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4012 N. Main Street
Dayton, OH 45405

QUESTION:

Realizing that maxforce bait or any other ant bait is not registered for the control of flying insects, I wonder about these baits killing yellow jackets or ground hornets that come in contact with it? In the old days “baits” used for hornets, yellow jackets, etc, were compounded with a sweet attractant. I am a PCO from Massachusetts. Thank you for your time and consideration.

ANSWER:

I think the answer needs to be that most ant baits are labeled such that wasps should have no opportunity to come into contact with them, and I don’t mean this as a lecture. But taking Terro liquid ant bait as an example, since it would be one that yellowjackets would definitely be interested in if they found it, the Label requires that it be placed within “bait stations designed to hold liquid bait”. Advance liquid bait has similar wording, although they refer to “feeder trays”, but it seems to me that most, if not all, of the bait stations in our industry used for ant baiting are enclosed, allowing access for ants but keeping out other insects, childrens’ fingers, and dogs’ tongues. So, used properly for ants the bait would not be exposed so that larger hornets or yellowjackets could access it.

We probably will not see baits come out for things like the large cicada killers, mud daubers, and other large predatory wasps. These solitary wasps pose so little stinging hazard but provide such benefit with their predatory habits that they are far more beneficial than pesty. Most of the ground nesting wasps are going to be these solitary wasps, although yellowjackets definitely may nest in the ground as well. It is only a few of the species of yellowjackets that even come to artificial baits, and these scavenger species are the biggest problems. They are drawn to picnics and outdoor activities where they relentlessly try to get into canned drinks, onto hot dogs and hamburgers, or gather around spills of food materials, and now they represent a serious stinging problem. Fortunately we do have 2 products now labeled for use to mix as a bait for yellowjackets – Onslaught and CyKick. These can be added to chopped meat or sweet syrups, placed in a proper station, and very effectively elminate local nests of scavenger yellowjackets.

But, just supposing these various wasps DID manage to access ant baits. I think most wasps would only be interested in liquid sugar baits as food for themselves, and not to protein ant baits which might be a food source for scavenger yellowjacket larvae. Nearly all those other wasps and hornets stick to natural food supplies, meaning other insects, so granular insect baits (hopefully) would not attract them. Most ant baits use boric acid as the active ingredient, and boric acid must be ingested by the insect to be toxic, so casual physical contact would not harm them. However, some of the baits are now using contact insecticides such as fipronil, so even contacting these baits without eating them could, conceivably, affect a wasp.

Obviously we need to pay close attention to the product labels and how they require the bait to be applied, as well as to the pests listed on the labels. I know we can get frustrated with trying to control ground nesting bees and wasps when the customer demands they be eliminated, but hopefully our desire to throw everything possible at the bugs won’t tempt us into using things that should not be used. Scattering granular baits around the area where ground hornets or burrowing bees are active probably won’t accomplish anything, but it could expose other wildlife to the bait and result in problems. For yellowjackets we do have bait products that work well. For the others hopefully educating the customers to understand more about the benefits of burrowing wasps and bees will reduce the demands that they be killed.

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QUESTION:

I service a restaurant that has a recent problem with fruit flies and gnats. I’ve placed scented glue boards for fruit flies but I have not trapped any and the problem is getting worse. Any ideas?

ANSWER:

My first thought would be to verify the identity of these flies. Fruit flies (Drosophila) are very similar in appearance to Phorid flies, but quite different in habits and potential sources. Both have similar orange-brown coloring and are the same size, but a couple of distinctive differences are these. Phorid flies do not have the red eyes of typical Drosophila, although the “Dark Eyed Fruit Fly” is a Drosophila that also does not have red eyes. Phorid flies also have the curious and annoying habit of landing on a surface and then running quickly on it for a moment.

