 Waikato Times |
Farmers target pests ravaging Kaimai birdlife
Waikato Times You look and think there are quite a few tui but when you hear that nothing's been done with pests in the Kaimais, they just devastate the native birds. It makes you think what we can do to help," King said. He has recruited a fellow farmer to the … |
Pests in the NewsOctober 11, 2011
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State, Abilene experts on the lookout for exotic plant pests
ReporterNews.com By Brian Bethel The Texas Department of Agriculture is not aware of any new exotic pests introduced in Taylor County, said Bryan Black, director of communications with the Texas Department of Agriculture. But over the last 10 years, … |
Pests in the NewsOctober 11, 2011
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Digging deeper: Do we need to fear hairy, crazy ants?
WALB-TV Not like our typical pests including termites. There are six to eight colonies per acre and live undetected in mud mounds like this one found in the crawl space of a south Georgia home. "Termites have to have moisture to survive so what they do they … Crazy Hairy Ants Spreading Through the South EastNewstar Media |
Pests in the NewsOctober 11, 2011
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Fox News |
War on Terror Misses Invaders: Invasive Bugs, Diseases
Fox News The consequences come home to consumers in the form of higher grocery prices, substandard produce and the risk of environmental damage from chemicals needed to combat the pests. An Associated Press analysis of inspection records found that … |
Pests in the NewsOctober 11, 2011
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University of Oklahoma forensics class not for the faint of heart
NewsOK.com On a recent field trip, students armed with face masks, magnifying glasses, test tubes and baggies searched first for the carcasses, then the insects and bugs that could provide clues to how long the carcasses had been there. … OU's 'Bugs' explores crime scene methodsTulsa World |
Pests in the NewsOctober 11, 2011
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New insects worry coffee growers
Times of India MADIKERI: A new type of insects are attacking coffee plants in Heruru village near here. These insects are slowly occupying coffee, pepper plants along with the shade silver tree. Coffee growers, Thekkade Sanjay, Sadashiv and Siddartha, expressed their … |
Pests in the NewsOctober 11, 2011
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Foreign insects, diseases invading US
Marion Star Dozens of foreign insects and plant diseases slipped undetected into the United States in the years after 9/11, when authorities were so focused on preventing another attack that they overlooked a pest explosion that threatened the quality of the … |
Pests in the NewsOctober 11, 2011
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QUESTION:
A few questions on Advion Cockroach Bait. First, will roaches die by just contacting each other? And, will the roaches eat the bait after the bait gets hard and how long does it take a roach to die after eating the bait?
ANSWER:
This was a little difficult to pin down as DuPont does not seem to have a useful product guide that answers these kinds of questions. Advion has the active ingredient Indoxacarb, and this a.i. kills by either being ingested or absorbed through the cuticle as a contact insecticide. In theory, then, if the roaches simply contacted the bait with their bodies they should absorb some of the active ingredient and it could kill them. However, obviously with a bait product the primary mode of control is ingestion, and I would say that a roach that has ONLY ingested Advion bait would not have any of it on its exoskeleton, and therefore other roaches simply touching that first roach should not be affected by it.
But, roaches do eat their own feces, particularly the first instar stage of the German roach, which stays in voids and dines on the fecal matter of other roaches. If those other roaches have recently fedd on Advion there should be some of the active ingredient in their feces and the roaches that eat them would be killed. According to one resource on indoxacarb death to an insect is between 4 and 48 hours after exposure, but a “stop feeding” action goes into effect within a few hours.
Most of the gel baits today are holding up longer than early formulations, but since much of the gel is water it is bound to evaporate, and once the gel hardens it is at the least much less attractive to the roaches. The moisture in the gel is part of the attraction as they do need water. In my opinion roaches would / could still eat the bait after it hardens, but it becomes much less attractive. If you have really limited other food resources then the bait is one of the few options left, and roaches would be more likely to continue to eat it.
Pest QuestionsOctober 11, 2011
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QUESTION:
How can I obtain a list of Green pesticides?
ANSWER:
As seems to be my nature I’d like to talk about this awhile, but I will start by saying that you can contact your local Univar PP&S office at 1-800-888-4897 and discuss this with our Customer Service Representatives there. Not too long ago we compiled an “internal” listing of products that nicely fit within a “green” pest management program, but we do not want to promote this list as one of Green Pesticides because there simply is no such list. Green is not about the pesticides. It is about HOW they are used. Now, your customers may have a very different view of what green means to them than you have for your own definition, so it is important to have a talk with customers who ask for green pest management on their property to understand what their perceptions are. In their mind green may mean that you use no pesticides, or only natural pesticides, and knowing this in advance helps you plan the proper strategy on their property that fits their needs.
