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Pest Control Specialists Contact Us

4012 N. Main Street
Dayton, OH 45405

QUESTION:

A different question for you. For the last 6 months I have been building a collection of antique pest control memorabilia, advertisements, application devices, books, etc. Unfortunately, the only reliable sites I have come by are craigslist & ebay. The pickings on those sites are pretty bare bones. I was wondering if you knew of any place that I could visit (web or in person) to help expand my antique collection. The end hope is to donate an “evolution of pest control” exhibit at a local museum that is showing interest in the endeavor.

ANSWER:

Wow. I really don’t have any great ideas for you. I collect butterflies and moths but looking for them is a much easier thing to do. Finding old memorabilia of any industry may just be one of those stumble-upon-it opportunities. Certainly you could advertise your interest in this, and on PestWeb we do offer the free resource of the Classified Ads. Under the tab “Industry Information” you will find Classified Ads, and if you select this you can “Add” your own advertisement for this sort of thing, and it can be left in place for just about as long as you want it to be. These ads may be read by PMPs throughout North America, and they may just be willing to part with some old equipment or trade magazines that have been lingering in their office or warehouse.

Other than this it’s probably very much like the show “American Pickers” on TV, where you simply find people who have old barns and sheds full of junk they either gathered themselves or owned and neve threw away. Antique stores probably are going to cater more to trendy things, but you still never know what you may find – old rodent traps, old sprayers or dusters, etc. You could check used book stores to see if any of them carry old magazines or very old reference books on pests. You might also call the NPMA (National Pest Management Assoc.) in Virginia and tell them what your goal is. Since you want to donate this to a worthy museum the NPMA folks could have some ideas as well.

Locally you could call on old farm homes where barns tend to accumulate odds and ends from times past. Even your own customers are going to have some interesting things tucked away in storage sheds and garages. I have had my own customers show me very old pest control equipment that they found under homes or forgotten in storage, and with the owner’s permission were able to take it for themselves. Even advertise locally in your town’s newspaper – this can be fairly inexpensive and you never know what will show up. Contact your local Dept of Agriculture, whose field inspectors could very well turn you on to some leads that they have seen as they have called on farms or had very old pesticide containers turned into them on toxic cleanup days.

I’ll go ahead and post this to show on PestWeb and you never know who may read it and want to cooperate with you on this. Anyone who thinks they have some items this person would like can contact our [email protected] and we can forward the contact information.

View past Ask Mr. Pest Control questions.

QUESTION:

Do rodents eat cockroaches?

ANSWER:

Absolutely rodents will eat cockroaches if they find them and can get them before the roach hides. In Dr. Robert Corrigan’s excellent book on Rodent Control he makes the statement that natural populations of rats and mice in habitats away from structures consume “tremendous numbers of insects”, and this is one of the beneficial aspects of rodents in nature. He also states that our perimdomestic rodents, specifically the house mouse, will consume cockroaches in and around our structures. We also know that rats feed on insects as well as slugs and snails, and because these rodents are omnivorous (feed on many different kinds of foods) and opportunistic, they will take advantage of what they find available.

Rats and mice certainly have preferred foods, and I suspect that the mouse with an abundance of seeds, grains, or cereals to feed on might turn up its nose at cockroaches. This may not be the case though, because insects do provide a great source of protein that the rodent may feel a need for. Cockroaches could be fast enough to skitter away and into hiding when seen by a mouse, making its capture more trouble than it is worth to the mouse. But, both animals being nocturnal should bring them into contact with each other where both infest a structure.

Just because mice and rats “will” eat roaches does not suddenly make rats and mice desirable biological controls for cockroaches. There are just too darned many negatives to having rodents living with humans to really call rodents beneficial. And, there is no likelihood that rats and mice are going to eliminate a cockroach infestation, any more than a few assassin bugs living inside a home are going to eliminate bed bugs.

View past Ask Mr. Pest Control questions.

QUESTION:

I have a farm and family center in central NY that has mosquitoes in the greenhouse, garden center, and some getting into the main store area. What would you recommend to do in a situation like this? I am not sure if fly zappers would work or if just the cold weather would take care of the problem, but they are asking us to deal with it. Please advise as to what we might be able to do.

