Archive for February, 2012

Norfolk CBP intercepts arrival of pest – WAVY-TV

Norfolk CBP intercepts arrival of pest
WAVY-TV
(WAVY) – US Customs and Border Protection (CBP) agriculture specialists in the Port of Norfolk intercepted the arrival of a pest native to the United Kingdom. Had the red mason bee been introduced in the US, the honey bee population would have been …

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Pests in the NewsFebruary 16, 2012

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San Marino Residents Asked to Treat Trees For Dangerous Pests – Patch.com


89.3 KPCC

San Marino Residents Asked to Treat Trees For Dangerous Pests
Patch.com
Due to a shifting of resources, the Citrus Pest and Disease Prevention Program is asking local residents to step up and inspect and treat their trees for a small, destructive insect. State agriculture officials are calling on homeowners to self-treat …
Earth Matters by Jacqueline Milner – Is Engineered food on the lunch menu …Cornwall Free News

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Pests in the NewsFebruary 16, 2012

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One giAnt leap: Incredible insects bridge gap over water with their own bodies – Daily Mail


Daily Mail

One giAnt leap: Incredible insects bridge gap over water with their own bodies
Daily Mail
An ant reaches out for the other side Photographer Vincentius Ferdinand, 39, captured these amazing pictures the insects in Kepulauan Riau, Indonesia, in December. 'These pictures were taken near to where I live,' he said.

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Pests in the NewsFebruary 16, 2012

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Feb 16, 2012 – Bed Bugs – The Beat Goes On Too

QUESTION:

We know bedbugs are dificult to treat. We are currently treating a residential single family home where bed bugs were found in 2 rooms and inspected for in every room. We use Temprid at the labeled rates, but after the initial spraying and repeated follow ups every 10 days we are still seeing adult, nymph and egg stages of these critters. The main culprit is a child’s wooden bed frame and headboard. Many cracks and crevices are present and breaking down of the bed is not an option. This doesn’t concern me as much as the fact that I fan spray the head board, out in the open, on a decorative groove that every 10 days still has live adult bugs collecting there and living in the area where the residual should be. How can they still be there time after time (6 total treatments, full inspection and treatment each time)? What can we do to make the treatment more effective? Could it be resistance? I hear nothing but good results from Temprid by others and chemical reps.


ANSWER:

I will approach this from several angles, and the first will be the wisdom of constantly applying a toxic material to the headboard of a child’s bed. Now, let me qualify that a bit. Temprid is an excellent insecticide composed of 2 active ingredients – the pyrethroid cyfluthrin and the non-pyrethroid imidacloprid. There is nothing wrong with either of these materials, and I suspect that bed bugs confined to a surface in contact with these active ingredients for a long enough period of time is going to die. Yes, The Common Bed Bug demonstrates a VERY high degree of ability to become resistant to most active ingredients, but it is not yet completely immune to them. But, because of this high level of resistance our industry experts still tell us that total reliance on insecticides is probably not the solution to bed bug eradication. And, as you state, 100% eradication must be the goal or the problem will continue. 

We also know that around 70% of the bed bugs in an infested room are going to be found in the immediate vicinity of the sleeping person – the mattress, box spring, and bed framing. The next largest percentage will be nearby in night stands, dressers, etc., and the rest of the bugs could be along edges of carpets, behind items on the walls, in adjacent rooms, and in anything else in the infested room. Perhaps what you are experiencing is a movement of bugs from these outlying locations to the locations where they are now closer to the food source. It may be a factor of available harborage that causes many of the bugs to hide further away, and when the numbers immediately near the person are reduced it opens up some places for the distant ones to move closer. Just my thought, but a possibility. 
These active ingredients definitely should still be present at a reasonable level after 10 days, but the question is “contact time”. Some of the studies done on resistance show that for certain active ingredients it may take 24 hours or longer for the bed bug to die from its exposure to a pyrethroid, and perhaps other actives as well. For this reason it is less efficient to treat open surfaces than it is to treat directly into holes, crevices, and voids that the bugs, theoretically, hide in for most of that 24 hours each day. Treating an exposed surface may achieve only minutes of contact with the traveling bug, as opposed to the bug resting directly on the active ingredient for 23 hours or longer. This may be what you are doing with this framing and headboard – treating crack & crevice – in which case my sermon is unnecessary. However, you do indicate you are fan spraying the decorative grooves in the headboard, which leads me to perceive it as treating open surfaces. 
You say that breaking down the bed frame and headboard are not options, and this should not be necessary if you can access all the hiding places and treat them. Obviously a major need at this time is to eliminate the bugs from that bed so that child can sleep without being fed upon. Can this entire frame somehow be heat treated so that you know all bugs and their eggs are now killed? If so, then perhaps the bed can be isolated by placing the feet of the framing within traps, and ensuring that no blankets touch the floor. This may not stop bugs from falling onto the bed from the ceiling, but it should greatly reduce the problem on that bed from bugs walking over to it. 
Do you have the mattress and boxspring of this bed inside quality encasements? This at least reduces the harborage opportunities for the bugs. Could the headboard itself be enclosed within some plastic material to remove it as a harborage opportunity? Is this customer cooperating fully be passing all bed coverings through a cycle in the hot dryer? In short, do you feel that these bugs you continue to see must be hiding in and on the bed and framing themselves, or are they moving into this location from other places in the room? Have you treated EVERYthing within this room, including all electronic equipment? With Nuvan Prostrips available now with good labeling we have the opportunity to isolate difficult items within plastic bags and to fumigate them with the dichlorvos in the strips, killing bugs and eggs that otherwise were impossible to treat. 
Are you treating along all edges of carpets, either with a steamer, with a residual spray, or with a dust such as Tempo or Drione dust. Are you treating within wall voids in this room using a dust product? I really doubt that you have stumbled upon some population of bugs that are dramatically different than those found everywhere else, but somehow these bugs continue to hide where they are not being exposed to treatment methods. Again, why they would seem to be surviving right there in plain sight on surfaces you have previously treated would seem to be a result of insufficient contact time with the active ingredient. But, hopefully you can take some other steps that will allow you to stop the constant application of the insecticides on this sensitive location so close to the child. 

