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Pest Control Specialists Contact Us

4012 N. Main Street
Dayton, OH 45405

QUESTION:

Help! I have a house that has a rat problem. I think the rat is trap shy, so how do I overcome this?

ANSWER:

Trap shy or not, this rodent (or rodents) still needs all those earthly requirements – food, water, shelter – and it is going to have to move about to find them. Somehow you must make some changes within this home to take away any comfort level this rodent has going for it, and if you can make these changes this may cause the rodent to move about more to look for new opportunities. 

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QUESTION:

I am new in pest control and am in Maryland where the label is the law. I have 3 small apartment buildings with a ton of roaches in every one of the 50 kitchens. I am blind reading labels. I have chosen Onslaught because of its broad label and the fact that it may last up to 1 year after the application. When the eggs hatch Onslaught and the Nyguard are still working! Most of my friends use Suspend or Tempo. Can you name an advantage to using Suspend or Tempo such as a different mode of action, a residual effect, or a wider label application? Is there any advantage you may cite? Can you direct me to independent published material that I may read on the subject? Same for Maxforce FC vs. Maxforce Magnum vs. Vendetta – any independent published report you know of as to which is the best or lasts the longest? If you read their literature they all say they are the supreme #1. How can I get an independent view?


ANSWER:

Well, that’s quite a few questions, but more or less on the same topic – how to judge which product offers the best attributes for your work? Let me start off by saying that The Label Is The Law in every state, not just yours, but there can be some flexibility in some states and you have to find out if your state is one of them. The flexibility is with respect to three areas – using a product for ANY pest that occurs on a site that is listed on the label, regardless of whether or not the pest is named on the label, using a product at LESS than the label rate as long as the label does not specifically prohibit it, and using a product at a lower frequency (less often) than the label suggests. The EPA allows this under a FIFRA amendment many years ago, and they allow some judgment on the part of the applicator in those states that permit it. 

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QUESTION:

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

ANSWER:

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

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

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QUESTION:

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

ANSWER:

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

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

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

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

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

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QUESTION:

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

ANSWER:

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

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

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

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

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QUESTION:

Amvac had an online brochure for the use of
heat with their Nuvan Pro-strips for bed bugs.
Not a heat machine for bed bugs, just a small
electric radiator type. The chart showed the
difference with and without heat and it was
phenomenal. The use of heat gave you complete
kill in 48 hours rather than the 7 without. My question is this. The label still allows for large furnishings, etc. to be put in sealed rooms, but no mention of heat, and the sales brochure has been removed from their website. Do you know if they are no longer endorsing the
heat approach?


ANSWER:

At the NPMA Conference last month I attended every possible educational session on bed bugs, and really increased and updated my knowledge on them. Nuvan Prostrips, I have to say, got a pretty good plug in several of the sessions, and the use of heat along with the strips was mentioned several times. However, since the use of heating devices along with the Nuvan strips is not currently on the Nuvan label I suspect Amvac is being very, very careful with the subject. They have a fantastic product that fits a very important need for us – the fumigation of electronic equipment to eliminate any bed bugs or their eggs within – and they would hate to blow the opportunity by jumping the gun and having the EPA come back with some regulatory punishment.

One session presented by Dr. Phil Koehler out of the Univ. of Florida highlighted some field studies he did using Nuvan strips in vacated college dorm rooms. He tested the results with 3 options – Nuvan strips alone, Nuvan strips with a fan blowing past them, and Nuvan strips with a fan blowing past a heater and then the hotter air flowing past the Nuvan strips. As you mentioned, the time for complete control of bed bugs planted in that room dropped from 7 days to 1 day, for the Nuvan alone versus Nuvan with fan and heat. HOWEVER!! A representative immediately stood up and politely cautioned everyone in the room that this was currently NOT a labeled use of the Nuvan, but only a field research study that may lead to some new labeled uses.