ANSWER:

This is always a really tough demand on the part of customers – handing you the task of stopping flying insects from flying onto their property. Hopefully I can offer some worthwhile suggestions, and the first one is always to make certain of that identification. Are these really mosquitoes, or could they possibly be non-biting midges, crane flies, or some other similar fly? But, mosquitoes certainly are a possibility in your area, so we’ll work with that assumption. Second, yes, cold weather is going to cause them rather suddenly not to be active anymore, but your customer is not likely to accept this solution if they think that you should have a magic wand in your pocket that eliminates the mosquitoes immediately. So, the question really is how to prevent these insects from coming onto this property and to prevent them from entering the store, and this is difficult.

Of course, we always look to the source. You can inspect the property itself, especially that garden center / greenhouse, to see if there are any breeding sources on site. Perhaps there are decorative fountains in place that contain water with mosquito larvae, catch pans under potted plants with water constantly in them, or any other standing water that would allow the mosquitoes to breed right there. If so, point it out to the customer and suggest ways to remedy the problem by eliminating the water. Then, move to the surrounding properties around this center and see what other local breeding sites may be nearby – ponds, creeks, low areas with water retention, waste areas with old tires, buckets, etc. Many of these could just be emptied of water while others might need to be treated with a larvicide if you are able to do so. Female mosquitoes generally do not fly very far from their breeding source, although some species are “capable” of traveling fairly long distances. But, the odds are that the mosquitoes at this garden center are coming from a local source.

So, do what you possibly can to reduce the numbers of mosquitoes that can visit this site and make sure they really are mosquitoes. Then, we have to ask what can be done to prevent or capture them as quickly as possible, and of course suggestions that work for homeowners are not appropriate for a retail store – wear repellent, long sleeves, keep doors closed, etc. Mosquitoes do not like air movement, so if this is a regular problem at this store they might consider the use of some sort of air door at entrances. Placed properly the air flow would either push the mosquitoes away from the doorway or just discourage them from even trying. Unfortunately, UV light traps of any kind (zappers or glue trap kinds) are not effective at attracting and controlling mosquitoes, and in fact are much more likely to kill many beneficial insects instead. Mosquito monitoring traps that use UV also use carbon dioxide, which is really the major attraction to a mosquito, along with some other interesting lures that may also enhance the draw to the trap. But, these are best used for monitoring and not control.

You might consider the application of residual insecticides as a “barrier” treatment while the store is not in operation. The treatments would be directed to places where the mosquitoes are likely to rest during the daytime, which is often shaded places such as under the eaves, within shaded cavities, or anyplace where there is semi-darkness and little human activity at that time. Around homes barrier treats have been shown to provide very good relief from biting mosquitoes for 2 weeks or more. The use of pyrethrum mists or fogs could also drop the population of adult mosquitoes but it has some drawbacks. First, you probably would not want the misting occurring while customers are present. There are just too many negative attitudes about being exposed to any kind of (and say this with dread in your voice) PESTICIDES!! You could fog the garden area at night, but pyrethrum lasts only a short time, so if more mosquitoes can come to the site the effectiveness is very short, and you would have to do this every day to keep the effectiveness going.

View past Ask Mr. Pest Control questions.

QUESTION:

A few questions on Advion Cockroach Bait. First, will roaches die by just contacting each other? And, will the roaches eat the bait after the bait gets hard and how long does it take a roach to die after eating the bait?

ANSWER:

This was a little difficult to pin down as DuPont does not seem to have a useful product guide that answers these kinds of questions. Advion has the active ingredient Indoxacarb, and this a.i. kills by either being ingested or absorbed through the cuticle as a contact insecticide. In theory, then, if the roaches simply contacted the bait with their bodies they should absorb some of the active ingredient and it could kill them. However, obviously with a bait product the primary mode of control is ingestion, and I would say that a roach that has ONLY ingested Advion bait would not have any of it on its exoskeleton, and therefore other roaches simply touching that first roach should not be affected by it.

But, roaches do eat their own feces, particularly the first instar stage of the German roach, which stays in voids and dines on the fecal matter of other roaches. If those other roaches have recently fedd on Advion there should be some of the active ingredient in their feces and the roaches that eat them would be killed. According to one resource on indoxacarb death to an insect is between 4 and 48 hours after exposure, but a “stop feeding” action goes into effect within a few hours.

Most of the gel baits today are holding up longer than early formulations, but since much of the gel is water it is bound to evaporate, and once the gel hardens it is at the least much less attractive to the roaches. The moisture in the gel is part of the attraction as they do need water. In my opinion roaches would / could still eat the bait after it hardens, but it becomes much less attractive. If you have really limited other food resources then the bait is one of the few options left, and roaches would be more likely to continue to eat it.

View past Ask Mr. Pest Control questions.

