Archive for the ‘Pest Questions’ Category

Mar 28, 2012 – In Order of Popularity…….

QUESTION:

What pesticide is best used for eliminating bed bugs?

ANSWER:

The advice from our many industry consultants and experts on The Common Bed Bug continues to be that we need to NOT rely on insecticides as the ultimate answer for its control. Insecticides definitely can kill the bugs, and perhaps their eggs, but at this time there still is no perfect chemical solution for this difficult pest, other than whole-structure fumigation. Resistance to the many pyrethroids continues to be an issue as does the ability for the bugs to hide in many places that are not easily treated. In addition, you may choose to use several different formulations depending on the setting – Nuvan strips for fumigating electronic equipment and other sensitive materials inside a sealed bag, a dust for within the wall voids, an aerosol for treating along seams inside furniture, a liquid residual for treating along carpet edges. You may choose one product for use away from the bed and another for use on the mattress itself, given the sensitive nature of the mattress. 

It also continues to be important to consider all the non-chemical aspects, and these include the use of steam along mattress seams, the hot washer and hot dryer for everything that can go through either of these appliances to heat up and kill bugs and eggs, the installation of mattress and box spring encasements, and the use of some of the improving monitoring devices and traps. Obviously all of this means that the price to do bed bug eradication is going to be far higher to the customer than for getting rid of just about any other pest insect, and you cannot expect to eliminate them by using only insecticides of a single kind. 
According to a recent survey and reported at the last NPMA Conference, these are the most used products in order of their popularity in our industry – Phantom, Temprid, Bedlam, Gentrol, Alpine, Transport, Deltadust, Suspend, Tempo, Drione. Phantom and Temprid were by far the most often used products. This speaker at the conference also reported that the average number of visits per account was 3 and the average time spent was 3 hours per visit to the infested account, so again we cannot treat bed bugs as we do earwigs or ants. They are simply a different breed of horse. 

View past Ask Mr. Pest Control questions.

Pest QuestionsMarch 30, 2012

No Comment

Mar 29, 2012 – If It’s Not One Thing It’s Another

QUESTION:

As a technician I service a lot of restaurants. My question is where in a restaurant can I spray with my B&G? my boss wants me to spray just about everywhere, but I refuse to spray in food prep and cooking areas, and I tend to use crack and crevice treatments and glue boards in those areas. I do spray the dining area. I would hate to contaminate the food with overspray. Also, are we allowed to set snap traps in those areas or only glue boards for rodents?

ANSWER:

I will preface my response by saying that regardless of what you CAN legally use in your accounts you are really obligated to do what your manager tells you to do, short of breaking any laws or good ethical standards. We all may have slightly different ways of doing things and each of them may be equally effective and within the label directions. So, I am not going to focus on what you “should” be using in restaurants, but only on what the law permits. 

First on the rodent traps. Yes, definitely you are permitted to use snap traps and any other kinds of traps in all areas of restaurants. Your considerations should be these. In dining areas you absolutely do not want patrons of the restaurant seeing a trap or even worse a trap with a rodent in it. When we eat in a restaurant we prefer to divorce ourselves from the idea that our chosen restaurant could possibly have a rodent problem, so keeping all traps out of sight and mind to the patrons is important. In the kitchen and other “Food Areas” of the restaurant the traps should be set so they cannot be contacted by anyone and will not be covered with food, hit with wash water, or otherwise contaminated or interfered with. Snap traps are considered a more humane trap than glue traps, and with either kind of trap the rodents captured should be disposed of quickly. 
A “Food Area” is defined as any place where food is prepared, processed, served, or stored. The dining areas are a “food area” when food is present, but a non-food area when no patrons are there and no food is on the tables. It is important to carefully read each Label of each product you use to determine what that particular product legally allows you to do in a food area, or even in a non-food area for that matter. Most residual products allow no more than a “spot” application in a food area, and may even be restricted to a crack and crevice application. Frankly, if it is roaches that you are concerned with a C&C application is going to be more effective anyhow, as this puts the active ingredient directly into where the roaches spend 80% of their time. Spraying generally over open surfaces is a waste of material, and coincidentally increases the chances of that spray contacting people or food. 
So, the Label tells you “where” you can spray in that restaurant and “how” you are allowed to make that application. There are very few places in a restaurant that you are prohibited from treating in any manner, but it is the method of application that is important. Treating in food preparation and cooking areas is perfectly acceptable if you determine that those are the locations where the roaches are to be found. Just as important in the long-term management of this problem in that restaurant , however, would be EXCLUSION. If this is a regular account that you visit every month or two months, and on each visit you re-apply your material into the same cracks and crevices, why not take just a moment longer on one trip, fill in that crevice with the appropriate caulking, and never have to treat it again? Roaches cannot hide where they cannot squeeze in. It really should be our Hippocratic Oath to use as little toxin as possible and still achieve the best roach control we can, and eliminating harborage is a big step in that direction. 
You do seem to distinguish between “spraying” and “crack and crevice”, so it appears that you are currently treating within the food areas, and that C&C application should be fine and effective. Even in the dining area you would be better off, for roach control, to do C&C applications rather than spraying along baseboards and other open surfaces. It is simple math that it takes contact TIME between the roach and the active ingredient in order to get sufficient a.i. into the roach to kill it, and a quick run across your band sprays is not likely to get that contact time. Applying insecticides onto exposed surfaces is also putting that a.i. where it is much more likely to degrade rapidly. 