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Pest QuestionsFebruary 16, 2012

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Bedbugs found in dorm on Kearney campus

Officials at the University of Nebraska at Kearney have confirmed a case of bedbugs in a residence hall. The university says a company has been at the dorm to conduct an in-depth inspection. UNK director of Residence Life Tony Earls tells …

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Pests in the NewsFebruary 15, 2012

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Utilizing IPM strategies – High Plains Journal

Utilizing IPM strategies
High Plains Journal
Integrated Pest Management is a valuable management tool that strives to use several complementary control methods to manage pests making the system more stable and subject to fewer production risks. The 20th Annual New Mexico Ag Expo is pleased to …

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Pests in the NewsFebruary 15, 2012

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The summer scourge – Southland Times


Southland Times

The summer scourge
Southland Times
In summer, some preventive spraying for insect pests is a good option, as opposed to waiting till a problem erupts. Several spray applications may be needed for control. Hot weather can bring drought conditions, and this puts plants in stress, …

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Pests in the NewsFebruary 15, 2012

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A plague for restaurants – Topeka Capital Journal

A plague for restaurants
Topeka Capital Journal
Nobody is immune to having pests.” Not everyone considers that to be the case, and only about 3 percent of restaurants in Shawnee County have had a roach problem in the past year, according to inspections by the Kansas Department of Agriculture.

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Pests in the NewsFebruary 15, 2012

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Natives thrive with pests off island

IN the middle of the vast Southern Ocean, halfway to Antarctica, a transformation is gaining pace – with stunning results.

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Pests in the NewsFebruary 15, 2012

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Feb 13, 2012 – What Is A Structure?

QUESTION:

With the new rodent bait station laws for exterior use, stating stations cannot be placed further than 50 feet from a structure, what is considered to be a “structure”? Does it have to have 4 walls and a roof? Can it be a 4-sided fence? What about dumpster sites? Would they be considered as structures?


ANSWER:

When it comes to interpreting language on pesticide labels it is always best to consult with your own local regulatory agency. This sounds like I am ducking the issue, but what one state defines as a “structure” might differ quite a bit from other states’ interpretations. So, that will be my ultimate advice, to talk with your local regulatory inspectors and see what they will enforce on this. 

However, I think in our own minds we can generally understand that a structure is some building or other construction that has walls and a roof. In California structures can include vehicles, such as railcars, airplanes, trucks, or ships. It doesn’t have to be a permanent structure that sits only in one place, although obviously placing bait stations around an airplane that is going to move away would not seem to be in keeping with the spirit of the Rodenticide Mitigation Decision (RMD). We also need to avoid trying to work around this. For example, a previous question to this forum asked if a small bird house could be placed on some outlying fence and thus constitute a structure at that point, and my response was that this was highly unlikely to be accepted by any regulatory inspectors. 
Within the discussions on this issue from the rodenticide manufacturers, the information that we received from LiphaTech stated that EPA directs the states themselves to be the ones to interpret label wording. The manufacturers are not permitted to make these interpretations, so all they can do is add to their rodenticide labels exactly what EPA directs them to add, and how the wording is interpreted is then up to each state regulatory agency. On this information from LiphaTech they also state that EPA does NOT consider fences or fencelines to be structures. In fact, the actual wording now on rodenticide labels is “do not apply further than 50 feet from buildings” (not “structures”, but “buildings”), so perhaps this is even more clear of a picture. The concrete walls around a dumpster would not conceivably be considered to be a building. A fence with 4 sides to it would not either. 
So, we will need to stick to the more likely definition that exterior bait stations must be placed within 50 feet of permanent structures that have walls and a roof, but do check with your own regulators to be certain of their intent. 

View past Ask Mr. Pest Control questions.

Pest QuestionsFebruary 15, 2012

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