Archive for the ‘Pest Questions’ Category

Jul 20, 2012 – Once Gone, Back Now

QUESTION:

I have been spraying a restaurant for 6 months using Suspend SC inside and Cyper WP outside and really have had no problems until now. The establishment is getting overrun with roaches coming out of their walls and out of the thermostat. I have baited the areas with Maxforce and I have used CB-80 and dusted the wall voids with DeltaDust just in the area of the thermostat. I was wondering if there is a different approach I should be taking or maybe a different product.

ANSWER:

I still maintain that the insecticide active ingredients we currently use, and which you have been using, are effective at killing German roaches. The important key is that the roach and the active ingredient must meet and stay in contact with each other long enough to get that lethal dose into the roach, and the best way to accomplish this is to place the active ingredient directly into the places where the roaches hide during the day – cracks, crevices, holes, and voids. In a restaurant these kinds of harborage could be in a great many locations, and perhaps your focus on that thermostat where you (or your customer) have seen them emerging is causing you to overlook other important places. 

Since you feel that you had effective control for several months it may be time to go in with a fresh Inspection of the entire facility, using knee pads, a flashlight, and perhaps a C&C pyrethrum aerosol to find out just where the roaches may be now. It may be that they are also hiding in equipment, floor molding, within boxes in storage, or in other wall voids where you simply are not aware of them yet. If the interior truly is “overrun” then it sounds like you have a fairly large infestation that would most likely be using many areas for their harborage. These all need to be discovered and treated in some manner, and “treated” could mean simply filling in a hole or crevice permanently so that harborage is no longer available to the roaches. 
You also need to evaluate what might have changed in the recent past. Has the sanitation effort by the customer declined so that more food resources are now available. Are their storage areas cluttered and filled with cardboard boxes. Are more things being stored on the floor. We really need to avoid complete reliance on insecticides to handle roach problems, and in particular if sanitation is poor then your bait products will not be as interesting to the roaches and your contact insecticides will be less effective. I would suggest altering bait products on a regular basis regardless, as this offers alternatives that may keep the roaches feeding on them. Dusting within wall voids is excellent, but you should try to access as many interior voids as possible and perhaps use an inorganic dust like boric acid or silica gel or diatomaceous Earth. These will last for many years, whereas synthetic actives like deltamethrin are going to degrade in a much shorter time. This is particularly so where heat and water may be contacting the treated surfaces. 
Again, nothing wrong with cypermethrin as a contact treatment but it still pays to rotate your product choices for spraying to avoid any possibility of resistance or avoidance. Try one of the newer non-pyrethroids for a few months instead, and concentrate on placing all sprays directly into cracks and crevices using a C&C tip. This not only puts the most active ingredient into the most important places, but it also removes the a.i. from human exposure and from being washed off by the next wash down. Place lots of insect glue traps around the interior, such as under and behind all equipment, and take a look at them within a week to see what is captured and where. This may reveal that the roaches are coming from places you did not suspect, and you can then treat those locations. Advise the customer that you are placing these traps and that they should not be moved or washed down or covered in any way. 
But, most important now, I believe, is to make a new and thorough inspection to find out just where all the roaches are hiding, and then attack them once more at their source. 

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Pest QuestionsJuly 22, 2012

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Jul 21, 2012 – Pyrethroid Concerns Again

QUESTION:

Can you please name some other products that are similar to EcoSmart’s lineup? I was told by one of their reps that because of the excessive moisture in western Washington he did not think their line was the best choice for my area…..suprised me. I also question the residual of these “greener” pesticides and prefer the cold, hard “facts” on this. I like independent studies that are not connected to the manufacturers. I am not sold on my kitchen spice rack as pesticides.
With respect to the new labeling of pyrethroids, labeling now calls for no spraying in the rain or if it is going to rain. Have we now stepped into forecasting? In western WA when does it not rain?