View past Ask Mr. Pest Control questions.

Pest QuestionsMarch 29, 2012

No Comment

Mar 26, 2012 – Coming From The Neighbors

QUESTION:

We have a commercial building that has an ongoing Fungus Gnat problem. The employees are telling me that they cannot take it much longer. There is a recycling center directly across the street and we are very confident it is the source of the problem. We find the live gnats in all the rooftop air conditioning unit filters everytime we look. No moisture visible around the A/C’s. The A/C company does keep those disks in the drip pans. We have checked the entire 150,000 sq. ft. facility for moisture related problems repeatedly and find none. There are no potted plants in the facility. The customer has about had it. Any suggestions for us?

ANSWER:

I probably don’t have any good ones. Fly control relies heavily on source reduction. You cannot stop flying things from flying, although fungus gnats are not strong fliers and shouldn’t go far from where they are breeding. This time of year there could be plenty of outdoor sources for them as we come out of a wet period. It is tempting to blame the recycling operation, and my experiences with these facilities is that they rarely are anything but pretty messy. But, is there a chance that you could speak with the management of that recycling center and be allowed to look around there as well? If your customer is getting so many fungus gnats from the recycling operation that they are in agony, then there should be plenty of fungus gnats at the recycling center for you to pin down that place as the source. If you are allowed access, and it would take some real diplomacy on your part to sweet talk them into it, you may be able to find some likely breeding resources for the gnats that could be fixed. 

However, I have not started to hold my breath on that one. So, we’ll move on to dealing with these gnats at your customer’s facility. I know that it does not take many fungus gnats up your nose to be an intolerable problem, and these tiny flies can be pretty determined and annoying. It even seems as though they are drawn to breath, and make the effort to fly into your face. So, is this ongoing fungus gnat problem one where there are thousands of the flies in the building or just that onesy twosy gnat that finally picks the last nerve? For occasional gnats it could well be a few that live in the mulch outdoors and make it in when doors are opened. For thousands then obviously some hefty breeding source is nearby. 
If you are resigned to dealing with the adult gnats then your options are really limited. I am not a great fan of pesticide applications for gnat control. You can kill all the adult gnats with a fogging of pyrethrum, but this is only a stop-gap measure designed to give relief while you find and correct the breeding source. Surface applications of residual insecticides may kill some adult flies but again it is going to be very temporary if successful at all. You could consider placing UV light traps throughout this building, and these are going to catch fungus gnats. You don’t indicate what kind of commercial building this is – office, manufacturing, distribution – or if the employees being bothered are sitting at desks or working in a warehouse. This could definitely affect what options will work. 
There really are no traps designed specifically for fungus gnats, and no baits or other attractants to draw them to a point. The UV light traps will be helpful. You might even consider placing plenty of large yellow sticky traps around the office area, and inspect them in a week to see how successful they were at drawing and capturing gnats. Yellow has traditionally been the color believed to be most attractive to flying insects, although Pest West is coming out with their BLUE Fly Baiter that the believe is more effective at attracting and capturing house flies, phorid flies, and some other flies. 
I would not abandon the hunt for the source, nor dismiss the possibility of inspecting the recycling center and hopefully making some fixes there that could reduce the breeding potential, if that turns out to be the actual source. 

View past Ask Mr. Pest Control questions.