At the Amvac booth in the exhibit hall the Amvac reps also now tell us that heat greatly diminishes the time needed for kill of bed bugs and their eggs. For example, the current university recommendation for fumigating computers within plastic bags is 2 weeks, to be certain the eggs are all killed. Amvac reps suggested that if the heat within that bag can be increased to about 85 degrees it drops the needed time to only 5 days. The heat volatilizes the dichlorvos from the resin strip faster, causing the concentration of the dichlorvos to reach the necessary level faster for killing the insects and, very important – their EGGS.

So, this is probably the reason you now do not find Amvac literature touting the use of heat along with the Nuvan strips. They prefer to wait for EPA approval or blessing before making this suggestion. All of the literature a manufacturer makes available is referred to as the product “Labeling”, as opposed to the product “Label”, and if it is in writing from the manufacturer it is the same as a recommendation. They are just being careful, but I’d look for this in the future. In the meantime, hopefully our industry members will NOT use added heat until it is legal to do so, or we are likely to blow a good thing.

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QUESTION:

What animal has 3/4 inch droppings?

ANSWER:

Believe it or not, this is really an important issue for us, and for me a somewhat fascinating topic. We so often are presented only with the “evidence” of some animal and not the animal itself, and our challenge is to determine just what critter left that little prize behind and therefore the importance of it. To class up this whole subject we add some syllables and refer to it as Scatology – the study of feces – rather than Looking At Poop.

The description offered of “3/4 inch droppings” is, unfortunately, not enough to provide a definite ID for you. A lot of little animals may produce fecal pellets about that length including large rats, other rodents such as squirrels, or possibly even large bats. They also may come from reptiles such as lizards or even from toads or frogs. If the scat is round perhaps it is rabbits. They key to figuring this out, and don’t be disgusted, is to pick up the pellet and determine what it consists of, and it really pays to have a small hand magnifier with you so you can take a close look. If you find a lot of pieces of insects in that pellet then you know you have an animal that feeds on bugs, such as lizards, frogs, or bats. If it is more of a smooth consistency without obvious bug parts then perhaps it is a rodent – rat or large mouse. If the pellet crumbles easily as you roll it in your fingers (with gloves on preferably) then it probably came from a bat. If it does not easily fall apart then rodent. If there are hairs in the pellet this suggests an animal that frequently grooms itself, such as a mouse or rat.

So, I can only offer some suggestions and ask that you take a closer look. Another key that I have seen may be its location. You may find fecal pellets stuck to a vertical wall, and this suggests an animal such as a frog that may perch on that wall, perhaps near a porch light and its bugs. Rodent droppings do not stick to vertical surfaces. If the droppings are on a flat surface but scattered around this often occurs when bats roost above that point, and their droppings bounce as they land. Rats and mice tend to move along vertical surfaces, and their droppings will be concentrated along that wall as well.

Hopefully the professional technicians out there are continually adding to their knowledge, and being able to identify fecal material is a very important skill. This includes the ability to identify insect droppings too, as very often this will be what the customer finds, and determining what bug left it can lead to finding the source of the problem.

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QUESTION:

Can subterranean termites nest above ground?

ANSWER:

Subterranean Termites very definitely can nest above ground, and this pertains to some of the native species in North America as well as tropical species such as the Formosan Termite. I have visited rain forests in South America many times and always will watch for the aerial nests of termites found well up on the sides of tree trunks. Sometimes these nests may be several feet wide, composed of a combination of soil they brought up, wood material they chewed off the tree, and either their saliva or their liquid fecal material. When you spot one of these obvious nests in the tree you will always find the mud tubes on the outside of that tree trunk, connecting the nest to the soil below. My feeling was that the aerial nest may be occupied during rainy season when the soil gets saturated, and the ground nests occupied during dry season when moisture in the tree is not adequate.

