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QUESTION:

This may sound like a silly question, but bed bugs need a blood meal to molt and they have 5 instars. Is this also true of the males, and do male bed bugs also produce offspring?


ANSWER:

As far as I know the Common Bed Bug reproduces only by sexual reproduction, meaning a male and female must mate to fertilize the eggs that are carried by the female. However, ONLY the female is capable of producing eggs and offspring, as the males do not have the plumbing needed for this – the ovaries and other reproductive organs necessary. The role of the male is only to provide the sperm to fertilize the eggs. Males, however, DO feed on blood and only blood as their food resource. This is very unlike so many other blood feeding parasites like mosquitoes, deer flies, and other blood sucking flies where only the female feeds on blood and the males feed on plant and flower juices and nectar. Fleas and ticks, however, do all feed on blood whether male or female.

What you may be hinting at is parthenogenesis, whereby females of a species of arthropod may be capable of producing viable offspring without any sexual fertilization, and this is a common phenomenon in the world of bugs. Aphids routinely reproduce in this manner, as do some cockroaches and other insects. In many cases no males are even known to exist within a species while in other cases males are produced periodically so that sexual reproduction does take place for some generations, perhaps allowing a mixing of genetic material to keep the species stronger.

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QUESTION:

I’m having trouble with German roach treatments. I use Cykick CS, Delta Dust, and multiple baits. How long after initial treatments should I do a follow up for best results? Do you have a suggestion for the perfect product for
residential use?

ANSWER:

I would say that the products you are using now should be perfectly capable of killing every cockroach that comes into contact with them for the necessary length of time. However, it always is a good idea to rotate the products you use now and then, rather than constantly using the same active ingredient over and over again, as this is one way that we can select for resistance to an active ingredient or even a family of materials. If cockroaches become resistant to a pyrethroid they could be resistant to all pyrethroids, as all pyrethroids attack the nervous system of the bug in the same manner, and resistance means that the roaches have developed a mechanism for blocking that action on their systems. “Resistance” does not mean “immunity” however, so even roaches that are resistant to an insecticide would still be killed by it if they absorb enough of the active ingredient.

It’ human nature to assume that something must be wrong with the insecticide when we start having problems controlling the pest, and since resistance could occur this cannot be fully ignored. However, most often the problems begin when we do not locate all of the insect harborage sites, and therefore do not treat them. Cockroaches and many other insects are capable of detecting something on a surface that is irritating to them, and pyrethroids could create a behavioral avoidance by the roaches. It is possible (don’t know if it has been demonstrated) that roaches could sense the presence of the pyrethroid as an irritant to their system and just choose not to rest or walk on a treated surface. Microencapsulation, as with the CyKick CS, tends to greatly reduce this repellency, so that should not be a factor for you. Instead, I would choose the more likely path that there are roaches hiding in places that have not yet been found and treated.

Still, it is a good idea to alter your chemical choices, and perhaps go with an inorganic dust like diatomaceous earth or silica gel instead of a pyrethroid dust. Alternate to a non-pyrethroid for the contact treatment, and there are so many new chemical families on the market that I hesitate to pick just one. But, products like Phantom, Acelepryn, imidacloprid products, Alpine and Optigard products, and Transport are options that all provide good results. I used to comment on the need to keep odor in mind when treating residences, but nearly all of our insecticides today have very low to no odor, so that is not as much of a consideration. For bait products it also is good advice to alter the choices, as this avoids behavioral resistance as well. If the roaches simply lose their appetite for one particular bait they will stop eating it, so offering choices helps keep them interested. Alter the formulations though, using granular baits within wall voids, gel baits within crevices, and stations stuck under cabinets or drawers.

The main thing is thoroughness and the placement of the contact insecticide directly into the harborage site. Do not treat baseboards or “band” treatments for German roaches, as they just don’t spend much time sitting on exposed surfaces. You get the most contact time placing the active ingredient onto the surfaces the roaches will sit on for all those daylight hours. Don’t ignore the use of aerosol formulations for the crack and crevice treatments. Aerosols are easiest to apply into crevices and to keep in the crevice, as the solvents in the aerosol evaporate rapidly rather than running out like a water-based spray will do.

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QUESTION:

I was speaking with a property manager today about bed bug control. He told me that a few judges in Massachusetts are trying to pass a law that states the following – the landlord / property manager will be responsible for putting a tenant up in a hotel/motel for the duration of a bed bug treatment, plus be responsible for any damages incurred during the treatment. This seems to me to be an impossible reality, as any landlord / property manager will go bust with people claiming they have bed bugs. This expense will continue until the rooms are declared bed bug free, which would be a minimum of 6 weeks.
Have you heard anything like this? The pressure would be on the PCO to declare bug-free rooms sooner than it should be.