ANSWER:

We’ll address these as two separate issues, and I share some of your concerns. I am often asked “how long” a particular active ingredient or group of them will last and always sidestep the answer to the best of my ability. The length of residual of any active ingredient is just too variable depending on many environmental conditions – heat, moisture, pH, concentration when applied, kind of surface, exposure to UV light, sanitation issues, etc. When the “EcoSmart” product line was first introduced to our industry we were told by the manufacturer that the active ingredient (hexa-hydroxyl) would last as long as the synthetic pyrethroids do. Whether or not this is true I really do not know, but my feeling is that most of the tree oils and other Botanical insecticides should be considered as contact activity with a very short residual. I don’t know that I have seen any third party studies on this either, and whether it is these plant-derived products or old synthetic standbys I tend to be skeptical of some of the claims by manufacturers. 

I am not sure why your region with perpetual rainfall should be any different that any other region of the country except for the likelihood that applying the products outdoors will likely expose them to rainfall much sooner, and thus the onset of hydrolysis that degrades the molecules or simply being washed off the surface. By the way, the brand name of EcoSmart is now aimed primarily at the retail, over-the-counter market and the professional line of their products has a name change. You will now find Univar selling them as the Essentria brand and the manufacturer, formerly Prentiss, is now named Envincio. So, look for those new labels on PestWeb. 
There is no doubt that your kitchen spice active ingredients are quite toxic, and in fact hospitals admit a great many people each year suffering from clove oil toxicity due to a fad of smoking clove oil impregnated cigarettes. “Toxic” is not a quality reserved for traditional synthetic pesticides, and plants produce some pretty dangerous stuff, much of which has been formulated into insecticides. Whether the fact that they are “natural” and from plants means that, therefore, they are less hazardous to people or to the environment is a good question, but I personally believe that being natural does not change the need to use them wisely, with PPE in place, and to limit their use as much as possible by focusing on non-chemical steps in the overall management of the pest. 
Now to the pyrethroid issue. Yes, the new labeling is found in two areas of the pyrethroid labels, and this new labeling will be on ALL pyrethroid products of ALL formulations. Within the “Environmental Hazards” section of the label you will find the statement “Applying this product in calm weather when rain is not predicted for the next 24 hours will help to ensure that wind or rain does not blow or wash pesticide off the treatment area.” According to the NPMA this is a “suggestion” or guideline, not a mandatory statement that you shall not apply if rain is “predicted”. Instead, under “Directions for Use” you will find the MANDATORY statement “do not make applications during rain”. 
I think this is a very important distinction. Yes, it would be best for everyone and for the environment to avoid applying any insecticide that may get washed off the surface in the next 24 hours, but you are only mandated to avoid the treatment if a rainfall event is in progress. Of course, we need to be upstanding about this and if we really know that it is going to start raining shortly after we apply the product it would just not be right to go ahead and spray it, even though the rain is not occurring yet and technically we are legal. Even though this statement now appears on all pyrethroid labels you will also find similar wording on the labels of many alternative products. Applying the insecticide just to see it washed away is not good for the environment and is a dis-service to the customer. 

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Pest QuestionsJuly 21, 2012

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Jul 18, 2012 – Roaches Gotta Eat

QUESTION:

I have a friend with a custom car building / mechanic shop which is a large place, equipment around the walls, car lifts, etc. With the restrictions we have now how would you go about treating a shop like this for roaches? In the past I have treated around the base of the walls as much as possible, under equipment the best I can, and spot treated around the doors and any possible entry points. Mainly I see American and Australian roaches and there are no moisture issues that I can see. There is no break room so no feeding area or water resource. There are two bathrooms just off of the shop which I treat. The way I have treated in the past has worked just fine, and just wondering what your professional thoughts are.


ANSWER:

First, I guess, is that I don’t know of any new restrictions on the use of insecticides indoors for a site like this. You may be referring to the new label changes on synthetic pyrethroids, but these only address outdoor settings and refer to restrictions in using these products on exterior surfaces of the structure and on “impermeable” horizontal surfaces such as patios or sidewalks. I don’t think these changes should have much effect on how you would treat for cockroaches, either inside or out. This, however, doesn’t necessarily mean that what you are doing or have been doing should not change in some way. If it is not currently fixing the pest problem then continuing it would seem to be a poor course of action. 