Pest QuestionsMarch 28, 2012

No Comment

Mar 27, 2012 – Bringing In The Heat

QUESTION:

What are your thoughts regarding pest control technicians reporting customers to public health officials? I had a situation where I was asked to follow up for another technician dealing with a rat infestation at a residential account, and he informed me that he reported her to the public health dept for the condition of the house – supposedly rat hair, rat feces, rubbish and odors. When I inspected the house the only odor I could detect was from her old dirty dog, which basically lived in the first floor of the house, and upstairs seems perfectly normal to me with no odors and relatively clean. I informed his supervisor of my findings and indicated that I didn’t believe that she should have been reported to public health, but that we should just eliminate the rats from her home and do the job she paid us to do. Also, the supervisor was the one that contacted the Health Department without even inspecting the residence himself and he became extremely defensive, questioning my judgement. Your thoughts please.

ANSWER:

Whenever I tread on controversial ground I tend to tiptoe a lot, but this is a very good question that relates to more than just this incident. If you have commercial customers, especially a restaurant that serves food to the general public, and you perceive a serious health situation that the management of that restaurant refuses to address, should you notify the public health authorities about it? This puts you in a ticklish situation. If you ignore an obvious public health problem perhaps you are guilty as well of putting people at risk when they unwittingly eat the food there. If you bring in the authorities you risk angering that customer and losing him, since he is likely to connect the dots on what has occurred. I think you would work as hard as possible with the customer first, to get the problems corrected and get him to cooperate and willingly bring his facility into proper health standards, but if that simply is not going to happen then how badly do you need to keep that account? If someone gets ill because of the poor sanitation there, linked also to the presence of pests, YOU will be brought into the mess because you will be blamed for not controlling the pest problem, and when the media publicizes this event they could well mention your company name in a negative way. Perhaps when all hope is lost bringing in public health inspectors is the right thing to do. 

Without knowing any background on this home you are dealing with I can’t pontificate too much. Is this just a private home with the owner the resident, or is it a rental? How long has the other pest control company been dealing with what they felt was a deplorable situation? Who asked you to do this follow up on this home, thus bringing in a second company? I am making the assumption that you and the other technician are with separate companies? On the face of your description it sounds to me like the first technician/supervisor may have jumped the gun. There is no law that says you have to be clean and neat, and what one person thinks of as cozy another may think of as pigsty. If this house has a rat problem then obviously there would be rodent hair, feces, and urine and the associated odors, and to be honest, all of that is exactly why we are called out to the home, and all of that is a situation that WE have the ability to correct. Part of the process of rodent management is to point out to the customer these unsanitary conditions and to offer to properly remove the feces and to sanitize the surfaces that are contaminated. If it seems to be beyond the scope of what we can do then recommending to the customer that a cleaning company be brought in is appropriate as well. 
It may be that the other company had been dealing with this situation for a long time, had gotten no cooperation or seen any improvement, and truly was concerned for the health of this resident. The only recourse they would have might be to try to get a public health inspector to see the place and add some authority to their desire to see it improved. Perhaps they may even have believed that with Public Health backing there might be public funds available to get the work done. I agree that before making a fairly desperate move like contacting public health that supervisor might have taken the time to see the situation personally to be certain that public health was needed, but he probably should have remained professional with you in your discussions with him. 

View past Ask Mr. Pest Control questions.

Pest QuestionsMarch 27, 2012

No Comment

Mar 24, 2012 – Fix That Squeaky Wheel

QUESTION:

I did a treatment for mice in a large, brand new home where the client called me because he could hear a small noise in the living room. I found lots of holes, so we did a lot of rodent proofing and set traps in the attic, suspending ceiling, and so on. Activity in the basement and attic was noticeable so he cleaned up and this seemed to stop it. He still says he hears noise at the same place in the living room but I don’t see new activity. I have baited outside and there is no activity there either. What do you suggest? Do I look under the blown insulation, for bats or what?

ANSWER:

From what you say they definitely have had a rodent problem, but it is important now to identify that “noise” that this customer claims to still be hearing. It is not unusual for pest control technicians to be called out for a bug that keeps on chirping, only to find out it is the smoke detector with a low battery. Perhaps this noise the customer hears is something other than rodent related, or he even may be so hyper-sensitive to mice now that he is straining to hear things that are not there. This time of year it also is possible he has firewood next to the fireplace, and large wood boring beetles within that wood can be chewing and causing audible sounds that he may hear. This happened in my own home this winter until a couple of large eucalyptus beetles found their way out of some wood that I should have left outside. From 20 feet away my wife kept hearing the gnawing sounds. 