ANSWER:

Well, a few thoughts come to mind immediately, and the first is that what you heard from a property manager could, perhaps, be his emotional view of this and not exactly what is being proposed. I also would be certain that it is not judges that are pushing this, but likely (liberal) legislators who think that this would be a good politically correct protection for renters who have had this awful thing foisted upon them. Again, what the proposed legislation ACTUALLY says would be important to find out first before getting too angry or losing sleep over it.

My second thought, if we work with the premise that what you heard is exactly what is proposed, is that this is a shining example of where strong trade associations need to step in and work with those legislators. I have not heard of this specific kind of PC legislation, but in California there certainly have been many other proposals over the decades that would have been fairly unliveable for our industry, and because the state pest control association was strong and organized it was able to use its lobbying efforts to get those bills modified to something that was actually reasonable and responsible for both sides. I think it goes back to that saying that if you really want a puppy you start by asking your parents for a horse. People will come up with outrageous proposals knowing they will likely have to compromise down to something less.

My take on what you have heard on this is pretty much in line with your thoughts Bill. And, since the management of apartments was not the ones who brought the bed bugs into their buildings, but it was “irresponsible” tenants who transported them, rewarding those tenants with free stays in hotels would seem to unjustified. Of course, no one is going to own up to being the ones who brought in the bed bugs, and tenants surrounding the guilty party’s unit  would also be involved in this disruption, so the fight begins. I can also see this from the point of view of those who propose this legislation. IF…… the big “if”……. innocent bystanders (those other tenants) were forced to vacate their homes while a bed bug service takes place, why should they suffer economically? It falls back on the question of who is going to foot the bill when these things happen, and generally the owners of businesses are perceived as the ones who can best afford it.

Somehow a compromise needs to be sought, and this means that immediately your state associations for pest management and for property managers need to contact their legislators, including whichever legislators are sponsoring this bill, and work with them to point out the drawbacks to this proposal and offer solutions that meet the needs of everyone. Too often some lobby group will approach a legislator with an emotional scenario – in this case the poor disrupted tenants who must leave their homes but cannot afford to pay for a motel for many weeks – and without knowing anything other than this side of the story the legislator puts together his proposal. If no one challenges it then it could sail on through. It is imperative that your association immediately become involved, and hopefully your company is a member of your state association.

Remember, these folks are called “Lawmakers” for a reason – they feel they must be introducing lots of new laws or they aren’t doing their jobs.

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QUESTION:

How can I tell where a dead rodent is located in a wall?

ANSWER:

Well there’s a good question. On this note I just have to tell a story about a recent news article in our area. It seems a mouse died under a desk in an office building of a public employees’ workplace, and for some reason they actually called the local Haz Mat team out, evacuated the building and sent everyone home (except those who had to go to the hospital due to exposure to this terrible odor), and had the guys in sealed silver suits with SCBA hoods on locate the dead mouse and dispose of it. I wonder how much THAT cost the state during these fine financial times. It made the TV headlines all day long.

You may be able to narrow down the search for the offending wall void using your nose and sniffing along baseboards or into electric outlets, but this can be pretty hard to pinpoint. If there are blow flies inside the house they may be able to lead you closer to the location within the walls. But, to be absolutely certain you probably need to actually SEE the carcass, and this means using a camera or scope of some kind to view inside the wall void. These kinds of devices have been used in pest management for a very long time, but more often for termite inspections to peek inside walls or under slabs. But, fiber optic viewing devices and tiny cameras on flexible tubes are commonplace, and you should be able to find them for sale on the internet. By narrowing the search to a specific wall you could poke the camera through existing openings such as electric outlets, or create a small and hopefully inconspicuous opening yourself that could be patched easily afterward.

Eventually the carcass is going to completely dry out and at some point in time the production of foul odors will stop, but this could be a long time, and if that rodent is in a void where the air just loves to flow into the living areas the residents could detect it for awhile. If this is the case there are deodorants you can use, and one that I have received excellent feedback on is the dry deodorants that come in pouches, such as the “Odor Remover Pouch” from EarthCare. These can simply be placed in the area of the odor and according to the manufacturer they pull the air through the pouch and remove the molecules that cause the foul odors. I was skeptical of this claim, but have heard a number of very positive stories from PMP’s where it worked in exactly this manner.