I personally believe that just about any of our currently popular cockroach products is going to kill cockroaches. The key is getting the active ingredient and the roach together for a long enough period or time, and this is referred to as “contact time”. The a.i. must be given the opportunity to get inside the roach in concentrations high enough to kill it by affecting its nervous system, or in the case of boric acid baits to be eaten in sufficient quantities. A quick run across a dry deposit of insecticide by a large cockroach is really unlikely to achieve this contact time, and for this reason I am not a great fan of baseboard treatments or other surface spot treatments. Much better for roaches found indoors is to take the fight directly to where they spend 80% of their time, and that is hidden within crevices, voids, and beneath materials resting on the floor. Placing the active ingredient directly into their harborage maximizes the contact time and also puts that material where other roaches may choose to hide if they enter. 
One IPM step that could be offered to this account would be storage of materials off of the floor, perhaps on metal racks as much as possible. Removing that harborage opportunity limits what is left so you can treat it more easily, less roaches can live inside with the reduced hiding places, and you put those present under stress because you have taken away one of their needs. 
Now, whether or not you know of any food or water resources we have to recognize that these roaches are, indeed, eating something. Perhaps their foods are outdoors and they are just using the interior for harborage during the day. Perhaps there are foods inside that you have not discovered or your customer has not revealed to you. Presumably the people who work there do eat lunch at work occasionally, so something may be discarded or fallen and forgotten. Ditto for the moisture, and Australian roaches in particular require high moisture in their environment. Of course, you are in Florida, so humidity is high anyhow, and with all the recent incredible rain you have had it may be that much higher. This also may be a reason these roaches have moved indoors more to escape excessive water outside. 
I would take a really close look around the exterior to see where these roaches may be coming from, since they often are outdoor roaches. There may be opportunities to change conditions outside to remove food and clutter that support them. You also might try granular insect baits outside and even inside with a bait labeled for the interior. Large roaches seem to like this kind of bait and eat it readily, particularly if other foods are removed or restricted. Take a look at any voids inside such as wall voids that connect to the exterior, as the roaches may live within them and they could be treated with a contact dust. Take a close look at where you can fill in openings on the outside that the roaches may be using for entry, and seal those permanently where possible. 

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Pest QuestionsJuly 20, 2012

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Jul 19, 2012 – Pump and Spray Performance

QUESTION:

How can I measure output pressure (p.s.i.) at the nozzle of my JD-9 gun or lawn wand on my truck mounted spray rig? Not just the pressure the device is rated for. I am trying to evaluate major changes to the output p.s.i. of my spray rig and their ultimate effect… this may be plumbing changes, orifice configurations, aging components, and other variables that all have effects on the ultimate pressure of the insecticide applied. I am a pest control technician who utilizes this rig at least 5 days per week for perimeter spraying, lawns & outdoor commercial.

ANSWER:

The ideal and most accurate way to measure pressure at the nozzle would be to have a pressure gauge installed on the spray gun, and JD-9 gunjets do come as one model tooled to accept a pressure gauge. If yours is not set up to screw a gauge directly onto the gunjet the next best thing would be to install a gauge in-line between the hose and the gunjet, and these are available as well. The gauge will probably feel like it is getting in the way if you leave it in place for all your work, but you could at least determine what the pressure is and then remove the gauge for your daily routines. 