QUESTION:

How can I obtain a list of Green pesticides?

ANSWER:

As seems to be my nature I’d like to talk about this awhile, but I will start by saying that you can contact your local Univar PP&S office at 1-800-888-4897 and discuss this with our Customer Service Representatives there. Not too long ago we compiled an “internal” listing of products that nicely fit within a “green” pest management program, but we do not want to promote this list as one of Green Pesticides because there simply is no such list. Green is not about the pesticides. It is about HOW they are used. Now, your customers may have a very different view of what green means to them than you have for your own definition, so it is important to have a talk with customers who ask for green pest management on their property to understand what their perceptions are. In their mind green may mean that you use no pesticides, or only natural pesticides, and knowing this in advance helps you plan the proper strategy on their property that fits their needs.

Green Pest Management (GPM) may be a re-worded way of saying what we have said for decades, and that is Integrated Pest Management. But, IPM never really caught on with our customer bases, although all states now have in place School Pesticide Use regulations, and in most states part of this regulation is that the schools must have in place a written IPM Program. So, IPM is not dead, it just is not as trendy and catchy as Green has become, so we go with the times. GPM and IPM state that we use not just chemical methods for controlling a pest problem, but that we also look at the overall picture to determine what the contributing conditions are that are producing the pest problem. How is it entering a structure, what food and water resources are available to it, what harborage sites are available. And, then we make a strong effort to correct all of these contributing conditions as a major part of the control program. We do not just reach for the spray can and rely on pesticides to do all the work.

Both GPM and IPM also mandate the use of the many non-chemical tools, such as traps, exclusion materials, vacuums, steam, freezing, or mattress encasements in the case of bed bugs. These kinds of weapons can be effective without creating any environmental contamination, and they can be used in a very specific way for the intended pest. This is the emphasis behind Green Pest Management – minimal impact on the environment and other living organisms while at the same time achieving the NECESSARY pest management.

Chemicals are certainly part of both GPM and IPM, but we never settle into a one-shoe-fits-all approach to what we use. I often am asked what is “the best” product for flea control, but what you choose depends on a lot of variables – is this a home or an office, people present or absent, the wishes of the customer, carpet or hard flooring, etc. We choose the product that is best for a particular pest problem by taking these variables into account, but also with an eye to using the product that has the least potential to harm non-targeted organisms or the environment, again while still achieving the control we need. It would be pointless to use an insecticide that causes ZERO harm to the environment but doesn’t kill the pest either.

So, to that end we look at bait products that can be placed without polluting the environment and which may be very specific to the intended pest. We place them so that only the pest animal can access them. We use sprays and dusts only within cracks and crevices and voids, knowing that these are the best locations to put them if we want the maximum contact time with the pest. This also points out that just about any insecticide could be used in a “Green” program if it is placed where it cannot be contacted by other organims.

If we were to create a list of Green pesticides, again contrary to what green is really all about, we could place certain materials on that list. These would include IGR’s, as most growth regulators are effective only on insects. It would include all pheromones used on traps. It could include many (but not all) of the plant-derived active ingredients, and in general these may be what most homeowners think of when they think of “green”. But, not all plant-derived pesticides are necessarily safe for human exposure, as some of them can be really toxic or irritating or even possibly trigger allergenic responses. The list would contain many repellents as most of these are plant oils of some kind. Plant oils include MANY different products, but some are pyrethrum, clove, mint, garlic, d-limonene, Neem, rosemary, castor oil, and others. We should never represent that these are in any way NON-toxic, because they very definitely are toxic. However, they are “natural” and they break down rapidly in the environment.

Do natural, plant-derived oils kill only the “pest” insects? Certainly not, so even these so called green products could be used in a very Un-green manner. If you fogged a back yard with pyrethrum you likely kill all the ladybugs, lacewings, praying mantids, and other beneficial predators too, so as I said in the first paragraph – it is not about the pesticides, it is about how they are used that makes them green.

View past Ask Mr. Pest Control questions.

QUESTION:

Some questions about snake pits please. Where and how do they occur, can snakes make their pits anywhere they want or is the pit already made by other snakes? Can a snake make its pit in a hole such as a gopher hole? Can snakes make pits near residental areas or only out where there’s nobody around? Please help me out with as much information as you can give me. Thank you

ANSWER:

The most famous snake “pits” that you may be thinking of are those of garter snakes, and there are some really famous ones in North America, such as the Narcisse Snake Pits in Manitoba, Canada, where tens of thousands of garter snakes gather as a winter hibernation site. They do not make these pits but use naturally occurring caverns created in the limestone rocks there. This site just happens to provide some perfect conditions for the snakes to survive the winter, including a lot of space to allow so many snakes to be in one place. Garter snakes are one group known to return to the same hibernation site (called their hibernaculum) each fall to spend the winter, and they may travel over 2 miles to return to that site.