If you know the void the carcass is in but cannot open it to remove the carcass you also could dribble in granules of deodorizers or fog into that void using a liquid deodorizer. So many of the deodorizers in our market today are not “masking” agents that just cover up the smell with a stronger nice fragrance, but they actually remove the odor itself.

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QUESTION:

I have a customer who wants to know if Cyonara, Suspend, and Transport are Green “friendly”, and if so where can I get the literature for my customer?

ANSWER:

A great place to start might be our resource on “Green Pest Management” on PestWeb, which you will find in the Business Tools tab. This document discusses the topic of Green, and emphasizes that this is a very misunderstood topic. What your customer thinks of when he thinks “green” and what you may be thinking could be on different tracks, and it is important to talk with the customer to find out what it is they are looking for. Some homeowners or business owners may think green means that you use no pesticides, or only “natural” pesticides, but this really is not how our industry views the whole topic. Bottom line is that there is no such thing as a Green Pesticide, but only that pesticides can be used in a green manner, or in a manner that is eco-friendly. Of course, anti-pesticide groups are going to take offense to my belief that ANY pesticide could be compatible with a perfect environment, but, well, what’s that old saying about “opinions”?

These 3 products all contain synthetic active ingredients. Does that make them non-green? Of course not, as they all could be used in a manner whereby you ensure they are not polluting the environment and are not harming non-targeted organisms. The active ingredients in them are used in bait products that are very specific to the intended pest. They can be applied in a very discreet manner so that no one and no animals are contacted other than the pest. You can (and should) use them as part of a specific IPM program so that all possible non-chemical techniques are also put to practice for this customer. They may help to rid the customer’s environment (his home, his business) of pests that threaten his personal health, and this creates a better environment for him and his family.

This shows why the topic of green is easily confusing, and you and the customer must work together to provide what he wants. Most homeowners probably think in terms of natural pesticides when they are thinking green, and if this is the case then no, these 3 products are not natural active ingredients. If we use Green Buildings under the LEED protocol then we would look for products on an acceptable list of pesticides, and this is provided as a link on another resource on PestWeb on LEED Certified Green Buildings, which you’ll also find under that Business Tools link.

But, the most important points here are that there is no such thing as a Green Pesticide, but only that there are green ways to go about pest management, and that some pesticides seem to fit within those methods more logically than others. However, any pesticide may be appropriate – it is all about HOW the material is used, not WHAT it is.

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QUESTION:

I have a question in regards to service for cluster flies. We would like to use Talstar Pro but it does not list cluster flies, but does list flies. Do you know if this is good for cluster flies or do you have another option that you have heard works well for cluster flies?

ANSWER:

Most states continue to allow the use of a pesticide for any pest that occurs on a labeled site as long as the Label for that product does not specifically prohibit use for non-labeled pests or has any other restrictive wording. For example, the recent RMD (Rodenticide Mitigation Decision) required rodenticide manufacturers to place the words “for use ONLY for” on their labels for products used for the house mouse and for Norway and roof rats, clearly restricting the use to only these three species. There may be similar statements on many insecticides, but most often the product labels are vague for a reason, and that reason is to allow flexibility on the part of the end user – the professional in pest management. In our resource on PestWeb listing all of the products for various pests and various sites we often take it down only to the basic level – flies, cockroaches, spiders – and not to specific house flies, german roaches, black widow spiders, because that is as far as the Label goes.

So, in my opinion if the product is labeled for “flies” then it gives you the judgment call to use it for any kind of fly pest you encounter as long as you are using it in a manner allowed by the Label and on a site allowed by the Label. Since cluster fly management does include the use of residual insecticides this would probably be an effective material to use in some settings, such as applying it to resting sites indoors or outdoors as long as that site is on the label (attic, wall void, exterior surfaces of structures, etc.) Yes, pyrethroids like bifenthrin are good products for fly management, but it is possible that a different formulation may be more effective.

Microencapsulated products, and we have quite a few different brand names now, offer a few benefits over other formulations of products applied as liquid sprays. They hold up better once exposed to the environment, and if you are treating exterior surfaces for cluster flies that are gathering on the outside walls you want the product to last as long as possible. The microscopic capsules may be more inclined to adhere to the flies that land on that treated surface or walk across it, giving the fly a better opportunity to be exposed to a lethal dose of the active ingredient.