Exactly what the pressure is at the nozzle tip where the liquid comes out varies, as you indicate, with a number of considerations. The diameter and length of the hose are big ones, and there is a dramatic drop due to friction between the pump and the end of the hose. You can find formulas for determining what this loss of psi is, but it still could be somewhat subjective and only an estimate. The kind of spray gun and the size of the orifice are also major considerations, and the larger the orifice the less resistance you have pushing back on the flow of the liquid, so a larger orifice should equate to somewhat lower psi actually coming out the nozzle. A “flood” or “shower” style nozzle reduces that even more and is probably the best kind of nozzle to use for turf applications, as you get a faster treatment of the turf with far less fine particles being produced, thus less drift. These kinds of lawn guns are available from Univar. The shower style nozzle would not be appropriate for spraying taller trees, so for that a JD-9 gunjet is good but with a fairly large orifice to put out the volume with less mist and fine droplets that drift. 
But, to get the most accurate reading of the psi at the tip of the gunjet you would want a gauge installed as close to that tip as possible. Knowing exactly what your output psi is could be a very important consideration, as many product labels may restrict what psi you are using for your application. Certainly this is a restriction on termiticide applications where guessing at the psi could be a problem. 

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Pest QuestionsJuly 19, 2012

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Jul 16, 2012 – Live and Let Live?

QUESTION:

I have a customer who has a serious cicada killer problem. He has a very thick lawn that he waters to prevent them on his property. The neighbor to his left does not water his lawn and has a much larger number of the wasps and the property to the right has no vegetation and has many wasps as well digging into the sides of the hill. It also has a large drainage pit for the development. I’m out of ideas as to how to help him. I think he is doing everything he can but is there anything else I can tell him to help the situation? Do Purple Martins eat cicada’s? Are their any other natural predators that would be of help to him? If you have any advice that would be greatly appreciated.

ANSWER:

The huge Cicada Killer wasps are common in the eastern U.S. but do not live in the western states, so I personally have never had experience with them. We do have many other kinds of solitary, predatory wasps that capture other insects, create burrows and chambers in the soil, and provide that captured insect as food for their developing larvae, but none nearly the size of the cicada killers. A couple of things really are important here. The first is the extraordinary benefit that all of these solitary predator wasps provide to us with their feeding on cicadas, caterpillars, crickets, and other insects that truly are the pest problems in the garden. The second is the fact that these wasps do not have social structures and therefore do not have the instinct to rush at someone to sting them when they approach a colony of the wasps. There are no colonies of cicada killers, only large numbers of them working independently. 

Now, a female cicada killer is quite capable of inflicting a painful sting, but this would happen only if that  wasp was directly threatened, such as captured in a hand or confined within clothing, and every reputable resource on these wasps states that stings from them are quite rare. It appears that the benefit far outweighs the threat, and the ideal thing would be for these customers to begin to appreciate the work the wasps do, including that free aeration of the turf, and at some level start to enjoy having them around. All that being said I also recognize that the digging of the females can make a pretty large mess of a nice lawn, and when hundreds of them are working on a single turf area it may become intolerable. 
The female wasp looks for soil that is the right consistency to allow her to dig that tunnel and create the side chambers for her offspring to develop in. Sand would collapse too quickly, but other soils may hold up just right. Watering a lawn heavily is probably not enough water to discourage them, and anecdotes about using water to keep the wasps away tell us that it is done by actually flooding each individual burrow so completely that the female wasps finally decide to go somewhere else. This means going to each burrow opening daily and using the garden hose to fill that burrow with water until the wasps no longer are using that area. 
Every other treatment for these wasps also seems to be hole-by-hole, and area wide applications of insecticides do not seem to be particularly effective. Some level of kill of the adult wasps may be possible by spraying a contact insecticide over the turf, but this will kill only a few and others will continue to work and the area will continue to attract them. This is going to be a very seasonal phenomenon, as the adults are only working in July and August, but that still is a long time. Insecticide applications are effective only when applied directly into the burrow opening, and this does appear to be successful, if only for this one season. Various pyrethroids in either dust or liquid spray form can be poured or dusted in and this will kill the working female wasp. Even “home” remedies by people who think they are using non-pesticides rely on treating each hole individually. 
Covering bare soils with gravel or garden mesh will discourage the wasps from digging. There even are many university websites that suggest that a tennis racket will quickly “dispatch” the wasp, but now you could be aggravating that wasp enough to elicit a sting if you miss with the first swing. Tolerance and appreciation are always preached by wasp experts. From what I can read Purple Martins may very well eat cicada killers, as they feed on nearly any kind of insect available, but predators like birds do sometimes figure out that large wasps can sting them and may avoid the risk. It is rare for any predatory bird or mammal to actually eliminate an insect problem from an area, so if they do eat these wasps they are not going to eat them all. 

