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Stink bugs and other summer pests
witf.org The bottom line is as the weather heats up, we will be battling all kinds of insects from house flies to fleas on our pets to mosquitoes. On Tuesday's Radio Smart Talk, we'll target these summer time pests with Jeffrey White, research entomologist, … Stink Bugs Now Invading 33 US States, USDA Studies Natural SolutionPlanetSave.com |
Pests in the NewsJune 07, 2011
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 Fox News |
Pesticides on Playing Fields
Fox News Keeping those playing fields in good condition and free of pests, however, requires regular maintenance that includes spraying the grass with a toxic cocktail of chemical fungicides, herbicides and insecticides. Although we have become accustomed to … |
Pests in the NewsJune 07, 2011
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Skeeters Just Find Some People Sweeter
Patch.com More recently, an article in the Wall Street Journal reported that scientists at the Rothamsted Research Center in the UK had identified seven to eight specific chemicals that entice the insects. These included both palatable and pungent aromas, … |
Pests in the NewsJune 07, 2011
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QUESTION:
We have a customer with warehouses used for storing bakery goods in waiting for sale to its
customers. One of the main items stored is wholewheat flour on pallets stacked 10 to 15 feet high. They are complaining that mice are ruining some bags of flour.
Upon inspection, small 3/4 inch holes can be seen in the bags of flour in one out of 50 bags. It also seems that these holes are in the top bags of the pallets only. No other penetrations are found in any other bags. It’s almost like they are dropping from the ceiling 10 feet above and
penetrating the top bags on the pallet, as there are no penetrations in the sides of the other bags of flour.
All pallets are moved regularly and placed 3 feet from the walls for inspection, sticky traps placed throughout. However, sticky traps have
proven to be non-effective. Maybe some way to keep them from getting on the pallets?
These warehouses are “Open Bayed” meaning doors are open all day during operation. Upon inspection it seems like the mice may be running through the interior walls as well. This is not a
food handling establishment and I am wondering if we can use tracking powder in the wall voids and Liqua-tox in those areas suitable for placement.
The customers are very good at sanitation and sealing of holes, voids, etc., however the walls seem to be the travel points. It seems focusing on exterior and wall voids are where I need to focus. What are your opinions?
ANSWER:
First I think we need to recognize that this is indeed a food “handling” establishment, which is defined as “any place other than a private residence where food is held, prepared, processed, or served”. The presence of all of these bags and pallets of food product stored there would qualify it as “food handling”, even though the food may not necessarily be exposed.
Second, it would be important to determine just where these mice are coming from, and if in fact there are mice, since you don’t specifically state that you know this damage is being caused by them. The use of a regular flashlight to examine all possible travel routes for evidence such as droppings, and an ultraviolet flashlight to inspect for urine, would be very helpful. This would allow you to inspect those overhead beams to see if somehow this is how the mice are getting onto the pallets. While mice could definitely drop a short distance to access food they also would easily climb up onto the pallets and bags, and this would seem like a more likely access for them.. Since they could not jump the 10 feet back up to the rafters they must be climbing down off the bags and heading back to their harborage, so I suspect that this is the more likely route. But, just to be sure it pays to inspect overhead as well, if only to eliminate that possibility. If you do find urine spots or footprints or droppings on the overhead beams then setting snap traps in stations along those beams would be effective.
I know it is typical for many warehouses to leave exterior doors open to facilitate movement of people and forklifts, but obviously this encourages rodents to enter and makes exclusion nearly impossible. Your inspection should include the entire exterior of the warehouse to see what openings do exist that could be permanently closed, and at the least this will narrow the entry of the mice to just the open doors, and now you can concentrate your initial defenses on either side of these doors. When a mouse first enters a structure it may spend up to an hour investigating things right in that immediate area, and if you have placed a number of stations on either side of the doorways you should get the mice quickly to enter the stations, now landing in traps or finding bait, depending on what choice you make. You also could place stations on the OUTside on either side of the doorways, hopefully intercepting them before they even get inside. Mice still are going to be nervous about traveling in exposed places, and will enter stations perceiving them to be secure places to hide temporarily.