Green Pest Management (GPM) may be a re-worded way of saying what we have said for decades, and that is Integrated Pest Management. But, IPM never really caught on with our customer bases, although all states now have in place School Pesticide Use regulations, and in most states part of this regulation is that the schools must have in place a written IPM Program. So, IPM is not dead, it just is not as trendy and catchy as Green has become, so we go with the times. GPM and IPM state that we use not just chemical methods for controlling a pest problem, but that we also look at the overall picture to determine what the contributing conditions are that are producing the pest problem. How is it entering a structure, what food and water resources are available to it, what harborage sites are available. And, then we make a strong effort to correct all of these contributing conditions as a major part of the control program. We do not just reach for the spray can and rely on pesticides to do all the work.
Both GPM and IPM also mandate the use of the many non-chemical tools, such as traps, exclusion materials, vacuums, steam, freezing, or mattress encasements in the case of bed bugs. These kinds of weapons can be effective without creating any environmental contamination, and they can be used in a very specific way for the intended pest. This is the emphasis behind Green Pest Management – minimal impact on the environment and other living organisms while at the same time achieving the NECESSARY pest management.
Chemicals are certainly part of both GPM and IPM, but we never settle into a one-shoe-fits-all approach to what we use. I often am asked what is “the best” product for flea control, but what you choose depends on a lot of variables – is this a home or an office, people present or absent, the wishes of the customer, carpet or hard flooring, etc. We choose the product that is best for a particular pest problem by taking these variables into account, but also with an eye to using the product that has the least potential to harm non-targeted organisms or the environment, again while still achieving the control we need. It would be pointless to use an insecticide that causes ZERO harm to the environment but doesn’t kill the pest either.
So, to that end we look at bait products that can be placed without polluting the environment and which may be very specific to the intended pest. We place them so that only the pest animal can access them. We use sprays and dusts only within cracks and crevices and voids, knowing that these are the best locations to put them if we want the maximum contact time with the pest. This also points out that just about any insecticide could be used in a “Green” program if it is placed where it cannot be contacted by other organims.
If we were to create a list of Green pesticides, again contrary to what green is really all about, we could place certain materials on that list. These would include IGR’s, as most growth regulators are effective only on insects. It would include all pheromones used on traps. It could include many (but not all) of the plant-derived active ingredients, and in general these may be what most homeowners think of when they think of “green”. But, not all plant-derived pesticides are necessarily safe for human exposure, as some of them can be really toxic or irritating or even possibly trigger allergenic responses. The list would contain many repellents as most of these are plant oils of some kind. Plant oils include MANY different products, but some are pyrethrum, clove, mint, garlic, d-limonene, Neem, rosemary, castor oil, and others. We should never represent that these are in any way NON-toxic, because they very definitely are toxic. However, they are “natural” and they break down rapidly in the environment.
Do natural, plant-derived oils kill only the “pest” insects? Certainly not, so even these so called green products could be used in a very Un-green manner. If you fogged a back yard with pyrethrum you likely kill all the ladybugs, lacewings, praying mantids, and other beneficial predators too, so as I said in the first paragraph – it is not about the pesticides, it is about how they are used that makes them green.
Pest QuestionsOctober 10, 2011
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QUESTION:
Some questions about snake pits please. Where and how do they occur, can snakes make their pits anywhere they want or is the pit already made by other snakes? Can a snake make its pit in a hole such as a gopher hole? Can snakes make pits near residental areas or only out where there’s nobody around? Please help me out with as much information as you can give me. Thank you
ANSWER:
The most famous snake “pits” that you may be thinking of are those of garter snakes, and there are some really famous ones in North America, such as the Narcisse Snake Pits in Manitoba, Canada, where tens of thousands of garter snakes gather as a winter hibernation site. They do not make these pits but use naturally occurring caverns created in the limestone rocks there. This site just happens to provide some perfect conditions for the snakes to survive the winter, including a lot of space to allow so many snakes to be in one place. Garter snakes are one group known to return to the same hibernation site (called their hibernaculum) each fall to spend the winter, and they may travel over 2 miles to return to that site.
Snakes are not necessarily social animals, but there are many times that you may find a lot of them gathered together. The garter snakes, again, are often found in writhing masses of hundreds of snakes where males compete to mate with females. There are also these kinds of mating events with other snakes, such as rattlesnakes. Females will take care of their offspring for a short period of time, so you may find a female with many young snakes near her.
Since that perfect place for hibernation may not be commonly found, where they do exist many snakes will gather and use the same dens. These will always be large holes or caves that already exist, as the snakes themselves are not particularly good at digging. The den may be a large burrow from a mammal that is now abandoned, or cavities under rock piles, or caves created by mining. The presence of snakes within burrows such as gopher holes is probably related more to their hunting for food rather than denning up for the winter. Generally speaking snakes are rather shy animals, so they really would prefer to be where people are not. There probably is no reason why a den of snakes could not occur in someone’s back yard if the conditions were right, but it seems more likely that more snakes would occur in more rural areas where there is less human activity. If you have a residential community bordered by woodlands or grassy fields this could bring the snakes closer to the residences.
Pest QuestionsOctober 09, 2011
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