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Pest QuestionsJuly 18, 2012

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Jul 17, 2012 – Batty Buildings

QUESTION:

I have an account with bats in a small metal building. I have watched them leave so I know where to block access. Do you have any helpful hints on installing screen or netting to exclude them?

ANSWER:

In my mind’s eye a metal building can be a pretty porous structure, so even though you know where the bats CURRENTLY are entering and leaving it would be wise to take a pair of binoculars and walk the entire perimeter to see where else they may be able to get in. There also will often be multiple entry points, and you may not see this until you visit the site at early evening when the bats are leaving and find a way to observe all sides of the structure, perhaps with the help of some friends. Even if you block the preferred opening bats will attempt to find another way into this chosen roosting site if one is available, so all openings need to be permanently closed. 

Some people have better results with evicting bats if they offer the bats an alternative outside but a little away from the structure, and bat “houses” are popular for this. Given the benefits of bats and their current plight with “white nose syndrome” we should do what we can to preserve the bats and allow them to continue to live in an area……….just not in our buildings. Once you manage to get these bats out and keep them out it would be good customer service to inspect the area where they have been living to see what kind of mess they are leaving behind. Their feces and urine are not healthy materials to leave in a structure inhabited by people, and some cleanup and sanitation may be needed. 
This time of year one little concern you may have is that these bats may be breeding inside this structure too, and this could continue through the warm months. If you exclude the adult bats at this time you may be causing their young to be left behind to die, and this is not a good thing. So, if you can determine that young bats that cannot leave on their own are within this structure it would be advisable to hold off on the exclusion until early fall, or early September at the earliest. Repelling them from the interior with ultrasonic devices is completely ineffective and the use of moth balls is generally illegal, not to mention that you would have to use so much of the moth balls that it would create an awful odor for human inhabitants. The permanent solution is allowing them to leave willingly but not return. 
Allowing bats to leave is often done with a one-way flap or sleeve that allows the bats to push their way out through that entry hole and past or through the material you have over it, but prohibit them from getting back through that material to re-enter. Not all bats leave every night, so whatever you place over their openings should be left there for at least 7 days. Bird netting of fine mesh can be used as a large flap over the opening that they can push aside to exit but cannot lift for re-entry, and hung at least 2 feet below the opening. A tube can be made from some material and also hung over that opening. Univar sells several configurations of “Bat Cones” that also work well, offering a cone that narrows toward the end so that the bats are unable to work their way back through the ultimate opening. 

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Pest QuestionsJuly 17, 2012

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Jul 14, 2012 – Readers’ Digest Rodenticides

QUESTION:

Could you tell me a little about rodenticides? A history of the transition from multiple dose to single dose, acute vs. anticoagulants, their toxicity to humans and the different classes of them?


ANSWER:

This is a pretty wide topic, so this will be a very abbreviated history as I can remember it. Certainly the first toxicants used to kill pest rodents were natural substances that were available in plants or minerals, such as arsenic (a mineral), cyanide (from a family of salts but also present in many plants), and strychnine (from the seeds of a tree). These are all extremely acute poisons that killed any animal that ate the bait laced with them, and bait avoidance due to eating sub-lethal doses was a possible concern along with the deaths of too many unintended animals. Other early active ingredients included Red Squill, Thallium sulfate, ANTU, and 1080, and each had its benefits and its problems. Another early product was zinc phosphide, and of course this and strychnine are still used in a limited number of rodent baits today. 