Snakes are not necessarily social animals, but there are many times that you may find a lot of them gathered together. The garter snakes, again, are often found in writhing masses of hundreds of snakes where males compete to mate with females. There are also these kinds of mating events with other snakes, such as rattlesnakes. Females will take care of their offspring for a short period of time, so you may find a female with many young snakes near her.

Since that perfect place for hibernation may not be commonly found, where they do exist many snakes will gather and use the same dens. These will always be large holes or caves that already exist, as the snakes themselves are not particularly good at digging. The den may be a large burrow from a mammal that is now abandoned, or cavities under rock piles, or caves created by mining. The presence of snakes within burrows such as gopher holes is probably related more to their hunting for food rather than denning up for the winter. Generally speaking snakes are rather shy animals, so they really would prefer to be where people are not. There probably is no reason why a den of snakes could not occur in someone’s back yard if the conditions were right, but it seems more likely that more snakes would occur in more rural areas where there is less human activity. If you have a residential community bordered by woodlands or grassy fields this could bring the snakes closer to the residences.

View past Ask Mr. Pest Control questions.

QUESTION:

What is the most effective chemical on the market for a bedbug treatment? Also, explain the Univar way for treating for bedbugs please.

ANSWER:

Well, I will avoid angering our upper management and state that Univar has not really sanctioned any particular method for dealing with bed bugs, so what we’ll go with instead is the Mr. Pest Control Way for bed bug management. And, everything that I suggest comes from listening to our experts on their advice for dealing with this difficult pest. There also does not seem to be that “most effective” insecticide, but companies across the country are successfully using a great many different products. Perhaps after the great many educational sessions on bed bugs at the upcoming NPMA Convention I will know a lot more, but for now here are my impressions. Also, on PestWeb we do have extensive resources and information on bed bugs in our (appropriately) Bed Bug Info section. Here you will find example inspection checklist, customer info forms, product information, and general information on bed bugs from many resources.

Some of our most knowledgeable experts on The Common Bed Bug have told us that (and I paraphrase) “neither chemical tools nor non-chemical tools by themselves are likely to eradicate bed bugs”, but it will be the combination of these that gives the greatest success. Now, I modify that statement because the use of a fumigant like Vikane, to tent and fumigate the whole infested structure, is likely to provide 100% eradication with that one treatment. And, whole structure heat treatments, if done properly, may also eliminate all bugs and their eggs with one treatment. Short of these two options your best process will be to incorporate the non-chemical tools (monitors, heat by laundering or heat chambers, freezing, steam, vacuums, and of course mattress and boxspring encasements, etc.) with the chemical tools (residual sprays into harborage points, pyrethrum perhaps, a fumigant like vapona strips, perhaps an IGR).

A complete reliance on just spraying materials has its shortcomings. For example, you should never spray into electronic equipment due to the likelihood of destroying the compenents within. But, bed bugs would certainly hide within computers, radios, TVs, bedside clocks, etc., and if they also deposit eggs in those items it is mandatory that these bugs and eggs somehow be killed. Vapona strips may be the answer. Not every customer wants you spraying pesticides on their mattress, so the use of steam and an encasement may be the best answer. Since bugs could hide virtually anywhere in an infested room and deposit eggs on drapery, clothing, luggage in the closet, and other fabrics that should not be directly sprayed with an insecticide, these items might instead be laundered or dry cleaned or placed within a portable heat chamber. Remember that temperatures above 115 degrees are lethal to bugs and their eggs within just a short time, so heat if a very effective tool.

With chemical products I always hesitate to publicly name names, for fear of angering the vendors whose products I failed to mention. However, I will say that synthetic pyrethroids have a problem because of a HIGH level of resistance shown by many bed bug populations. This does not mean the bugs are “immune” to these products, but only that a much longer exposure time is needed to kill the darned bugs. So, pyrethroids do work for many companies but placing them thoroughly where the bugs hide is necessary. Microencapsulated formulations may work better due to the ease of those capsules adhering to the bugs, and creating this longer exposure period. Non-pyrethroids also are popular and we have many new insecticides on the market that are in these newer chemical families. A few names that people use successfully include Transport, Phantom, and Temprid. For those customers who adamantly do NOT want synthetic insecticides used you have many natural choices, most using one or more of the various essential oils. These definitely kill bed bugs but pretty much only on contact, and they leave short to no residual. Essentria is one example.