Both kinds of flies could be breeding in fermenting materials such as spoiled fruits or vegetables or spills of juices that have been left and are fermenting and sticky. An interesting source for MANY fruit flies in one restaurant was some discarded beer bottles with lime sections stuck in them that had fallen under some counters and been overlooked. Over a few weeks these two bottles delivered thousands of Drosophila into the restaurant. Phorid flies may like this stuff too, but they also breed heavily in other decaying organic materials, so a very thorough inspection of this restaurant is in order to determine just where the flies are originating. We can place UV light traps and other fly traps to “monitor” for the flies, but these devices are rarely going to “eliminate” the flies if the breeding source remains in place. I’d suggest capturing a few of the flies and making that positive ID so that you know for sure what possible breeding sites to look for.

Then, take a flashlight and plenty of time and inspect every hidden place within this restaurant as part of your Sanitation Inspection – this is a good idea regardless of the pest, and your findings all should be written down on a physical Sanitation Inspection Report and shared with the customer. This allows both of you to discuss the contributing conditions you found that could encourage not only flies, but also ants and roaches and maybe rodents. I don’t know of any traps specific for phorid flies, but UV lights traps catch them readily, so placing some of these in various areas of the restaurant might give you a trail back to the source of the problem. One source that has occurred many times within structures turns out to be beneath slabs where plumbing has broken and all that contaminated water has flowed under the slab to provide Phorid Fly Heaven as a breeding site.

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QUESTION:

There is a question that I am asked over and over again. “How do I keep mice out of my car engine?” This usually occurs outside and it can happen overnight or when there is idle time for the car. I usually look for wood piles, compost piles, sheds, or any other harborage areas for the mice. Do you have any other suggestions?

ANSWER:

This certainly is not a dumb question Bill. I have a friend who just a few months ago had over $2000 worth of damage done to his engine compartment (wires, hoses) by rats gnawing away at things. You wouldn’t think that an engine compartment of a car would be such a comfortable place for a rat or mouse, but perhaps they first get in there when the engine is still warm and then begin returning to it out of habit. Fact is though, that while in there they do what rats and mice do and gnaw on whatever is available.

I’ll mention a new breed of rodent repellents in a moment, but I always hate to see us relying only on repellents, since these rarely last for more than a few weeks and would need constant reapplication to be effective, if they even work at all. You are doing the right thing trying to take the battle away from the vehicle and eliminate the rodents wherever you find other harborage or travel routes. Repellents also do only that – repel them – and these rodents are still alive and available to damage other things in the area, or to seek a way inside the structure where they are intolerable. I truly understand the empathy many people feel for these peridomestic rats and mice, but in the big picture they are competing with humans for our health and homes, and permanently eliminating them (is that a P.C. way of saying kill?) is the option we must consider.

Fact is that if the mice are living comfortably around these homes and the vehicles they are going to explore, and up inside cars seems to be a common place for them to go and perhaps hang out awhile. You cannot stop the mice from going to the car, but perhaps you can cause them to turn around and leave before going further. A few new repellents are on the market, such as Detour and Rat-Out, which use ingredients of white pepper, garlic oil, and other strongly irritating substances. I have no feedback from users in the field as to how well these work, and would love to get some. The manufacturers have claims about their efficacy, but I am always happier with the industry’s opinion from real-world uses.

Rat-Out, for example, is a gel that is labeled quite liberally for use just about anywhere, inside or outside, where rodents are a problem. The label says to apply it to “any surface where rodents travel”, including trees, roofing, and around any entry points you find. It suggests creating a “rodent-free zone by surrounding the area with gel”, bringing a picture to my mind of a circle of gel around the car on the asphalt driveway. This almost seems like spreading salt to keep a vampire away, doesn’t it? The label for DeTour is more extensive, and it claims that rodents affected by the repellent will stay away for 30 days as long as the repellent is still in place. This could be, given that these are creatures of habit that figure out when something hazardous is in a place. This product also offers more use sites, but the ingredients are the same

However, I really like the additional instructions on the DeTour label, in which they say “use DeTour in conjunction with a sound rodent eradication strategy”. In other words, the repellent should be considered a stop-gap tool to protect sensitive places and items as you implement the more important overall strategy of ELIMINATING the rodent pests. By pushing them away from a preferred harborage you may cause them to move about more and encounter your traps or baits, and this could enhance your results.