You should place plenty of monitoring traps around this room where pets and people will not step on them, and inspect them over the next few weeks to see if anything is captured. It is useful to clean up all visible evidence of rodents, such as feces and chewed materials, so that a subsequent inspection of that same area would reveal any new activity. I don’t know that I’d go burrowing through the blown-in insulation just yet, but definitely place glue or snap traps up in the attic with an attractant on them and see what you capture. In your question you don’t actually say that you caught or killed any rodents with the trapping and baiting you have done so far, but if you found previous evidence of mice and now do not then perhaps what you have done has been successful. 
I suggest at this time to move onto monitoring, as well as trying to identify what he is hearing in that room. With all the clean up and exclusion you have done you should have made any remaining mice, if they are there, uncomfortable and more likely to be moving around looking for new food resources, so hopefully you will capture them if they are present. 

View past Ask Mr. Pest Control questions.

Pest QuestionsMarch 26, 2012

No Comment

Mar 25, 2012 – Could 1 + 1 = None

QUESTION:

Can a store bought pesticide, such as Raid, contaminate a product like Tempo SC?

ANSWER:

I can take your question two different ways Dominick. You may be asking if applying one near or over the other could cause a problem or you could be asking if keeping them together in storage could cause a problem. This second option is easier to answer. 

If the containers of both products are in good condition there should be no issues of contamination. But, if the Raid (aerosol) can is leaking or rusted and liable to leak then it certainly is going to lose its contents into the immediate area. If you have that leaking can on the shelf with other stored materials then there is that chance that the contents could get on to other things. Now, if the container of the Tempo SC is also in good condition then even a leaking aerosol can next to it should have no effect on the contents of the Tempo SC. The bigger problem would be if you had rodent or insect baits near a leaking container of a liquid or an aerosol, and the leaked materials got onto that bait. This definitely would give the bait on off-taste that might make it unacceptable to the insect or rodent. 
If your question is whether someone spraying raid over the top of your application of Suspend could contaminate the active ingredient in your product to the point it does not work well, the answer would be……….. maybe. The concern would most likely be whether that aerosol product would create such a repellency that bugs would no longer walk onto your treated area, and since so many retail aerosols contain pyrethrum, which can be very repellent, this could happen. Pyrethroids by themselves may be repellent to very sensitive insects like ants and bed bugs, so adding some pyrethrum to the pyrethroid may not have much more of an effect. Either the bugs will readily walk on it or they won’t. 
I don’t see this as an issue in the sense that spraying a store-bought aerosol is going to affect the active ingredient that you put down. However, even though these a.i.’s are relatively low in toxicity, putting one on top of the other, perhaps multiple times, starts to add to the toxic makeup of the material on that surface. It would be good advice to ask your customers to please avoid using their own insecticides after you have treated their home. If they just cannot stand the sight of some bugs still crawling over that surface, since our products are not laser beams that instantly kill the bugs, then they could remove the bugs with a vacuum. 

View past Ask Mr. Pest Control questions.

Pest QuestionsMarch 25, 2012

No Comment

Mar 22, 2012 – Stuffed, Mounted, and Edible

QUESTION:

My question concerns clothes moths and taxidermy. Will the moths attack a stuffed quail or elk? If so, what treatment can be used to not affect the feathers and fur?

ANSWER:

I have spoken a couple of times in the past with people who manage wildlife collections in museums, and asked how they protect the many stuffed specimens of birds and mammals they oversee. Their answer is not going to please you. Unless something has changed there really is no insecticide or other preservative that can be applied to the specimen itself without changing its appearance in some way – dusts, sprays, etc. – or that would have any lasting effect. Since the goal is to protect these mounts from feeding by clothes moths or carpet beetles there appears to be nothing you can apply to them that would have any lasting effect. 

Yes, clothes moths will happily feed on feathers, as I saw one time when case-making clothes moths were destroying the feathers on a box full of Kachina Dolls from the Southwest. This is simply the role of these decomposers in Nature. Likewise, the hair of stuffed mammals also would be susceptible to etierh of these groups of insects. 
What the museums do is to remove the specimens on display periodically and treat them in some manner that will kill any insects or their eggs that may be on the mounts. This may be heat treating, which could be done quickly, freezing, which would take much longer, or the use of a sealed chamber and a fumigant, and the two easiest fumigants today would be either PDB (paradichlorobenzene as in moth crystals) or vapona. The vapona is now the Nuvan Prostrips, which are directly labeled for “museum collections”, which I believe these stuffed mounts would fall into. At this time we are, frankly, blessed with the ability to use the Nuvan strips in our industry. We know the benefit they provide in bed bug control, but if the quail or elk can somehow be placed within a sealed surrounding of thick plastic sheeting the Nuvan strips can be placed inside for a couple of weeks to ensure the kill of any moths, their larvae or pupae, or their eggs. 
Vapona strips have long been used in insect collections without causing any change in the appearance of the insects, including fragile butterflies. It should have no effect on the feathers or fur of stuffed animals, and it also should leave no odor behind, which PDB may tend to do. Having worked in insect museums for decades I kind of like the slight odor of PDB – it makes me feel at home – but some people may not be as tolerant of it as I am. If this customer does opt for moth crystals have them use PDB rather than naphthalene, as naphthalene is not as effective at actually killing insects or their eggs. 

