SOUTH BERWICK — The Maine Forest Service says it will release more than 1,000 predator lady beetles at a state park so they can feast on insects that kill hemlock trees. The tiny hungry beetles will be released Thursday at Vaughan Woods State Park in …
Pests in the NewsMay 06, 2011
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New York artist David Rogers has been constructing giant scale insects of wood and other natural materials since 1994. This year, his exhibit Big Bugs will crawl into Iowa State University’s Reiman Gardens Saturday, May 7, and remain there until Sunday …
Pests in the NewsMay 06, 2011
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 SunHerald.com |
Tips for getting rid of America's No. 1 pest: Ants
SunHerald.com A while back, pest control specialists did a survey to find out what the No. 1 pest was in the United States. They probably thought they'd find termites or cockroaches as No. 1, maybe rats. But the results of their survey revealed that the number one … |
Pests in the NewsMay 06, 2011
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 Philadelphia Inquirer (blog) |
Stink Bug Season Is Ramping Up!
American Agriculturist "We've also identified some selective pesticides that are effective against stink bugs, but have lower toxicity so they'll preserve the beneficial insects that growers rely on to control other pests as part of integrated pest management programs." Coming soon: Invasion of the stink bugsMarietta Times |
Pests in the NewsMay 06, 2011
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We warned you about them last month, but now the rare insects are making their way out of the ground.
Pests in the NewsMay 06, 2011
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QUESTION:
I have a severe mouse problem in a chicken coup. I have trapped 208 of them and they are getting worse. Is a rodenticide available that can be used without harming the birds?
ANSWER:
Where oh where to begin on this nightmare job. I am assuming that this chicken coup is absolutely porous and available to the mice to enter, and that exclusion is not an option at this time? Even so, since it sounds like you are in an area with an abundance of mice available to invade the chicken area, exclusion should be a long term goal. If nothing is done in that area then you may be faced with an endless program of killing mice AFTER they get into the more sensitive coup area. The barrier would have to be complete, meaning both horizontal and vertical, since mice would easily climb over anything installed around the outside except, perhaps, smooth metal. Just a thought, but it would pay to evaluate the options for exclusion and discuss this with the customer.
You say this is a chicken “coup” rather than a chicken ranch, so I imagine this is at least on a smaller scale than a large egg ranch operation. I think the immediate answer to your question on rodent baits is that any bait that would kill a rodent would also kill chickens IF the chickens consumed the bait. However, if you properly place the bait within tamper-resistant stations and have these properly secured to the surface there should be no way the chickens could access the bait, including as a secondary poisoning. It would seem very unlikely that even dead rodents that are left laying around (which they never should be) would not be eaten or pecked at by the chickens, so any undigested bait in the rodent should not get into any chickens. It would be more up to how you manage to use the bait rather than the bait itself as to whether or not the birds can get to it.
Stand back and take a really critical look at this situation. The mice are coming from somewhere, and the best pest management nearly always involves SOURCE control – dealing with the problem where it is coming from rather than picking off the pests one at a time after they get into the more sensitive locations – in this case the coup itself. Are these mice coming from surrounding natural areas? If so, perhaps you can place rodent stations in abundance around the perimeter of the property, keeping in mind the new rodenticide regulations coming in June that require all rodenticides to be used ONLY within 50 feet of a structure. If you do place stations around fencelines and are using new-labeled rodent baits, any stations beyond that 50 foot distance would have to use traps.
You indicate that the problem is getting worse, and as always you should make certain which mouse this is – House Mouse, Vole, Deer Mouse? With weather turning warmer we can expect rodent activity to increase, and your choice of control measures may vary depending on the kind of mouse. You are in Ohio, and winter has had a hard time letting go in the upper Midwest, but outdoor rodents probably are more active by now. As my father used to say, if nothing changes nothing changes, and it appears that continuing to approach the problem as you have been, even though you are catching lots of mice, is not going to resolve it. You need to look carefully at exclusion, at perimeter baiting or trapping if possible, and somehow changing the environment around this property to make life a bit less comfortable for the mice. Customer cooperation is going to be very important. It would be unfair and unreasonable for them to create a major attraction for mice and then expect you magically to keep the mice away.
Pest QuestionsMay 06, 2011
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QUESTION:
I have about fifty green bees that are nesting in a sand box of a playground area. I would like to get rid of them but do not want to spray pesticides in an area such as this. Someone had mentioned to me that they thought green bees only stayed for a short while and then would leave on there own. Is this correct? These bees do not even remotely appear to be aggressive. What would you suggest?
ANSWER:
I can understand the mixed emotions on this. If these bees were doing their little thing in some soil in my backyard I would stand aside and enjoy them. But, when they are in a children’s sandy play area it does bring children into closer contact with an insect that has the “potential”, if not the inclination, to sting. These are probably either Cuckoo Wasps in the family Chrysididae or solitary bees such as Sweat or Alkali bees in the family Halicitidae. Other smallish mettalic green bees include leafcutting bees, but these are unlikely to use the soil for nesting. All of these are solitary wasps and bees. They do not have a colony, do not have a queen, do not have division of labor and larvae to take care of, and do not have any instinct to attack someone who gets too close to their nest. The females of some of these solitary bees do have the ability to sting, but so rarely do that their benefit from pollinating far, FAR outweighs any health concern.
Many wasps and bees, including other little ones called digger bees, mining bees, plasterer bees, etc. create channels in the soil that end in a little chamber. In this chamber the female bee places a ball of pollen and the female wasp places some paralyzed insect and an egg is deposited near this food. The adult wasp then is done and does not return, so the larvae develop on their own from this food cache and emerge later as new adults. Again, no social structure = no aggressive tendencies, and the only time a person would be stung would be if the adult female were directly threatened, such as being captured in a hand or trapped in clothing.
The soil has to be of a consistency that the bees or wasps can create tunnels that do not collapse. Drying out the sand would keep them from doing this successfully, and raking the soil daily or more frequently might discourage the wasps. Covering it with plastic to keep the bees off the soil will also cause them to go somewhere else. I agree with you that spraying the sand that children play on with ANY pesticides could raise the concerns of some parents, even if the pesticide were a “natural” material from plant oils. Some people simply are that concerned over anything we could call a pesticide, although they routinely expose themselves to far more toxic substances in their own home or garage than we could use to kill insects.
However, insecticides are not that useful anyhow for burrowing bees and wasps, and making physical changes to cause these insects to look elsewhere for their larval chambers is a better long term solution. You would have to treat each individual hole in the sand if you could find them, and this is time consuming and make not work anyhow. Better to try to make it impossible for the bees to either access the sand or to dig tunnels in it. Dry sand is their enemy.
Pest QuestionsMay 05, 2011
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The eight-legged creatures are here to suck the life out of plants and vegetation, said James Brown, Adams Pest Control service manager. Brown said Adams Pest Control started receiving calls a few weeks ago about spider mites. “You usually see these …
Pests in the NewsMay 04, 2011
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As a result, there are many websites selling pest control products, many of which are not approved for sale in Canada. Under the Pest Control Products Act, before a pesticide is allowed to be used or sold in Canada, it must undergo a rigorous scientific …
Pests in the NewsMay 04, 2011
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HARRISBURG, Pa. — Nearly 40 acres of abandoned apple trees in Adams County have been removed this spring to protect nearby commercial orchards from damaging pests and diseases. Pennsylvania’s fruit industry is critical to the local and state economies …
Pests in the NewsMay 04, 2011
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