These aerial nests are extremely fragile and easily torn apart, compared with the “carton” nests of the Formosan Termites that also are often found above ground. This material somehow turns to a consistency almost as hard as the wood it was made from, which is probably a good thing considering the wall that is filled with the carton may not have much wood left in it to hold up the rest of the house. Formosans also nest above ground routinely, often with aerial nests in trees but also just with colonies located high up in high-rise buildings. As long as they can find a food and a water source they do not need to go back to the soil.

With native Eastern and Western subterranean termites in the U.S. there occasionally are incidents where the termites were living and surviving in a structure without any known access back to the soil. It is most likely that they began from the soil colony but were separated and isolated, perhaps by a chemical treatment of the soil below them, and were unable to make their way back down. But, if they find themselves near a leaking toilet or shower pan they now have the moisture and food that keeps them going. I once asked a termite expert how long subterranean termites could live in a structure without returning to the soil, and the answer was simply “as long as they have moisture”.
That above-group “colony” of surviving termites may not manage to be as robust and thriving as they would if they were making the round trip to and from the soil, but they can carry on, and since some of those termites could become secondary reproductives there could be production of eggs and growth of the colony as well.

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QUESTION:

I have a VERY sensitive account that has a problem with roaches and has had this problem for many many years. It is a medical research facility that raises animals and so there are lots of conducive conditions that have made it very difficult to eliminate the problem. We are presently using pyrethroids (bifenthrin) as well as Gentrol. We have wanted to use Transport but the management at the facility does not believe that pyrethroids are the answer and feels that acetamiprid is too new of a product with too little research to be able to be approved by the management for use. We have used baits in the past but with the animal food and feces that are in the building the baits did very little good. There are many rooms that we are not allowed to go into because animals occupy these rooms making a complete treatment even more difficult. Recently we met with some of the main people and they want us to use “stronger” products as they don’t believe that pyrethroids are the answer. What suggestions do you have in regards to products that may have a greater efficacy against the German roach that are not pyrethroids? What about nicotinoids or OP’s? Thanks.

ANSWER:

Wow. I wonder what I am going to come up with that is useful to you. A few observations first on your comments, and the first is with respect to their impressions about pyrethroid insecticides. I suspect they are aware that some scattered populations of German roaches have shown “resistance’ to pyrethroids, but resistance does not mean immunity. It means only that it takes more of the active ingredient to kill the roaches, and this is accomplished either by increasing the concentration they are exposed to but leaving the contact time the same, or staying with the same concentration but finding a way to increase the length of time the roaches are in contact with it. More on that later I think. But, pyrethroids definitely are capable of killing German roaches, and suggesting that a “stronger” toxin is needed is silly.

How we define “strong” or “powerful” is misunderstood, and over the 3+ decades I have been in this industry we have witnessed a marvelous evolution in what we use, from the Category 2 (moderately toxic) organophosphates and chlorinated hydrocarbons to the Category 3 and 4 (slightly toxic) pyrethroids and newer chemical families. The pyrethroids are not stronger toxins, but instead they are effective on insects at much lower concentrations of the active ingredient. Our industry manufacturers learn more and more about how to attack insects effectively while using less toxic substances and less of them. So much for that soap box.

Since this facility has apparently continued to have this roach problem for many years, it sounds like it is time to change the game plan. As someone once said, “the definition of  insanity is continuing to do the same thing while expecting a different result”, and clearly insecticides have not been the complete answer here. (I really like that adage). Frankly, I’m surprised they allow you to use what you have so far, as research facilities sometimes are very nervous about exposing test animals to any kind of contaminant or toxin in any manner, for fear it might alter some test results later. But, don’t tell them that. It also may be necessary for this customer to accept that NO place in the facility can be off limits to you. If they have roaches you need to be able to inspect and deal with every place where the roaches may be living, or the problem is going to continue.