View past Ask Mr. Pest Control questions.

Pest QuestionsMarch 24, 2012

No Comment

Mar 23, 2012 – Carpenter Bees – They Dig It!

QUESTION:

I have a customer with a severe problem with carpenter bees, this year more than tripled over last years, and I need some help. I have replaced and painted trim boards.

ANSWER:

This problem speaks directly to the current issue with new restrictions on the use of Synthetic Pyrethroids, as these have been a mainstay for deterring carpenter bees that excavate the wood of structures for their living quarters. The microencapsulated formulations in particular, such as Demand CS, have worked well when applied over outside walls where carpenter bees were chewing into the wood, but with the new labeling soon to be on every pyrethroid Label this general application will no longer be permitted. Finding non-pyrethroid products with the same general labeling does not appear to be an easy thing to do, and their effectiveness on carpenter bees for this use is untested. 

Surface coatings of paint and clear finish are considered to be “deterrents” to carpenter bees, meaning they’d rather not chew through paint or varnish, but if push comes to shove they certainly can and will. If those trim boards are in just the perfect place and are the proper kind of wood then chewing through a thin layer of paint is not difficult. Since it is unlikely that you can eliminate all carpenter bees around an area we have to expect them to investigate all that wood on the structure as potential nesting sites. This leaves us with two options – treating each hole directly as it is discovered or treating the surface prior to the hole being dug to kill the adult bees that attempt it. 
The general life cycle of carpenter bees is for the adult bees to overwinter in their galleries. These adult bees are the ones that emerged in summer to early fall, were active for awhile, and then settled into their chambers for the winter. They emerge in the spring to further excavate the burrows and then supply them with eggs and a food supply for their own offspring. Existing holes you find right now could be treated with a contact dust insecticide and then firmly plugged to keep the bees inside, where they should die once they contact the insecticide. This will at least prevent these overwintering bees from continuing the problem at that location, as they were likely to do. But, Nature hates a void, and if these bees are eliminated others are going to come at some point in time, and this is going to be a regular problem to deal with. 
With the new labeling on pyrethroids I believe that we still have the option of treating generally UNDER the eaves of a structure, as this falls under the “exceptions” to the requirement for crack and crevice or spot treatment only on exterior surfaces. For trim around windows or for exterior surfaces where these bees are active the best you can do is to spot treat, and this means a “spot” no larger than 2 square feet. For a trim board 4 inches wide this isn’t so bad, as that “spot” 4 inches wide could be 6 feet long. If you do opt for doing this preventive treatment to susceptible wood it should be done when you first begin to see adult bee activity, as this would indicate males and females now out of hibernation and ready to mate and start the digging process again. 

View past Ask Mr. Pest Control questions.

Pest QuestionsMarch 23, 2012

No Comment

Mar 20, 2012 – A Bug In A Bag

QUESTION:

What product do you recommend to combat bagworms /case moth?

ANSWER:

Just to make sure we are talking about the same thing, there are Bagworms that feed on outdoor plants and there are Casemaking clothes moths found indoors. Since you are in an eastern state I will assume it is the ornamental bagworms, which seem to be absent in the far western states. If it is the Casemaking indoor moths then control must begin with finding the source, which most often will be some animal fiber that the larvae are feeding on. This might be hair, feathers, or wool and other animal hair products. There are a couple of species of case making moths related to the Casemaking Clothes Moth that pop up now and then in southern states, and these are referred to as Household Casebearer or Plaster Bagworm, and they may be feeding on fungus that could grow on wet wood or on general materials such as spider webs and dead insects. 