I think that either a labeled tracking powder (used only in voids or in Tamper resistant stations) or Liqua-tox could be effective, and would be labeled for use in this kind of situation, ensuring that neither could get onto food or food surfaces. The liquid bait also would need to be in a station of course, and placed so that it would not get dumped by people or equipment running into the station.
But, an important beginning would be to determine for sure where the mice are traveling inside, and placing LOTS of traps and stations along those routes. Sealing off exterior entry points where possible will limit the entry potential to just a few open doors and you can concentrate your stations around these points for earlier interception of invading mice.
Pest QuestionsJune 07, 2011
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QUESTION:
What are the real pros and cons of Thermal fogs and Cold aerosols (ULV) in a mosquito management
program in a home complex?
ANSWER:
Thermal foggers essentially dribble the liquid insecticide onto a hot plate that then vaporizes the material, creating very tiny droplets of the liquid that are capable of floating or staying aloft for much longer periods of time. This may be beneficial if you are trying to release the fog at one point but allow it to drift with the breeze for a greater distance from that point. The droplets are in the range of 1 to 5 microns, compared with ULV droplets that are in the range of 5 to 20 microns in diameter. The ULV size is still pretty darned small, but being larger it falls faster, so in that same light breeze the ULV fog is not going to be carried as far.
I found an interesting chart one time that listed the differences in drift potential for various droplet sizes, and while the exact numbers may not be 100% accurate it still gives an amazing comparison. To start with the spray droplets that may be created by power spraying, where a lot of these fine droplets are in the realm of 500 microns in diameter, a droplet released at 10 feet of height in a 3 mph breeze will take only 1.5 seconds to hit the ground and travel only 7 feet off site. The fine particles in that spray may be 100 microns in diameter, and in that same 3 mph breeze will fall that 10 feet in 10 seconds but potentially travel 410 feet off site. This would be plenty of time to thoroughly coat a neighbor’s yard with pesticide they did not want there if you were not careful while spraying trees, shrubs or fences in a customer’s yard.
If we get down to that 5 micron droplet of a thermal fogger or even many of the smaller particles from a ULV fogger, in a 3 mph wind from 10 feet high the droplet takes 66 minutes to reach the ground and can travel as far away as 3 miles!! Here is your possible concern with thermal fogging – that fog is going to go a long distance, and you have no control over where it ends up. This may be what you want in a wooded or rural setting, but perhaps not so desirable in a residential setting. Since mosquito “misting” devices produce ULV droplets this points out the concern some states have regarding a system of one person’s property delivering pesticide onto the neighboring properties, and those neighbors may have strong concerns about pesticides and not want their properties sprayed in this manner.
I think you also have more options with ULV foggers, including some relatively low cost electrical models. Some of the older thermal foggers also were pretty noisy, so using them discreetly was not likely to happen. There even was an opinion I once read, but it may have been the opinion of someone who sells ULV foggers trying to convince us that thermal foggers were inferior. This opinion, though, was that the thermal fogger droplet size could be so small that it did not even attach to insects as well as ULV droplets do, but was more likely to just drift on by the mosquito and miss it. How realistic this is I really don’t know, but I toss it out for your consideration.
Pest QuestionsJune 06, 2011
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QUESTION:
Ground Bees – If and when treatment becomes necessary what would be a better option, dusting each individual burrow (and if so which dust?)or flooding with a wettable powder like Demon WP or something else? Seems to me that in a case where we are dealing with hundreds of nests that both methods would be very time consuming to complete.
ANSWER:
This is a tough call to make. You are correct in suggesting that treatment generally is unnecessary, and hopefully that is the route that should be approached first. We really need to help our customers understand that not all bugs should be killed. In the interest of a cleaner environment and a smooth operating landscape there are many kinds of insects that should be preserved. Unfortunately, most homeowners are not familiar with all the beneficial insects that appear at their porch lights or on their plants, and since they do not know their instinct is to ask that you kill them all. This would be the improper thing to do, and one of our roles as professionals is to learn what these insects are, understand their importance and role in nature, and educate our customers to understand that tolerance is better than a scorched Earth approach to pest management.