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QUESTION:

Two customers have called me today about hundreds of caterpillars crawling on their patios and driveways, coming into their garages. I asked them to describe them to me, and they told me that they were about an inch long, slim and black, with a white underside. What are these? Ballground and waleska.

ANSWER:

Well, as luck would have it I sent a response to you suggesting perhaps tent caterpillars, but immediately after that I reviewed our Pests In The News offerings for the day and found a article from today that appears to give the exact answer. You can see the entire article online by going into our Pests In The News for May 4 and opening the article from UGA on the “strange moth” outbreak. It turns out this was an unknown caterpillar and a behavior that has not been observed in Georgia before. Some examples were sent to Dr. Dave Wagner at the Univ. of Connecticut who identified them as the Black-dotted Brown Moth – Cissusa spadix, which up till now was not really considered to be a pest.

The caterpillars are as you describe – about an inch long, dark on top and with white lines on either side. They are wandering all over the trunks fo OAK trees and potentially will defoliate the tree. They also wander all over the ground and into homes, and have the wonderful habit of vomiting a dark liquid onto surfaces in the home. Some home remedies are offered in this news article, quoting some folks with the Univ. of Georgia, so I home you will take the time to read it and be aware of this unusual problem. It also brings up the good advice that ANY time you find some pests in your area you are not familiar with, or some behaving very much out of character, please bring it to the attention of your local Dept. of Agriculture or University Extension Service. We can be the thousands of extra eyes in the field to help recognize new invasive pests early, and perhaps eradicate them before they are out of control.

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QUESTION:

In some cases diatomaceous earth is a very reasonable option in my work. It seems like it should be a “non-repellent” but I’m not crystal clear. Repellent or not? Can I use this for pharoah ants or German roaches in combination with baits and/or Phantom?

ANSWER:

The use of insecticide dusts is making a nice reappearance in professional pest management, and I will summarize some information that was in a 2009 trade magazine article. A study by Romero, Potter, and Haynes at the Univ. of Kentucky tested several dust products on bed bugs, and their results were very interesting. Very briefly they got the best results with a silica gel/pyrethrum/PBO dust with 100% kill of all bed bugs within 72 hours, including resistant strains of these insects. Second place was Diatomaceous Earth (DE) which gave 100% kill but took 10 days. Surprising to them was that Tempo Dust killed 100% of the bugs within 24 hours, and topped their list.

There does not appear to be any inherent repellency from contact with these sorptive and desiccant dusts, but if the dust is applied too heavily it may become “physically” repellent – the bugs just don’t want to rest on a heavily dusted surface or wade through a barrier of dust material. As one industry consultant stated it 30 years ago “if you can see the dust on the surface after you applied it IT WAS TOO MUCH”. It is our tendency, and comfort level, to be able to see the result of our application, and a we may believe that a nice, even, visible layer is just perfect. In reality, this is an over application and detracts from the effectiveness. These dusts should be just excellent for ants and roaches too, and should be applied into closed voids as part of the overall strategy for their management. Even a nearly invisible layer of the dust allows particles to adhere to the lower surfaces of the bugs that walk over them or rest on them, and sorptive dusts like silica gel (Drione, Tri-Die, and others) also may have an electrostatic charge to them that helps them attach to the insect.

If there are any bugs that may be harder to kill with dusts, and this is just my thinking, perhaps it would be those that are very hairy, such as some spiders. The hairs could keep the dust particles away from the exoskeleton, and since these are abrasive materials that need to scratch into the exoskeleton to be effective this could be a problem. But, smooth-bodied insects like bed bugs, roaches, and ants should be highly susceptible to the dusts. There are 2 huge advantages to using the inorganic dusts like silica gel and DE – extremely low hazard to people and pets and many years of residual effectiveness. As long as they are applied to a dry surface the dust particles remain available to the bugs that touch that surface at some point in time. This is perfect for wall voids and interior voids of equipment or furnishings that are okay for dust to be in (do NOT dust the inside of a computer!!). Also appropriate for within the enclosed box spring of a bed, around the edges of floors behind molding or carpet edges, and carefully within deeper crevices.