In the 1940’s anticoagulants were more or less discovered by accident, when “dicoumarin” was isolated as a chemical responsible for internal bleeding in livestock that ate spoiled clover hay. The potential for using this “anti-coagulant” as an animal toxin was then investigated by the Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation, and eventually WARFarin (named after that group) was created as our first rodenticide anticoagulant. The benefits of anticoagulants include the fact that the active ingredient has essentially no foul taste that would cause bait avoidance, has a delayed reaction so that the rodent will eat more bait before effects begin to take place, thus avoiding bait shyness, and there is an “antidote” that can overcome the effect of the toxin. This is Vitamin K, and I prefer the word “treatment” to “antidote” since an animal may need to continue to receive Vitamin K treatments until the toxin is finally flushed from its system, which can take awhile for some of the anticoagulants. 
The anticoagulants actually are still highly toxic substances, but they are so diluted with food ingredients, taking the actual bait formulations down to an a.i. of less than 1% toxin, that it reduces the risk to non-targeted animals. As animals will eventually do, resistance began to develop to these early “multiple feeding” anticoagulants, which also include diphacinone, chlorophacinone, indandione, and others, and efforts began to find new anticoagulants that offered the same benefits on no bait shyness or avoidance, but which could get a lethal dose into the rodent with a single feeding, and difenacoum and brodifacoum, still in a number of our current rodent baits, were the first two Single Feeding anticoagulants to be developed. From these bromadiolone and difethialone were developed, also current actives in our rodent baits. These are often referred to as the “Second Generation” active ingredients and their oral toxicity generally is much higher than the First Generation actives, so they may be present in the finished baits at even lower concentrations. 
An effort continues to develop rodent baits that are fairly specific to rodents, or which offer some other safety features that reduce the chances for non-targeted animal poisoning or secondary poisoning, and one of these features is found in the “stop feed” actives such as bromethalin. According to manufacturers of the products with this a.i. a rodent loses its appetite shortly after consuming enough bait to kill it, and thus it does not fatten up on more bait and toxicant than is needed, hopefully reducing the chance for secondary poisoning when another animal eats that rodent. Bromethalin also is not an anticoagulant, and thus bypasses any resistance that may be developing in rodents to the anticoagulants. Instead, it acts to stop the production of energy packets (ATP) at the cellular level, essentially causing the rodent to die as its organs fail due to lack of nerve activity. 
Another active that followed the anticoagulants and which is still in our arsenal today is cholecalciferol. This a.i. causes the release of stores of calcium into the blood and results in heart failure. This a.i. and bromethalin are also considered to be “chronic” toxins, as are all of the anticoagulants, in that the effect in the rodent takes time to progress. The safety feature here is that medical treatment can be given when a child or a pet eats one of the baits, whereas the “acute” toxins like strychnine and zinc phosphide may not offer that time delay. 
I’ve probably forgotten something of value here, but hopefully this is a decent synopsis of where we were and where we are with rodent baits. 

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Pest QuestionsJuly 16, 2012

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Jul 15, 2012 – Dead Rodent Disposal

QUESTION:

What is the correct way to dispose of dead rats?
Thank you.

ANSWER:

Well, this is actually a really good question, and as usual my answer is not going to be a short one. There are just too many variables here not to cover some of them. The first is that gathering and disposing of dead or dying rodents that are the result of your rodent control work is often MANDATORY – you don’t have a choice and must do it because most rodent bait Labels state that you are to do so. If it is on the label then it is the law, and leaving dead rodents behind would be a violation, not to mention must bad customer service. This is one reason that baiting indoors has drawbacks, as rodents very likely will die in an inaccessible place (wall void, far reaches of the attic) and be there for flies to breed in and for odors to develop from. Dead and dying rodents outdoors may be available for other animals to eat, leading to the possibility that secondary poisoning could occur, however unlikely. 

