CLARKSVILLE, Tenn. (AP) — Workers have cut down about two dozen insect-infested pin oak trees at a Tennessee high school. Northwest High School Principal Ed Stephens watched the work on Tuesday and said it was a terrible shame that the 20-year-old trees …
Pests in the NewsJuly 08, 2011
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City faces 'aggressive' mosquito
StarPhoenix "They're going to be in your face," said Geoff McLeod, Saskatoon's superintendent of pest management. The most recent count by pest management staff from the traps set up around Saskatoon showed 347 captures, 25 per cent less than the fiveyear average … |
Pests in the NewsJuly 08, 2011
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Getting the bedbugs out .
Victoria Times Colonist Bugs and pests fly, creep and gnaw into our homes – and now they will even crawl into bed with us. While most pests simply come in through doors and windows open to the summer air, others hitch a … |
Pests in the NewsJuly 08, 2011
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Jamaica has shuttered all citrus nurseries across the tropical country to try and check an invasive pest that carries a fast-spreading bacteria capable of devastating its $43 million commercial industry, officials said Tuesday.
Pests in the NewsJuly 08, 2011
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Bed bug reports skyrocket in summer
KARE "We see more calls towards the end of the summer," says Todd Leyse with Adam's Pest Control. "People are traveling and they bring them back with them." The kids head to summer camp, the family takes a trip, and students return home from college; … New Bed Bug Pest Control Dog Sniffs out Infestations in the NorthwestPR Leap (press release) Choosing a Pest Control Technician Key to Addressing Bed Bug InfestationsPR Newswire (press release) Bed Bugs: Part 1ClaimsJournal.com RedOrbit all 31 news articles » |
Pests in the NewsJuly 08, 2011
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Pests pose problems for NE Arkansas growers
KATV Thiesse says soybeans can usually handle up to 40% defoliation because of the pests. But Thiesse says farmers are being advised to add a pesticide to the tank if they're going to spray weed killer. Officials say cotton planting is about three weeks … Pests reported amid northeast Arkansas crops; armyworms, bugs turn up during …Daily Journal |
Pests in the NewsJuly 08, 2011
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Declining Bat Populations Increase Insect Numbers
Patch.com Bats stock up on insects before hibernation and diminished supplies could be cutting off their food supply. Bats are an invaluable part of the ecosystem. They contribute to insect control, plant pollination and seed dissemination. … |
Pests in the NewsJuly 08, 2011
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One of the world’s most destructive pests — with the potential to wreak havoc on the state’s agricultural industry — has been found by U.S. Customs and Border Protection agents at both the Detroit and Port Huron crossings.
Pests in the NewsJuly 08, 2011
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QUESTION:
What are the correct and effective preventive
measures to minimize mosquitoes and blood-
sucking flies activity around a given structure?
ANSWER:
Controlling flying insect pests can be one of the toughest things we do, especially if the focus has to be on the adult insect. We can concede that we cannot stop a fly from flying, and if there is some food attraction (in this case humans) these pests will head toward where we do not want them. I like to use my fingers to count on, so our choices for controlling biting flies are (1.) killing them after they enter the property we are managing (2.) killing them as adult flies before they reach the property (3.) controlling them in the larval stage before they become the biting adult insect. I suppose we also could toss in preventing them from biting, such as the use of long sleeves and repellents, and on a private property this advice may be useful to a homeowner, but on a commercial property such as a hotel it is not of any value. You are not going to get all guests at a nice hotel to put on repellent and long sleeved shirt and pants when they want to lay around the pool.
Larval control is the ideal method if it is possible. If you prevent the production of flying, biting adult flies you save yourself all that time and effort swattting at the adults. For mosquitoes this is very possible, as they must breed in standing water and the adult mosquitoes generally will be problems fairly close to where they grew up. Identifying all of these sources around that property and either draining the water away or treating it with a larvicide can be highly effective. You can educate customers to keep standing water eliminated where possible, such as clogged rain gutters, empty containers on the property with rainwater in them, tarps and other covers that hold water, depressions in the soil that can be filled, etc. They can manage bird baths, pools, ponds to keep water clean. And, you or they can use labeled IGR’s or bacterial products in the water that must remain to kill the larvae.
For other biting flies source control like this may not be practical. No-see-ums, sand flies, horse and deer flies – these all breed in any wet setting such as leaf litter, wet soils, etc., and controlling these larvae at their breeding sites may be impossible. Here you are stuck with dealing with biting adults. None of these flies, mosquitoes included, is highly attracted to UV light. Instead it is CO2 that is the primary attraction since this indicates a warm blooded host animal is present. Mosquito traps are one option you can consider, and while they will not eliminate mosquitoes they do help cut down the overall numbers.
Another effective option for mosquito adults is the use of barrier treatments, applying residual insecticides to the places you expect the adult mosquitoes to rest. Since all insects have to rest somewhere every day, and perhaps for much of the 24 hour period, if you can have a contact insecticide on those surfaces you will kill the adult flies. This may be vegetation such as shrubs or trees, may be within out-buildings such as sheds or pet houses, or under the eaves of the roofline around the structure. Some of the pyrethroid insecticides have been tested for this, and up to 3 weeks of good relief from biting adult mosquitoes has been the result.