The disadvantage to dusts is their visibility, especially when over-applied. Even though their toxicity to people is almost nil, just the presence of a “pesticide” can spark fear in uninformed people, so your customers need a little education and discussion on what you plan to use in their home. Bottom line is that dusts have an excellent role in control of many structural pests and DE should be non-repellent if it is applied discreetly. The one dust that is NOT effective on bed bugs is boric acid dust, but it should be very good for roaches and ants. Boric acid must be ingested and bed bugs have no ability to do this.

Contrary to things you read on that darned Internet boric acid is NOT a desiccant and does not kill by plugging the breathing openings on bugs. It is toxic only by ingestion. And just to pontificate a bit more on MISinformation on the internet, boric acid also is NOT non-toxic, is NOT safe to use around children, is NOT toxic to “all” insects, does NOT attack their nervous systems, is NOT a “drying agent” to insects’ bodies, is not absorbed through their exoskeletons, and is not the “secret” ingredient in professional products. I picked up every one of these tidbits of disinformation from a single website that was promoting boric acid as the non-toxic alternative to pesticides. We have a big job to do as professionals to help our customers learn the facts about our products and our profession, and to overcome the junk they can find on the internet.

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QUESTION:

What is better, a vacuum cleaner or a spray for German roaches? What kind of vacuum cleaner is best, and where can I get one?

ANSWER:

It is unlikely you could completely eliminate a cockroach infestation using only a vacuum cleaner, so while this tool is an excellent part of good IPM and management of roaches, insecticides of some kind are also necessary. This may not mean a spray, for baits work very well if you place them correctly and are diligent about keeping them fresh. In addition to baits you also would benefit tremendously from dust applications in wall voids and other enclosed voids that roaches can get into, but where the dust will also stay put. Are sprays needed? Maybe not, but there will be situations where using a liquid treat or aerosol applications can greatly speed up the kill of the roaches, and it may be necessary to drop the roach population quickly to reduce the problem right away.

The vacuum is effective only on exposed roaches, meaning roaches you can see and get to at the moment you are vacuuming, or those that may be hiding within a very shallow crevice where the suction pulls them out effectively. It is not going to affect any roaches hiding in voids or deeper crevices, so this is where your residual insecticides are needed, and again a bait can be considered a “residual” material in that it will be available for days or weeks following application. The vacuum should also be used to remove as much food garbage as you can, and the customer also needs to cooperate fully in this regard. If you do not focus on sanitation for the German roach your baits are going to be far less effective. If the roach food resources continue to be present there is no reason for them to feed on your bait products. But, take away all their other foods and suddenly your bait becomes the only thing available, and it will dramatically increase the feeding on it.

Use a vacuum that is meant for insect control, and Univar does carry several kinds from a couple of manufacturers. Atrix International seems to be a leader in these products for the Professional pest management industry, and we 3 or 4 models of theirs, including backpack styles that are convenient for use in commercial accounts. These also can be fitted with HEPA filters so that microscopic dust particles are trapped as you vacuum, containing these bits and pieces of roaches and their feces that are known to carry allergens that can have a serious effect on people. This is another service that should be offered to customers who have a large roach problem. Cleaning up all the accumulated crud will make a much healthier living environment after the roaches are removed.

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QUESTION:

I have a severe mouse problem in a chicken coup. I have trapped 208 of them and they are getting worse. Is a rodenticide available that can be used without harming the birds?

ANSWER:

Where oh where to begin on this nightmare job. I am assuming that this chicken coup is absolutely porous and available to the mice to enter, and that exclusion is not an option at this time? Even so, since it sounds like you are in an area with an abundance of mice available to invade the chicken area, exclusion should be a long term goal. If nothing is done in that area then you may be faced with an endless program of killing mice AFTER they get into the more sensitive coup area. The barrier would have to be complete, meaning both horizontal and vertical, since mice would easily climb over anything installed around the outside except, perhaps, smooth metal. Just a thought, but it would pay to evaluate the options for exclusion and discuss this with the customer.