Rodents are also often covered with parasites such as lice, fleas, or ticks, and once the rodent dies these arthropods do not, and will leave the host animal in search of a new host for their blood meals. Removing dead rodents quickly also removes these important parasites, but now we move into the second phase of this answer and that is personal protection. You should always wear washable or disposable gloves when handling rodents to avoid getting their problems onto your skin. When handling snap traps with rodent blood and other remains on it you really would prefer not to touch that material with your bare skin. When working in an area where rodent waste materials are present you also should have long sleeves and a respirator to avoid any skin contact or inhalation of the dust that may come off that surface. A lot of nasty things grow in and on rodent feces and urine. 
Phase 3 of my answer is with respect to the actual disposal of a carcass, and of course we have to keep in mind that animal “cruelty” is a huge consideration with many people. If you have a rodent that is still alive but captured on a glue trap or snap trap it probably should be dispatched / euthanized / humanely killed before you wrap it up and toss it in the garbage. Whether we all agree or not we should have some concern for the suffering of any animal and kill it as quickly as possible when killing is needed. A look at a number of responsible sites, such as university fact sheets on rodent control, placing a dead rat or mouse within a plastic bag that can be sealed closed and thrown in a dumpster that is headed to the local landfill seems to be an acceptable method for disposal. But, you never know what kinds of local ordinances may exist in a community, so it would pay to investigate this before you start any action like this. You may be in a city or county that requires that all dead rodents be buried or taken to the local shelter for incineration. 
Burying dead rodents is also often recommended, but one concern here is that other animals may dig up that rodent and either eat it or leave it exposed on the ground. To minimize this possibility you may want to bury that animal at least 2 feet deep, and now we are talking about a lot of work, and you either aren’t going to go to that much trouble or you are going to accumulate a lot of dead rodents so you can do them all at once, neither of which is a good idea. Enclosing in a sealed plastic bag and disposing of in a trash can or dumpster that will be emptied for removal to a sanitary landfill very soon is the best idea if there are no local taboos against it. Generally speaking, dead rodents and their waste materials are NOT considered to be “toxic” or hazardous wastes. 

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Pest QuestionsJuly 15, 2012

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Jul 12, 2012 – The Path to Professionalism

QUESTION:

In your opinion, what is the difference between a pest control technician and a “spray jockey” or a “Dale Gribble” type besides the official stuff like training and accreditation.

ANSWER:

Well, this is one of those questions I just love to ramble on about, but also one I am really passionate about, and I’ll take a couple of different paths here. Let me start with a comparison and offer that there are a lot of professional school teachers or professors out there who, without a doubt, really know their subject matter and who may have several degrees and other accreditation, but who do not have the ability to “teach” that information to others. Similarly, we have plenty of people working in professional pest management who may attend a lot of training events and have state-issued licenses and other accreditation, but who maybe did not pay close attention to what was taught at those training events or perhaps just chooses to stick to the fast and easy way of doing things. It may have as much to do with desire and attitude as it does with the formal training and licensing. On the other hand, there are a great many highly professional people in our industry who do not have to multiple licenses or much formal training, but they have good common sense, high moral standards, and a strong sense of what needs to be done to resolve a pest problem properly. 