Bagworms outdoors are interesting critters, and heavy infestations, like any caterpillar infestation of a plant, can cause damage to the plants. These moths include about 2 dozen species in North America, and they have a weird life cycle. Females of some species never become adult-like and never leave the “bag” they constructed as a larva. The female deposits several hundred eggs within her case in the fall and then crawls out and dies, and these eggs hatch in the spring to become active larvae that leave their mother’s case. They immediately create their own silk case around themselves, often attaching bits of twigs to the silk, and drag this case everywhere as they feed. When the larva is mature it attaches its case firmly to a twig on the plant and pupates within. 
Because the silk case is so strong and so firmly attached to twigs on the plant it will remain there into the next year, even though no live larva is inside. These can be physically removed and disposed of to eliminate the clutter and to point out which cases are new and active ones on the plant. Removing the cases in the fall also removes all of the eggs, so this will help to prevent new larvae from emerging on that plant. This could be time consuming on plants with a lot of cases, but if the homeowner is made aware of the benefit hopefully they will make the effort. On the other hand, if they want to pay you your hourly rate to do it for them, well, that’s pretty good money. 
If spraying is needed many of the residual contact insecticides will be effective. An excellent active ingredient for many years for lepidoptera larvae has been carbaryl, as in Sevin SL. This can leave a few weeks of residual on the plant, depending on weather conditions. Pyrethroids like bifenthrin and cyfluthrin also are labeled well for ornamentals and do a good job. If the customer insists on something natural you also can consider the bacteria in Dipel or one of the plant-derived products such as an Essentria liquid concentrate. 

View past Ask Mr. Pest Control questions.

Pest QuestionsMarch 22, 2012

No Comment

Mar 21, 2012 – The Chirp Is Not For Everyone

QUESTION:

I have a house with a cricket problem. We have treated the exterior perimeter twice with 2 different products and they are still seeing them inside. He had a light right inside his front door that they were getting in. I looked outside on his front porch and found a pretty large gap between the brick and the soffit above the porch. I told him to seal that up because I wondered if they were climbing the brick and then entering the house through that gap, and therefore coming out in the light. We also had him fix a gap under his front door. We have spot treated the inside and I even shot some aerosol up into that void. Is there a possibilty that they are just in some void in the house and breeding internally somewhere? I am seeing dead ones outside on the warm sides of the house. We have never really had an issue with getting rid of crickets before. Let me know your thoughts. Thanks

ANSWER:

This time of year we are sort of in that “tweener” season when it may still be cold enough to keep bugs in hiding, but may have the warm days that get them moving outdoors too. A lot of insects do find homes to be wonderful places to spend the winter, so it’s possible this home managed to have a population of them inside. But, since you also are seeing dead crickets outside it sounds like you do have outside activity. Since I assume these are black “field” crickets it is unlikely that they can breed indoors or even survive for very long once they get inside. There would be little for them to eat and conditions indoors are probably too dry. They are generally only a nuisance. And, the fact that you are finding some inside the lights suggests they would be coming down into that light from above, meaning they were in the attic. 

This does suggest that the gaps you are finding in the soffit could be one of the culprits. Crickets have no problem climbing exterior walls, and particularly if they feel the need to escape some weather conditions they would move to find a drier location. It sounds to me like you are doing what you need to do so far – closing entry points outside, treating the exterior perimeter to kill those that move along the base of the house, treating within the gaps you suspect they may enter. Some thoughts would be to do an even more thorough inspection of the exterior to identify more entry points and have these permanently closed, and “telling” the homeowner to do this and actually getting it done could be two separate things. If they are willing to pay you for your time this exclusion is certainly a legitimate part of the overall pest “management” process, and every gap you close is one less place for these or other bugs to enter, and one less place you’ll need to apply insecticides in the future. 
Another part of this IPM approach to cricket control is identifying the contributing conditions on the property too, so it would be of value for the customer to take the slow walk around the yard and identify harborage opportunities that can be changed. Every time you take away a hiding place for a bug you tend to lower the bug population, and those places crickets hide are also harborage sites for rodents, snakes, and lots of other bugs. These are things the homeowner may just not think about, and would appreciate having pointed out to them. 
At this point, if the entry gaps are closed and you feel no more crickets could be getting in from the outside, it may just be a waiting game. The crickets could live for weeks inside before dying from starvation or desiccation, so they will wander and show up for the homeowner now and then. If they are in the attic they may be drawn to gaps of light, such as above light fixtures in ceilings. 

View past Ask Mr. Pest Control questions.

Pest QuestionsMarch 21, 2012

No Comment

« Older Entries Newer Entries »