There also is fogging with pyrethrum to kill adult insects that are present. This does a very good job of killing any flying insects that happen to be present at the time the fog is released, but pyrethrum leaves no residual, so you can plan on having more of the insects moving back into the treated area right away if the breeding sources are still producing them. However, you will definitely get some relief for awhile with fogging. On a small scale the “misting” products can extend this relief. These are permanently attached to a structure and on a programmed interval they release a timed amount of pyrethrum mist. Numerous nozzles can be used to provide this over a wider area to enhance the effect. Some regulatory agencies are concerned about misting devices, probably because they are used quite often around homes with no ability to control where the mist travels once emitted, and a neighbor may object to having their yard treated too.
If this is a private home you have some hope of educating the customers to wear long sleeves and long pants during those periods outdoors when biting flies will be present. You can strongly encourage the use of repellents, and new repellents are coming into the market to offer alternatives to DEET, which long has been the product of choice for effective and extended repellency. You can evaluate the home to ensure all windows are screened, doors closed or screened, and no other obvious entry points are present to allow biting flies to enter. Where these insects are a real problem you also can encourage the use of mosquito netting at night.
It is the use of these many options altogether that begin to put a dent in the problem, rather than relying on a single option that does only part of the job.
Pest QuestionsJuly 08, 2011
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QUESTION:
I have a client with fleas but she does not have any pets and has had a home inspection to determine if there are any rodents trapped or dead inside of her chimney, walls, etc. She has the occasional cats (not hers) walking around the house outside, but it has been that way for three years with no issues. We have treated the home twice and she has indicated that the living areas are virtually free of fleas. However the basement has now become their home. I’ve used Demize as well as Transport GHP and she seems to think that the Transport GHP has worked the best. Do you have any idea as to where they might be coming from? Any suggestions of what else to use?
ANSWER:
A couple of observations or thoughts to start. First is that those outdoor cats could suddenly become the source of a flea infestation even if they were not creating one in the past. It is a matter of the cats themselves acquiring fleas from some other source and now carrying the fleas around on their bodies, shedding flea eggs wherever they happen to spend time. However, this should not account for a lot of fleas indoors if the cats stay only outdoors. What normally will happen, though, is that feral cats or wild animals such as raccoon or possum will find a way to live under a house or an adjacent deck, seeding the soil there with thousands of flea eggs over time, and the ensuing adult fleas can find their way into the home. I have seen this twice recently with major invasions of bathrooms in homes where the source was the crawlspace below or the soil under a wooden deck immediately outside.
Aside from those thoughts we know that fleas must come from a vertebrate host animal. The typical flea is the Cat Flea, and it is a permanent ectoparasite, meaning it prefers to remain on the host animal and does not readily hop on and off. But, the eggs fall of the host animal and the larvae live independently in carpets, on soil, or any other protected substrate where they can find food, and one part of their food must be dried fecal pellets of blood produced by adult fleas. These also fall off the host animal along with the eggs. So…….somewhere nearby you must have some location where host animals have been spending time, and this is important to locate. We would consider this to be the source of this problem, even though the adult fleas may be found some distance from the source, as they will move about looking for a new host animal to get onto.
Since this seems to be a lingering problem in the basement you either have continuing production of flea eggs coming from host animals that are resting, sleeping, living nearby, or it is the vestiges of a flea problem that occurred there but still is not gone. Your enemy in flea control is the flea pupa, as the flea that has developed within the pupa can remain there for a very long time – many months – waiting for the proper “stimulus” that signals that a host animal (food) is nearby. This may be physical contact or strong vibration. To get these last fleas out of that pupa and into the exposed adult stage you can recommend that this customer THOROUGHLY vacuum every square inch of the basement before you treat again, and if it is carpeted to vacuum again each day for the next week. You might even have her vacuum the upper living areas again just for the heck of it.
The products you have used should kill adult fleas just fine, but the Demize is more of a short lived contact product that provides little residual. Better might be a residual material such as the Transport or some other pyrethroid that will last a couple of weeks to affect new adult fleas. It also is important to use an IGR with the treatment. The growth regulators are terrific products that can mess up both flea eggs and larvae so they do not develop properly, and if you stop getting new adult fleas you break up the life cycle. The IGR can be applied along with the adulticide, and should last up to 6 months.
Without physically visiting this home and seeing the basement and configuration of the building it would be hard to know just where the initial host animals were living to begin this infestation. It’s possible those animals are still living around the home and continuing to seed the area with new flea eggs, or it’s possible this is just the remnants of an old infestation and the pupae that have not yet hatched. Take a fresh pair of eyes in there and look at that basement and the areas outside it to see what you can find. You might find a lot of those outdoor cats residing comfortably under some bushes or a deck or some other cozy place right outside the basement, and if so they should be discouraged.
Pest QuestionsJuly 08, 2011
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