a “shiny” pellet that crumbles easily in the fingers is probably a bat dropping, and if you can identify the presence of insect body parts in that pellet (legs, body plates, wing covers) then you know it is a carnivore, perhaps the bat or maybe a lizard or frog. For those doing structural pest control you may be able to verify or dismiss whether the pellets are drywood termites, powderpost beetles, or carpenter ant frass.

Water bugs are, of course, cockroaches, and the larger species such as American and Oriental do produce fecal droppings that may be about the same size and shape as a dropping from the house mouse. The best difference is going to be the presence of hair in the mouse dropping, due to its habit of frequently grooming itself and swallowing hair. It may also be more common to find larger pieces of undigested grain or plant materials in the mouse dropping, whereas the cockroach dropping would be more likely to have a fairly consistent makeup due to its food being ground to a much finer paste during its passage through the throat and internal organs. But, you do need the magnification to see this, and without the close up look you could make a pretty good guess based on external appearance, but if that guess turns out to be wrong then your control program could be for the wrong pest.

Along with the recognition that it is one or the other – mouse or roach – you can place glue traps where the pathway of the pest appears to be, and verify the ID by catching something. If you find droppings and suspect mice you could verify this with a UV flashlight that should illuminate urine spots along the same area. Mice tend to urinate so darned often. You might also find other evidence if it is a rodent – smudge marks, gnawing, etc. Distinguishing between mouse and large roach droppings, as well as cricket droppings, probably is the most confusing distinction in scatology, so it would be advisable to use more than just a naked-eye examination to be sure. In general, the mouse dropping is going to be pointed at one (or both) end, but not always, so examine several droppings to be sure. In general insect droppings usually have more blunted ends, but again not always. Insect droppings also tend to be more rectangular or cylindrical in shape than the irregular shape of rodent droppings. You might even see lengthwise depressions in the roach droppings (but only with magnification) created by the anal muscles pressing down on the pellet prior to its exit from the roach’s body.

And you folks thought Scatology was boring. This kind of stuff is good opening material in a social setting.

View past Ask Mr. Pest Control questions.

The residents of Lynam Hall and Siena Hall have already seen the pests. The parasitic bug has been an ongoing problem for the university this year, and in October and November the school treated separate cases in those two halls. The current outbreak is in …

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The article on identifying pesky pests such as honey bees and wasps and treating the problem early that was in the Tuesday’s home and garden section was disconcerting. Honey bee populations in this country and across the globe are in decline due to colony …

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HEBBRONVILLE, Texas — An elderly Texas couple were killed by bees this week after they apparently tried to remove the insects from a fireplace in a house on a remote ranch, the Valley Morning Star reported Wednesday. William Steele, 90, died Monday in the …

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