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Pest Control Specialists Contact Us

4012 N. Main Street
Dayton, OH 45405

QUESTION:

How long after a person is bitten by a bed bug
does it take for a bite mark to appear?

ANSWER:

And therein lies the problem. The bite reaction from bed bugs can run the gamut from no reaction at all to a serious immune system reaction. Typically there is a bite mark that appears anywhere from 1 hour to 24 hours after the bed bug has fed, but for some people it may be delayed, and the reaction or bite mark may not appear for up to 2 weeks after the feeding episode. I know one local college professor who maintains a bed bug colony in his lab, feeding them his own blood on a regular basis. He tells me he has been bitten thousands of times and never has shown the slightest reaction to it. His wife, on the other hand, was bitten by bed bugs in a D.C. hotel a few years ago and had to seek medical attention to calm down the large bumps that appeared on her skin.

If we say what is normal, then normal would be that for most people the bite mark will appear within the first 24 hours, showing as a red bump that itches for the next couple of days. With a little luck and no excessive scratching it should, like a mosquito bite, then just go away. However, some people can exhibit stronger reactions as their immune system just hates that foreign protein (the bug saliva) that much more. For some it may lead to long term problems with their nervous system.
At this time there continues to be no evidence that The Common Bed Bug – Cimex lectularius – is capable of vectoring any pathogens to humans, despite what the media likes to publish now and then or all the incredible things you can read on internet Blogs. It is obvious that these bugs can ingest pathogens from an infected human, but there seems to be no mechanism for them to pass the pathogens along to another human. The unfortunate side to this is that many public health agencies continue to label the Common Bed Bug as NOT a public health issue. This is slowly changing as they recognize that there are many serious consequences to the presence of bed bugs in a home – sleeplessness, irritability, anxiety, etc.

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QUESTION:

I have a client who claims that they have gribbles, which are wood eating crustaceans, Genus: Limnoria or L. lignorum, (according to their research on the internet). I have not been to the site to identify it. My questions is, is this pest indigenous to Malibu, CA, and if so how do I treat it?

ANSWER:

Well, I sure learn something new every day, and my first thought was that here was another great example of the power of the internet, allowing people to find justification for their imaginary problems. (It also reminded me of that old Star Trek episode and the infestation of tribbles on the Enterprise – “gribbles”?).

However, turns out that there is such a thing as a Gribble, and the Latin name you provided is valid – Limnoria lignorum is a marine crustacean (related to pillbugs and sowbugs) that does feed within pilings and other wood members where the wood meets the ocean. When their numbers are really high they can do serious damage to the pilings, and even leave behind a hollow timber that no longer provides any structural strength. While I cannot swear they occur in Malibu it would be likely that they do, since Malibu is located right along the coast of southern California. The gribbles look very similar to sow bugs, and as we may know another name for sow bugs in many countries is “wood louse”, so they are known to enter wood.

Control after-the-fact may be very difficult, as it would require treating a piling that is going to be in contact with the water in a short time. And, treating that piling below water line is probably impossible to do. Bora-Care may be one of the only wood preservatives that could actually penetrate deeply into logs, and it is labeled for use on “pilings”. However, the intent is to treat that piling prior to its being sunk into the ground for holding up boat docks. Any surface coating currently on an existing piling would prevent the use of Bora-Care, as would any contact with water within 24 hours, seriously limiting its use on pilings.

This may be something beyond the scope of our normal pest management, and perhaps should be referred to a company that specializes in boat docks and their repair or installation. I was unable to find anything on the internet that offered any valuable tidbits on the management of these arthropods.

As a followup, it turns out that this client likely has Amphipods – little garden “shrimp” that commonly occur in damp areas in landscape, and which are harmless scavengers that really do not require control, other than removing their hiding places.

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There has been a 57 percent increase in the number of activities concerning mice and a 21 percent increase in such activities concerning American and German roaches in River Campus buildings during the beginning of this fiscal …

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WEST COVINA – A little more than a month after a search for Asian tiger mosquitoes in South El Monte came up empty, officials have found the invasive insects in a neighborhood near Duarte and Irwindale. According to a news release …

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QUESTION:

I live in Central Texas. On our Oak trees are BB-sized balls glued to the leaves – thousands of them per tree. I’ve been told these balls are from wasps. Could you please give me more data?

ANSWER:

Yes, these are caused by tiny wasps, but they are not glued to the leaf. In fact, they are part of the leaf tissue and they are galls, most often caused by wasps in the family Cynipidae. The one you describe sounds very much like one we have so commonly in northern California, and which I sort of thought might be unique to our state. We call ours the California Jumping Gall, and this is due to the fact that it falls from the leaf in the summer and the wasp larva inside that little gall begins tossing itself back and forth, perhaps intended to cause the gall to end up within some crevice in the soil where the larva then can pupate in comfort. But, all that tossing and flipping will cause the gall to jump right off the surface, and the jump could be an inch or more high. If you can imagine thousands of these tiny little balls bouncing all over the patio and on cars and outside furniture, the result is amazing, albeit terrifying for the homeowner who has no idea what’s happening.

You don’t mention whether or not your galls are hopping, but if they were a species that did this you likely would be aware of it by now. However, there are hundreds of other kinds of galls on oak trees and other trees, although some of those on oaks are the most interesting. They are created when a female wasp “stings” the tissue of the leaf to implant an egg. They really are not stinging wasps, but they still use the ovipositor for this. The egg hatches and the larva begins feeding within the leaf, but as it feeds it secretes some chemicals that cause the leaf to react in a way that is specific to each kind of gall wasp, forming these enlarging and unusual eruptions of the leaf tissue. Some of them end up looking like red Hershey’s Kisses candy, some like balls of fluff, some are spikey, others flattened – just an amazing array of shapes and sizes. They nearly always are attached on a leaf vein where the thicker tissue is.

They nearly always are completely harmless to the tree, particularly when they are on deciduous oaks that lose their leaves in the fall anyhow. Some kinds of galls, like spindle gall, will form on the thin stems rather than the leaf, and when these enlarge they do cause some minor die-back of the plant from that point outward, but it does not harm the tree overall. The Jumping Galls cause the greatest interest and concern due to their weird hopping and visibility to homeowners.

What can you do about them? Essentially nothing, and there is really no reason to spray pesticides all over the trees in an effort to eliminate them. It won’t do much good anyhow, as the active ingredients just don’t penetrate that gall, so it is a waste of toxic material. Better is to educate the customer with the trees to understand what these are and the benign nature of them, and hopefully they then will actually learn to enjoy the oddity. Not all “bugs” are a problem and not all of them need to be killed.

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U.S. ARMY KWAJALEIN ATOLL, Marshall Islands – After an increase in cases of dengue fever found in the Marshall Islands, leaders and experts in the medical and environmental fields emphasized the mounting importance of controlling Kwajalein’s …

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Christmas trees are back and so are the critters. Quarantine officers discovered today that three shipping containers sent to Home Depot contained trees infested with various , according to a press release. “As a precaution, the three …

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Maintain rigorous rodent controls over winter months Farmers Guardian WITH many farmers reporting early rat problems this autumn after a quiet winter and spring, this year's annual National Farm Rodent Control study promises to be especially revealing, says BASF Pest Control Solutions, which runs the survey. …

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Batzner Pest Management: Again recognized for growth and best business ethics Wisbusiness.com “We've grown because of our ability to adapt to the pest control needs of our clients, the excellent work of our dedicated employees, referrals from our existing customers, and the changes in our marketplaces, says Batzner. … and more »

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