Many companies include some liquid pyrethrum with the residual material and feel this gives them better results. Perhaps they achieve some faster knockdown due to the pyrethrum itself or perhaps the synergist in the pyrethrum product does the work, but choices here include Kicker, Excite-R, or Pyreth-It. The use of a dust product within interior walls and other voids is also very successful, and a popular choice is Drione, which combines silica gel and pyrethrum. Studies at the Univ. of Kentucky also found that Tempo Dust gave the best performance for dusting within voids, but as a synthetic molecule it is going to degrade more rapidly than the inorganic silica gel. The use of an IGR, like Gentrol, is still up for argument, but some companies do feel they get enhanced control with its use.

On top of all of these products keep in mind the various “passive” and “active” bed bug monitors that help you to determine if the bugs are still there after your treatment. One major company that has done thousands of bed bug jobs in and around New York states that they do not consider the infestation to be gone until 60 days have passed without any bugs or complaints of new bites.

View past Ask Mr. Pest Control questions.

QUESTION:

If a queen of a colony of termites is killed do the termites find another queen for the nest. How do the termites go about finding another queen?


ANSWER:

It’s a fairly long interview process and references are important. No, really, as luck would have it a termite colony is composed of males and females, and quite often there already are “supplemental” or secondary queens doing some of the egg-laying duties. The Primary Queen that started the colony is by far the most prolific egg producer, but the few to many secondary queens do their part. If the primary queen dies, which ultimately she must, the colony lives on with these secondary queens taking over a bigger role. If there are enough of these secondary reproductives in a colony, as may happen with subterranean termites, together they often produce the majority of the eggs, although the primary queen still produces more than any other single reproductive.

The primary queen and “king” are the pair that began the colony. They were the ones that had wings, left their own parent colony in a swarm, mated and formed the new colony. Of course, the primary queen eventually begins to lose that girlish figure as her abdomen swells with the enlarging reproductive organs. In a mature colony she will be very easy to pick out. For our native subterranean termites a life span of around 10 years is expected for these primary queens, but in some kinds of termites around the world it is suggested that this queen may live to 25 years or longer. Since it is known that some termite colonies are up to 100 years old there obviously has been a succession of different reproductives keeping the colony going.

The secondary reproductives are essentially nymphs (females) whose reproductive organs begin to develop, either due to a need with the loss of the primary queen or just as a normal process for putting more reproductives in the colony. The secondary reproductives will be somewhat larger than the primary queen but they still remain fairly small and without the massively expanded abdomen.

View past Ask Mr. Pest Control questions.

QUESTION:

I am having a problem with fleas in a 2 room apartment where a dog is present. Returning and still biting. What do you suggest as a good treatment?

ANSWER:

I’ll admit a little confusion with your question Mike, where you say “returning and still biting”. My question is whether you mean YOU are returning and continuing to have fleas hopping on you or if it is the customer who is returning following your treatment and claiming they still are getting bitten by the fleas. If it is the customer then it always is important to verify the presence of the fleas, as we all have seen those circumstances where homeowners believe something is biting them, never actually see a biting pest themselves, but pin the blame on some arthropod whose name they know. Now, of course, if these folks have a dog the likelihood is much higher that fleas could be present in this apartment, but even so your next visit should be to verify this presence of fleas. Inspect the dog carefully and if fleas are still on the dog ask the owners what steps they have taken to have the dog treated for fleas – flea “dip” bath, flea collar, flea powder? Since the dog is the epicenter of the problem initially it is imperative that fleas be eliminated from the dog, as this is where fleas will lay their eggs to continue any infestation.

If you yourself have never seen any actual fleas it also would be important to place a number of insect glue traps around the home where the dog won’t stick its nose or paws on them. You then can look at the traps a few days later and might be surprised by the results. If there are absolutely no fleas on the glue that might suggest that no more fleas are really present, unless of course the dog still has them. But, as I have seen a couple of times, the traps may be FILLED with fleas in one location, telling you that there is some other source of the insects. Perhaps there are feral cats outside, wild animals like raccoons living under a deck or in the crawlspace, and these infested animals could be seeding the area with eggs and hundreds or thousands of adult fleas as a result. Determining the source is important in any pest management.