That little sermon behind us, but I truly do believe it is the best route to take, there will be times when harmless little burrowing bees simply cannot be tolerated by some of your customers, and it is their right to demand that these beneficial insects be eliminated in some way. There are non-chemical approaches that could be considered, and the primary one is to make the soil where the bees are working either unattractive or unavailable. The female bees will be active only for a short period of time, excavating the tunnels and chambers in them, providing a supply of food in each chamber, and then depositing their eggs and abandoning the job forever. They are not social insects (although sometimes bumblebees or yellow jackets may burrow in the soil) and as solitary bees they really don’t give much attention to any people hanging around near them. While they “could” sting the likelihood is extremely low, and given the benefit of bees preserving them is preferred.
The soil is not always appropriate for creating tunnels and burrows if it is very dry, particularly if it is loose soil or sandy, so keepin the area from being irrigated may be helpful. It may even be possible to discourage the bees by daily raking over the area to ruin their work of the day before, filling in the tunnels. Depending on where this soil is and how much is involved you may be able to recommend covering it with bark, gravel, or mulch, or even a sheet of plastic for a temporary period of time.
If treating is needed then generally treating each soil opening individually is recommended. Not only is this a more directed approach than generally spraying over the entire soil area just to kill bees working one tiny little part of it, but it puts the active ingredient and the bee into much more likely contact. In this case either a dust or a spray solution, directed into the burrow opening, should be effective, so now it is your choice as to which one is easier to apply. Dusts generally last longer than liquid sprays, but normally this is only when the dust is in a dry setting. A dust puffed into a small burrow opening may be more likely to be pushed deeper into the burrow, so this could be an advantage. “Flooding” the surface tunnel with liquid could get the material just as deep, but perhaps take longer to apply into each opening, and the liquid is going to soak into the soil around that tunnel, so perhaps the dust particles resting on the soil would be more available to the parent bee that is moving up and down during the process of digging. I guess I would opt for the dusting, using a contact insecticide rather than an inorganic desiccant dust.
Pest QuestionsJune 05, 2011
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QUESTION:
We received a call about thousands of flies in a yard. When I got to the customer’s house I found that the yard was clean and the flies were in the grass. I think they are house flies. I couldn’t get one to ID it. No dogs and no cats. Could you help me with this?
ANSWER:
Given the large numbers and the fact they are concentrated in the lawn seems to hint that they may be March flies in the family Bibionidae, also called “love bugs” when they are so often found with male and female attached and mating. This is the time of year for these insects to emerge in their huge numbers, and some news stories from the Southeast already have highlighted them and their terrible nuisance value. Sometimes highways get slick from millions of mashed march flies and the bumpers and windshields of cars get solid layers of their dead little bodies, so they can be a little more than just a nuisance.
The larvae feed primarily on decaying plant materials but females often lay their eggs in the soil of turf, and the larvae then feed on thatch buildup as well as on the roots of the grass. In many species the adult flies don’t even feed, so they spend pretty much their entire adult life with the various activities of mating and egg laying and then dying within a few days. As one resource on them puts it the males and females attach and remain that way, even in flight, but of course they separate once the female feels the need to start depositing eggs.
Generally these are nuisance only, but if you feel their numbers are so high that some turf damage could occur then treating the turf to kill the adults now will prevent all those eggs from being left in the soil there.
If these turn out not to be march flies then it would be important to gather some and get the positive ID. March flies are shiny black or black with a red thorax, and are about the same length as house flies but much narrower.
Pest QuestionsJune 04, 2011
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The Government department in charge of pest control has been closed down — by a plague of moths. Officials at Nobel House, the Westminster headquarters of the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra), were forced to call in pest …
Pests in the NewsJune 03, 2011
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Bedbugs might not be a topic for polite conversation, but the resurgence is growing in Wichita, said local pest control companies. “We’ve seen more bedbugs in the last year than we’ve seen in the other 38 years put together,” said Cindy Betts, office …
Pests in the NewsJune 03, 2011
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Air Products touts concentrated CO2 as a less harmful alternative to bromomethane, phosphine and insecticides, which have traditionally been used to control pests on food products. Unlike toxic chemicals, CO2 has less impact on the environment, leaves no …
Pests in the NewsJune 03, 2011
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