I feel fortunate to have known quite well Mr. Norm Ehmann, a former star in our company and one who felt his own passion for moving the pest control industry forward into professionalism. His enthusiasm for educating technicians and owners rubbed off on me, and watching the changes over 35 years proves that this desire has made positive changes. I don’t watch the TV show “King of the Hill”, so I really don’t know how Dale Gribble is portrayed there, but I assume from the context of your question that he is not exactly the role model our industry wants to see on mass media. Unfortunately, portrayals like this one or the awful “B……. The Exterminator” reality (is that really “reality”) show might convince the American Public that this is how our industry really is, and they fail to separate true reality from entertainment. 
I think the true professional in pest management continues to learn everything he or she can about this industry, stays on top of changes and new issues that come along, willingly accepts that changes are going to be made and must be followed, and looks for the best long term solution to pest problems with the least use of toxic materials. He does not have a one-shoe-fits-all approach to all pest problems, but recognizes that different products are best for different issues. He has a strong focus on proper identification to ensure that a “pest” is actually present, and avoids the use of pesticides when it is not necessary. He works with the customer to teach them about contributing conditions on their property and how to resolved those conditions so that a pest problem is reduced or prevented non-chemically. 
The spray jockey uses pesticide whether or not it is needed because he is convinced that the customer is not going to pay if “something” is not sprayed, and the more the merrier. The spray jockey hops out of his truck on that monthly or quarterly account and, without bothering to inspect the property, just starts spraying the usual chemical that he always uses on that account. The spray jockey does not involve the customer in the selection of products to be used nor spends any time helping the customer to understand what the problems are and why they exist there. After all, the more the customer know the less mystery there is about pest control. The spray jockey doesn’t care what kind of bug it is or whether or not it is a beneficial or a pest, but works on the policy that the only good bug is a dead bug, and wants to see zero living creatures on the customer’s property. 
Fortunately we have tremendous leadership in the pest management industry, not only with the National Pest Management Association but every state association as well as the many university and private consultants who work so hard to teach us what they know. They have for decades preached the messages I summarize above, that IPM is absolutely necessary if we expect to provide  the best long term control with the goal of reduced use of pesticides. They preach that proper ID is absolutely necessary if we are to choose the proper methods and products to manage that pest. They work with the regulatory agencies and those groups who are not fond of our industry to come to compromise and workable regulations. 
But, ultimately it boils down to the technician himself, and whether he is just in this for a buck or wishes to be professional, effective, and concerned with the environment. Something about leading a horse to water………

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Pest QuestionsJuly 14, 2012

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Jul 13, 2012 – The MOA of Foggers

QUESTION:

Do spiders breathe in foggers? How do foggers work?

ANSWER:

We can answer this on two levels, the method of “breathing” by spiders and other arthropods and the way that foggers and mists actually affect the arthropod pest. The first is on breathing by bugs, and spiders have a somewhat different setup than insects do. Insects usually have “spiracles” that are small openings along their sides or somewhere else on their exoskeleton (on maggots they are on the end of the abdomen). These allow air to move into the body of the insect so that the air then is transported passively through smaller and smaller tubes to each area of the body, supplying the needed oxygen throughout. Some aquatic insects will have gills that remove the oxygen from the water, as with dragonfly larvae. 

Spiders and scorpions have “book lungs” under their abdomen, and these are large folds that lie within a pocket, more or less like thick pages in a book. This maximizes the surface area that is in contact with air (oxygen) and surrounding the book lungs will be large quantities of the spider’s blood, allowing the oxygen to move into the blood for transport throughout its body. So, neither spiders nor insects nor any other arthropod “breathes” actively in the manner of vertebrates. We actually pump the air in and the waste products out, and anything in that air (dust, vapors, droplets) gets pulled into our lungs as well. Particles and droplets are far less likely to move through the spiracles or into the book lungs of spiders, so getting the tiny droplets of a fog or a mist into a spider is not likely to happen. This is what foggers emit – droplets – and they may be very small in diameter but they are droplets nonetheless. 
However, some insecticide active ingredients will vaporize to leave the vapors in the air, and this may be part of the mechanism of pyrethrum. Even though the droplets have evaporated the vapors remain to some extent, and thus we get some repellency to flies from the use of aerosol misting devices set up over doorways. For most other active ingredients we should not expect that vaporization, and the droplets from foggers go up into the air and finally settle down onto horizontal surfaces below, with the active ingredient still in that droplet and thus settling only on that surface once the water or other diluents evaporate. The tiny droplets from foggers go only where air movement carries them while they are still aloft, and for the smallest of droplets this could take an hour or so. But, they are incapable of entering sealed areas such as wall voids, drawers, sealed packages of food, closed closets, etc. This is why fogging the air is not going to control an infestation of food pest insects where the larvae are living and feeding inside closed packages of food. 

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Pest QuestionsJuly 13, 2012

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