Also very possible is that you never eliminated all of the fleas the first time, and the tough part of the flea life cycle is their pupa. According to some experts on flea management you will be unable to kill the pupa of a flea while it is encased in its pupa case. This covering keeps your sprays off of the pupa, which is the actual insect. Therefore, since that developing flea inside that pupa case can emerge within seconds when some stimulus affects it, people walking or sitting on the pupa could quickly get a new, hungry flea on them before that flea has any opportunity to contact the insecticides you applied earlier. You need to get all of those “pre-adult” fleas in their pupae out of the pupae and to the exposed adult stage, and this is done with THOROUGH vacuuming. Your customer should have vacuumed every square inch of carpet and upholstered furniture in the home before your first visit, as this would have caused most of the pupae to hatch. Without physical stimulation (touching or strong vibration) many of the pupa could sit there up to 6 months before the adult flea emerges.

So, now before you spray again tell this customer to vacuum every square inch of the apartment, including the edges of hard floors where hair accumulations may be, all carpet including under all beds and furniture, behind drapes, etc., and all upholstered furniture including under the cushions. They also need to take the dog’s bedding and wash it all in hot water and hot dryer. They should continue to vacuum DAILY for the next week to keep pushing all the pre-adult fleas out of those dormant pupae, but you can come in after the first vacuuming and do a repeat treatment with a labeled product that allow you to use it again within this time interval. Be sure to include an IGR such as methoprene or fenoxycarb, as the IGRs will keep eggs from hatching and prevent larvae from developing to the adult stage. Permethrin is an excellent residual active ingredient for the inside, but other products also work well.

View past Ask Mr. Pest Control questions.

QUESTION:

I was asked a question pertaining to bedbugs by an engineer of a school building. He asked about the relationship of roaches to bedbugs, meaning he knows he has a lot of roaches in his building, but when it comes to bedbugs he also realizes that the kids bring some in and then they are gone. Is it because of the roaches or is this just a coincidence that the bed bugs disappear?

ANSWER:

Well, this is an interesting question, and my advice to this school employee would be NOT to put too much faith in the idea that the bed bugs are no longer at the school. If children bring them in, and we know that schools now are commonly infested with bed bugs, it would be really important for the school administration to take it seriously and do everything they can to monitor and determine if the bugs are still there. The U.S. legal industry has chosen to label people who have bed bug problems as “victims”, and of course “victims” need to sue someone for victimizing them. If it were found out that a school has bed bugs and the problem was not directly addressed, and suddenly some parent finds bed bugs in their home………… well, I can connect the dots, even if they really are not connected.
If you are the PMP who does pest management for this school it would be useful to discuss this with school administrators, and offer them information on the tenacity of bed bugs and the liabiltiy problems that could ensue. This might put you in the position of taking on some added business with the use of bed bug monitors and trapping. Perhaps the bed bugs, if they really were present at this school, were not The Common Bed Bug but instead were bed bugs from birds or bats, in which case they would naturally phase out of existence without their normal hosts, although they certainly could feed on humans for awhile just to try to get by. Perhaps what this engineer thought were bed bugs were in reality some other kind of insect, and without YOU seeing the bugs yourself for a positive ID I’d suggest not taking his word for it. Engineers generally have just about ZERO training in pests or pest management.

So, with all of that soap box taken care of, down to your actual question, which seems to be one I have gotten before – do roaches eat bed bugs? Of course, it’s also interesting, and probably worth yet another soap box, that this person “knows” this school building has lots of roaches but seems to accept it as normal and acceptable. Perhaps you could get a roach control job here too. Roaches are scavengers and opportunistic, so I would suspect that if a hungry cockroach happened upon some bed bugs hiding in a crevice, the roach just might eat them. However, in the excellent book the Bed Bug Handbook by Pinto, Cooper, and Kraft, they state that “reports that cockroaches feed on bed bugs have not been substantiated, although it seems likely that they do. However, none of the predators feed on the bed bugs extensively enough to serve as an effective control agent.”

There are a number of other insect predators that are known to eat bed bugs, but only onesy twosy when the predator finds a bed bug out and about. These predators will never eliminate all of the bed bugs, and with the egg-laying potential of the female bed bugs it is just too likely that plenty more bugs would exist to replace the few that got munched on. So, here’s your opportunity to suggest that steps be taken to monitor the school rooms to see if any bed bugs are present. This could be with the use of a trained dog or with the various passive and active bed bug traps and monitors now available.

View past Ask Mr. Pest Control questions.