We accept that old adage that roaches require 3 things for their survival – food, water, harborage. It sounds like food and water are going to be difficult to control, so how about spending your time eliminating their harborage? The German roach is not likely to change 350 million years of behavior by suddenly deciding it does not need to get into dark crevices and voids. Every access point that you close to them means that much less harborage they have available, and this stresses the heck out of a cockroach. Instead of injecting insecticide into that crevice on the next visit can you instead inject caulking, and eliminate that crevice forever as a roach harborage point? I know this sounds pretty simplistic on my part, but ultimately perhaps it will be the answer, and the years of injecting insecticides have not worked, so time to change the game plan. Filling every possible crack, crevice, and hole will sound like an impossible task, but if it’s taken one wall at a time you will suddenly realize it is getting accomplished.

There must be plenty of hollow voids for the roaches to hide in as well, and perhaps these can be injected with an inorganic dust (diatomaceous earth, silica gel dust) to provide long lasting kill of any roaches that find their way in. These also are essentially non-toxic to any test animals there. Hopefully the insecticides you currently use are not being applied as the good old “base board” spray, but instead you are carefully injecting the sprays directly into the crevices and voids where the roaches hide. Treating bands that the roach runs across just do not get the contact time needed to get a lethal dose of the active ingredient into the roach, but placing the material where the roach sits on it all day long gives you a better chance. This also keeps the insecticide away from any human or animal contact and allows it to last longer. I also hope that fogging is not part of the repertoire, as this is ineffective for German roach control.

I know that changing the way your customer behaves is very hard to do, but they are going to have to buy into this process too, and stop thinking that insecticides are the total answer. We’ve never really had the magic wand that so many customers think we have in the tool box. By the way, the OP’s (organophosphates) were taken from us 10 years ago, so this is not an option. Neonicotinoids include products like Optigard, Transport, and Arena, and these are certainly excellent materials for German roaches, so if changing the insecticide makes the customer happy then give it a try, assuming the product you choose is properly labeled. Plenty of other non-pyrethroids also exist now, such as Phantom, Advion, Alpine, and the various imidacloprid products. It has always been good policy to “rotate” your product use from one chemical family to another to avoid the chances of resistance developing.

But, I would love to see an increased emphasis on non-chemical approaches here, and an elimination of every possible access to harborage that you can accomplish. Long term this may be the best answer.

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QUESTION:

German cockroaches: before we seal around pipe
openings under sinks of apartments, is it best to
leave gel bait on pipes, spray in gap with
insecticide/igr mix, or dust?

ANSWER:

Good question, and I think we should consider what our longest term goal is when we put the insecticide into that gap that then is permanently closed. By the way, wonderful that you consider this IPM step, rather than the idea that every time you visit this account you add another application of contact insecticide into that opening. So much better, I believe, to just eliminate the opening.

Since we can only kill a cockroach one time perhaps we should look at the products that are going to provide the longest residual once we close an opening. Since it is possible that future roaches could move around in the void behind that former opening it would be desirable to kill those as well. Sprayed products and baits are going to have a relatively short residual or acceptance – months perhaps, but still short. But, dust formulations of inorganic active ingredients will last for many years if that void inside remains dry. Since we still believe that actives such as silica gel dust (Drione, Tri-die) or Diatomaceous Earth (MotherEarth D, Alpine D) can be very effective on cockroaches, these might be the best choice. They also present the least hazard to any people or pets that might possibly contact them in the future.

Puffing the dust in with a hand held bulb duster or plunger duster like the Mini Dust-R will create some turbulence that helps to push the dust further into the void, and if you really wanted to get the dust dispersed well you could go with a small battery operated duster such as the Exacticide or Power Puff. These look like cordless drills and run on a rechargable battery, and are very convenient for dusting into voids through small openings.

Injecting an IGR ahead of time, perhaps from an aerosol to keep the interior of that void dry, might be useful too. If roaches are inhabiting the void this could be very helpful in stopping the development of new adult roaches from either eggs or early nymphs.

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