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4012 N. Main Street
Dayton, OH 45405

QUESTION:

I am dealing with an apartment complex where every week they are finding new apartments with bedbugs. As far as insecticides, is there any one that so far has proven to work more than others? I am aware of mattress protections and vacuuming etc, but if it were you what would be your top preference of insecticide, with or without an added IGR, to appply for treatment. Thank you in advance for your answer.

ANSWER:

Your situation is not all that uncommon, judging by the talks I attended at the recent NPMA Conference, where a great many educational sessions were devoted to the topic of Bed Bugs. The problems are compounded in multiple family housing for several reasons. One of these is the cost to completely eradicate the bed bugs once they have gotten a foothold, and apartment managers often balk at that cost and opt for chasing the bugs around instead. Another problem is the tenants themselves – poor preparation, refusal to cooperate, refusal to admit they have bed bugs, etc. There also are battles between managers and tenants over who should pay for the cost of removal, and while the argument goes on the bed bugs expand their presence.

The fight against bed bugs in this situation has to involve educating the tenants themselves. They MUST learn about the bed bugs, how to prevent bringing bugs in themselves, and how to deal with the bugs once they have them as well as how to inspect their own apartments for the bugs. Some apartments are now offering FREE clothes dryers, but charging more for the use of the washers, in the hope that tenants who have traveled will immediately place everything in the dryer that can be there. A hot dryer by itself is capable of killing all bugs and eggs on clothing, in backpacks, blankets, stuffed toys, etc.

If we speak only in terms of insecticides I am going to offer you the list given by one NPMA speaker, who surveyed the pest control industry in 2011 and asked that question – what chemical products are most used by our industry. This is not my endorsement of any of these, as I don’t want to anger manufacturers whose products I did not mention, but the list may be helpful to you. This survey found that Phantom was used by 51% of PMP’s, Temprid by 42%, Bedlam 28%, Gentrol, Alpine, and Transport all about 15%, DeltaDust about 12%, and Suspend, Tempo, and Drione all about 10%. What this may tell us is that MANY different active ingredients and chemical families and formulations work well on bed bugs IF the product is placed where the bugs will contact it for a very long time. It remains a fact that treating baseboards and other exposed surfaces in the hope that the bugs will walk ACROSS the treated surface will be ineffective. The materials must be placed directly into the bed bug harborages where they will be in contact with it for hours.

In this manner you also directly treat the bugs with the wet spray or the dust particles, ensuring maximum contact with the active ingredient. One speaker made the comment that the Common Bed Bug has an extremely high potential for developing resistance to just about any insecticide active ingredient. It may not matter what product you use – it is how it is used that is important, and this means crack and crevice treatment, void treatment with dusts, treating along and under carpet edges and behind baseboards, etc. There does not appear to be any single insecticide active ingredient that currently is the magic material for the common bed bug, and it may never come along. Control now relies on all of those non-chemical steps combined with proper use of insecticides, continued monitoring to determine the success, and likely some repeat treatments where bed bugs continue to be present.

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Tiny Pests Threaten California's Citrus Trees Gazette Newspapers A tiny pest, called the Asian citrus psyllid, is what's threatening fruit trees in the Long Beach area as well as other parts of Los Angeles and Orange counties, as well as San Diego, said Citrus Research Board President Ted Batkin. …

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Popular Mechanics

Stop Pests From Invading Your Home This Autumn Popular Mechanics When it gets cold outside, bugs, rodents, and other pests want to get inside. We asked the experts for their best tips about keeping pests out–and what to do if they get past your defenses. By Stephanie Warren As the temperature outside drops, …

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The State

Clemson plant pest experts seek public's help finding new stinkbug SCNow CLEMSON — South Carolina residents are being asked to help track down a new stinkbug that has Clemson University plant-pest experts concerned. The public is encouraged to take samples to their county Extension Service offices. Unlike the stinkbugs … New Type Of Stinkbug Invades South CarolinaNews Channel 7 all 3 news articles »

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WANE

Texas drought may have affected migration of monarch butterflies, fewer … The Republic The insects need the nectar from blooming plants. Entomologist Mike Quinn with Texas Monarch Watch says he drove through the Hill Country last month and was disappointed in how many dead plants and how few butterflies he saw. Monarch butterflies are few and far between in Texas this yearFort Worth Star Telegram all 31 news articles »

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QUESTION:

I guess we all know to remove the honey and hive after exterminating honeybees. It surprises me at how fast other bees and insects will move in to collect the honey. But, what if you can’t get to the honey? Case in point is a recent job I did on a 5th-wheel RV type mobile home. You darn near have to tear it apart in order to get to all the honey. These mobile homes are a common habitat for bees and in my small bee control experience I have run into several infested RV’s. My question, is there another method of dealing with the old hive other than removal?

ANSWER:

The awful truth is that the honey should (must) be removed in some way, and therein lies the problem. In looking at a few resources from Beekeepers Associations there do not seem to be any good hints on how to get the honey to be removed by other bees, and of course allowing the honey to remain within a void in a structure is an open invitation to other honeybees to attempt to colonize the same place. Ants will certainly detect that that remaining honey and, once the bees are eliminated, will also move in to enjoy the feast. If you are in a region that gets hot in the summer the wax comb will melt without the bees there to maintain it, and the honey then flows wherever it darned well pleases, creating a major mess that is going to be a lot more expensive to repair than if the hive and honey had been removed right away.