In general cluster flies should be controlled with the combination of good exclusion to prevent their entry into the structure, possibly placing UV light traps into larger void areas the flies occupy in the winter, and using insecticides within the voids where they are gathering as well as on the surfaces in the fall outside when the flies begin to congregate.

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QUESTION:

I have a customer who owns a recyling center. He has bees swarming on top of the aluminum cans which are in a 40ft. container with an open top. I do not want to spray any chemicals on the cans because they are being recycled. Do you have any ideas?

ANSWER:

This is always a very difficult problem, where bees or wasps are attracted to a food resource. I will go out on a limb here and assume that this customer of yours is not inclined to make any particular changes himself in the way things are being done there. He has bees that he does not want around and expects you to just make them go away. I will say that there really aren’t any repellents that could be used, so that is out. If the sweet odors from the cans continues to exist it is going to continue to attract bees, so that cannot be changed. So, what we are down to is that the bees are going to come to this facility and your choices are either to kill them all or to prevent them from getting to the cans.

Killing the bees (or could it be yellowjackets) is going to be difficult. If it is yellowjackets then perhaps you have a chance by offering bait stations around the facility, using one of the two residual insecticides currently labeled for use in yellowjacket baiting (Onslaught and CyKick). Only yellowjackets will be drawn to this kind of bait, not honeybees, and it would be very limited due to competition from the recycled cans and their attractive odors. Even if you were allowed to use some insecticides that would effectively kill bees this would become a course of frustration. Whatever you sprayed would either be removed shortly afterward or the insecticide active ingredient would degrade rapidly, requiring you to make constant applications of the material, which somehow does not seem like a good idea.

I don’t have any wonderful brainstorms on this, but if there is some way to exclude the bees this is a goal you should work toward, and it is going to have to involve the customer to change the practices currently in effect. I am picturing bins that are 40 feet long, rather than 40 feet high, and hopefully this is correct. The open top is obviously for the convenience of the workers who regularly dump another load of cans into the bin. I say this naively, but is there any way to put a lid on that bin that could be opened each time a load needs to go into it? Could it be covered with a plastic tarp that is removed and then replaced? I have dropped by recycling centers many times myself and I know very well the rush hour work they do and the fact that sanitation is not exactly part of their mission statement. The bins are generally filthy and never washed, so there is always going to be that odor of spilled sugary materials that will attract the bees.

Is there any way to enclose these bins within a space that would keep the bees physically away, and yet allow the workers with their forklifts or loaders to push through and empty the cans into the bins? This would take some time and expense to create, but I really do not see pesticides as any kind of an answer here, and certainly not a long range answer to the problem. Changes the practices to exclude the bees would be the better approach to work toward. Unfortunately a look at a number of resources on the internet offers only that sanitation and rinsing of cans are the keys to preventing bees from being a problem at recycling centers, and these just do not seem to be useful options for a commercial recycling center.

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QUESTION:

Having been involved with bed bug control for 15 years I have seen many changes in methodology and pesticides as well as non-pesticide treatments. There are two products that I use often, Steri-fab and Bedlam. I used to time how long it takes to kill the bed bug and it USED TO BE within 27 to 32 seconds. Now I watch more than a minute before the kill takes place, and sometimes even that doesn’t occur. Have there been any reports on resistance being built up by the bed bugs?

ANSWER:

The news since The Common Bed Bug came back into our lives has been just abuzz with information on the resistance to insecticides that is clearly taking place. While I do not recall the exact numbers, Dr. Dini Miller of Virginia Polytech Univ. recently did studies to test the levels of resistance, and she came up with surprising and frightening numbers showing that many commonly used active ingredients took from many hours to many DAYS of continuous exposure between the bed bug and the active ingredient to cause the final death of the bugs. In some cases, and perhaps an increasing percentage of them, bed bugs today are 1000 times more resistant to insecticides than they were decades ago. All of our industry leaders and research experts advise us that pesticides alone are not likely to control a dug-in bed bug problem. You need to be incorporating other options as well.

Steri-Fab is 98% isopropyl alcohol with a very small amount of a pyrethroid in it, and Bedlam is, I believe, also primarily alcohol with a light level of syngergized pyrethroid in it. You would think that the alcohol portion would just fry bed bugs and their eggs on contact, but this does not seem to occur, although direct contact with eggs and bugs does seem to do a good job. Many companies add liquid pyrethrum to their residual for application, and this seems to help with knockdown and ultimate kill. Perhaps it is the pyrethrum or perhaps it is the synergist in the pyrethrum that does the trick in moving things along. Many other products are also used by PMP’s with what they claim is great success, so insecticides definitely do kill bed bugs, but just much more slowly than they used to, and the ability for bed bugs to build up resistance to active ingredients seems very clear.