The amount of honey might be minimized by waiting until very early spring to eliminate the bees, as they feed on the honey all winter long where it is too cold for them to continue to forage. But, less honey is still honey, and one way or another that hive will need to be located and the area opened for physical removal of it. The entire area of the hive should also be scrubbed well to remove all traces of odor of the hive and honey, or it could continue to be an attraction to other insects. In addition, simply killing the active bees and stopping at that point still leaves a lot of pupae in the hive that will develop on through to new adult bees, and there is a possibility that these new bees could regenerate the colony.

So, there is the dilemma that needs to be told to the owner of that RV. One way or another the hive has to come out, and this means opening the wall to get to the hive. You might be able to narrow the search for the hive using a digital camera on a tube, where you can slip the flexible extension tube into an opening in the wall to take a look inside the void. I have seen these cameras available in stores now for very little money, and you can view the scene right on the small attached digital screen. If you are unsure where the nest is this can really help, and then only the necessary wall materials need to be removed to get to the hive. Once the hive is removed and the wall repaired, ideally by a licensed contractor who knows how to do this kind of destruction and repair properly, a careful inspection of the exterior of this home can be made to see what exclusion steps can be taken to prevent more bees from invading in the future.

Again, looking over those beekeeper websites and university websites on dealing with honeybees in walls, they all more or less apologize for the fact that dismantling the wall is going to be needed. Leaving the honey there just leads to too many other problems. I suggest that anyone doing honeybee removal have this advice in writing, and have the customer SIGN the contract to indicate that they were advised of the need to have the hive removed. If it is not in writing and they fail to take that step they could come back and blame you for not telling them of the problems, and in court the sympathies could just lie with the victim – that homeowner now facing major repair costs.

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Lawn & Landscape

Industry seeks remedy for court-ordered permits Lawn & Landscape RISE presses Congress to end the duplicate permits pest control managers need under the Pesticide General Permit. WASHINGTON — RISE (Responsible Industry for a Sound Environment) continues to seek remedies to US EPA's recently published Clean Water Act … and more »

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QUESTION:

From time to time I attempt to catch gophers from a customer’s property and go through the process of trying to open the lateral and follow it to the runway in order to set my traps. It can be very difficult to do sometimes, due to the type of soil, moisture, landscaping features, etc. I position the trap in the most likely spot, cover the hole, then check back the next day, and often for several days to reposition the trap or do more digging. Many times I have gone for several days with no activity at the location. Even though I didn’t catch the rascal he’s still GONE. No more gopher on the property. What is your opinion about whether to charge the customer for the time spent and the fact that no gopher is present after so many days, or charging only if a gopher WAS caught. I have always kinda had mixed thoughts and can make a case in my own mind either way. What do you think?

ANSWER:

Well, that opens an interesting discussion on whether or not a carcass of the pest must be presented to the customer for your work to be considered successful. My knee-jerk response is that no, of course you do not need to present the dead gopher for you to have dealt with it so that it no longer bothers the customer. Now that I’ve stated my position let me try to justify it with some other comparisons.

First, killing gophers or other mammals is not always the goal of the management program. Many homeowners may opt for things such as repellents or exclusion, and these certainly do not kill the gopher but only cause it to go somewhere else and cause misery. What YOUR customer has contracted with you to do is to remove this gopher in some manner so that it no longer is causing damage on their property. What means you choose is up to you, and since the result you find here is that the gopher no longer seems to be on the property of your customer I would say you successfully completed your end of the contract. Just because it is not in the trap does not also mean that it was not killed in some way. Perhaps it was captured but managed to remove itself only to die somewhere else in the burrow system. Perhaps your activity in its secretive burrow frightened it so that it moved away from the area.

If the customer tries to make the case that “well, it could come back again” the same could be said for any other gophers living around that property. When you remove one gopher it opens up that property so that others may move onto it without competing with the previous resident gopher. Your elimination of one gopher could not possibly be a guarantee that no more will bother this client. Another comparison could be gopher control with the use of bait or fumigant, where you rarely would see dead gophers laying around, but assume success and control based on the fact that their activity has ended on the property. And, since the end of that activity coincided with your efforts I would connect the dots and suggest that you were responsible for it, and should absolutely be paid for the time you have spent there.

This is a paradigm shift our industry has attempted for awhile now, educating the homeowner or other customer that they are paying you for relief from pest problems, and NOT paying you to “spray” something. Pesticide applications may well be needed as a part of the overall program of pest management, but that program also involves inspecting, monitoring, exclusion, etc., and all of this requires your valuable time. I guarantee that nearly every other service industry charges for their time spent on the property, not just for the time spent changing a part. There can be a great satisfaction from a trapping program for gophers if you actually catch the gopher, but I don’t think you should have any internal ethical argument with yourself about charging for your work if the desired result was achieved.

View past Ask Mr. Pest Control questions.

Pests take up residence in ASU apartments ASU Herald The next day, a maintenance worker was doing routine pest control on the building. I stopped him and asked if he could do anything about the wasps and from what he said, someone has told maintenance that "residents can take care of the wasps themselves …

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Honeybees get some high-tech help Stock and Land HIGH-tech help is on its way for Australia's honeybees, with researchers developing remote surveillance systems for the hives situated around Australia's ports to catch foreign bees and pests. The aim is to provide information to inspectors almost … and more »

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