Hopefully your bed bug control procedure also involves those other accepted steps – heating by laundering and drying, dry cleaning, the use of heat chambers when needed, the use of sealed chambers with vapona strips for electronics, the installation of encasements for beds, the use of vacuum and/or steamer for many sites around the infested rooms. Resistance definitely exists and it is unlikely that some new magical insecticide product is going to come to our market anytime soon. The unbelievable cost to manufacturers to develop new active ingredients really prohibits their ability to come up with a new one just for this specific pest problem.

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QUESTION:

I have hornets in a brick dust pile. Once I chase them off with wasp and hornet freeze. How do I keep them away?

ANSWER:

I am not forming a perfect picture in my mind of this brick dust pile, but am assuming that it is what you call it – a pile of dust. This would not seem like a great location for paper wasps to be building their nest and colony, so I wonder if you are dealing with solitary wasps that are using this pile to create their burrows in. Many solitary wasps are burrowing wasps where the female digs a tunnel down a certain depth, and then digs side tunnels off this main tunnel with a small chamber at the end. Within this chamber she then stocks food in the form of a paralyzed insect and deposits an egg on it, and at this point the female is done with her role and she seals the chamber and never returns. Thus, the period of activity of the adult wasps can be relatively short.

Solitary wasps also are very unlikely to sting anyone, so the combination of their non-threatening presence and the benefits of their preying on other insects we should welcome them. I say all this because my hope is that we can educate our customers to understand that many insects should be tolerated and appreciated in the landscape, rather than killed simply out of an unreasonable fear of them. Controlling them can be difficult, but there are both chemical and non-chemical options. Certainly, one non-chemical option is to take away their access to this pile of dust. Since they are active only during that period of tunnel digging and egg laying if the pile can be covered with plastic or eliminated entirely this could encourage the wasps to look elsewhere for the appropriate soils for their nesting. If the dust pile is damp it offers a better substrate for digging than dry dust will, as dry soils may collapse as the female wasp attempts to create the tunnel.

If you cannot get the customer to tolerate the wasps, and you cannot control the presence or condition of this pile of dirt, then you are left with trying to kill the wasps chemically. Hopefully this is a small area without too many entry points, and again my inability to picture exactly what it looks like leaves me at a disadvantage. But, if you can access the openings the wasps are using you could treat them with a residual material of some kind, such as a dust or liquid spray. This would provide a lingering active ingredient that the wasps may pick up as they move back and forth into that pile. If you do this you obviously need to be pretty close to the entry areas, so it would be good advice to wear protective clothing to prevent an angry wasp from getting to you. A dust might be the better formulation as this can be pushed further into the pile and openings with a pressurized duster, and the dust clings to the body of passing wasps. However, dusts work best when they stay dry.

Trapping and baiting generally are ineffective for any wasps other than yellowjackets.

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QUESTION:

Do rats eat mice? Is this why they are never seen in the same environment?

ANSWER:

Given the opportunity I believe rats definitely would eat mice, and they may even get this opportunity if they were to come across an undefended nest with baby mice in it. Rats are omnivorous, meaning they feed on just about anything, and this includes both fruits and other plant products as well as meat. Roof rats have been responsible for terrible losses of nesting birds, eating the eggs or the young birds in the nests in trees. Norway rats also feed on eggs and young they may find as they forage at ground level. Meat is necessary protein, and being opportunistic in their feeding habits I believe rats will eat anything available.

However, adult mice are probably a harder prey to capture, so I would bet that rats don’t make a regular diet out of adult mice, unless they find mice that are injured and unable to escape. What is more likely perhaps is that rats are like any other animal, and they aggressively protect their own resources. We have been told that the larger Norway rats will dominate over Roof rats, likely chasing them away when competition for food seems inevitable. Wild animals have a hard time with the concept of sharing. Probably a good origin for the expression “It’s a dog-eat-dog world out there”. This also may explain why Norway and Roof rats evolved slightly different habitats – Norways more at ground level and Roof rats in the trees, and as Dr. Corrigan once stated it, Roof Rats are “arboreal” – they evolved to living in trees, and this is why they can climb so well.

With limited food resources I think that Norway Rats simply won’t tolerate the presence of other kinds of rodents that may steal those resources, and being so much larger they have the bulk to back up their claim to that food.

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