You say this is a chicken “coup” rather than a chicken ranch, so I imagine this is at least on a smaller scale than a large egg ranch operation. I think the immediate answer to your question on rodent baits is that any bait that would kill a rodent would also kill chickens IF the chickens consumed the bait. However, if you properly place the bait within tamper-resistant stations and have these properly secured to the surface there should be no way the chickens could access the bait, including as a secondary poisoning. It would seem very unlikely that even dead rodents that are left laying around (which they never should be) would not be eaten or pecked at by the chickens, so any undigested bait in the rodent should not get into any chickens. It would be more up to how you manage to use the bait rather than the bait itself as to whether or not the birds can get to it.

Stand back and take a really critical look at this situation. The mice are coming from somewhere, and the best pest management nearly always involves SOURCE control – dealing with the problem where it is coming from rather than picking off the pests one at a time after they get into the more sensitive locations – in this case the coup itself. Are these mice coming from surrounding natural areas? If so, perhaps you can place rodent stations in abundance around the perimeter of the property, keeping in mind the new rodenticide regulations coming in June that require all rodenticides to be used ONLY within 50 feet of a structure. If you do place stations around fencelines and are using new-labeled rodent baits, any stations beyond that 50 foot distance would have to use traps.

You indicate that the problem is getting worse, and as always you should make certain which mouse this is – House Mouse, Vole, Deer Mouse? With weather turning warmer we can expect rodent activity to increase, and your choice of control measures may vary depending on the kind of mouse. You are in Ohio, and winter has had a hard time letting go in the upper Midwest, but outdoor rodents probably are more active by now. As my father used to say, if nothing changes nothing changes, and it appears that continuing to approach the problem as you have been, even though you are catching lots of mice, is not going to resolve it. You need to look carefully at exclusion, at perimeter baiting or trapping if possible, and somehow changing the environment around this property to make life a bit less comfortable for the mice. Customer cooperation is going to be very important. It would be unfair and unreasonable for them to create a major attraction for mice and then expect you magically to keep the mice away.

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QUESTION:

I have about fifty green bees that are nesting in a sand box of a playground area. I would like to get rid of them but do not want to spray pesticides in an area such as this. Someone had mentioned to me that they thought green bees only stayed for a short while and then would leave on there own. Is this correct? These bees do not even remotely appear to be aggressive. What would you suggest?


ANSWER:

I can understand the mixed emotions on this. If these bees were doing their little thing in some soil in my backyard I would stand aside and enjoy them. But, when they are in a children’s sandy play area it does bring children into closer contact with an insect that has the “potential”, if not the inclination, to sting. These are probably either Cuckoo Wasps in the family Chrysididae or solitary bees such as Sweat or Alkali bees in the family Halicitidae. Other smallish mettalic green bees include leafcutting bees, but these are unlikely to use the soil for nesting. All of these are solitary wasps and bees. They do not have a colony, do not have a queen, do not have division of labor and larvae to take care of, and do not have any instinct to attack someone who gets too close to their nest. The females of some of these solitary bees do have the ability to sting, but so rarely do that their benefit from pollinating far, FAR outweighs any health concern.

Many wasps and bees, including other little ones called digger bees, mining bees, plasterer bees, etc. create channels in the soil that end in a little chamber. In this chamber the female bee places a ball of pollen and the female wasp places some paralyzed insect and an egg is deposited near this food. The adult wasp then is done and does not return, so the larvae develop on their own from this food cache and emerge later as new adults. Again, no social structure = no aggressive tendencies, and the only time a person would be stung would be if the adult female were directly threatened, such as being captured in a hand or trapped in clothing.

The soil has to be of a consistency that the bees or wasps can create tunnels that do not collapse. Drying out the sand would keep them from doing this successfully, and raking the soil daily or more frequently might discourage the wasps. Covering it with plastic to keep the bees off the soil will also cause them to go somewhere else. I agree with you that spraying the sand that children play on with ANY pesticides could raise the concerns of some parents, even if the pesticide were a “natural” material from plant oils. Some people simply are that concerned over anything we could call a pesticide, although they routinely expose themselves to far more toxic substances in their own home or garage than we could use to kill insects.

However, insecticides are not that useful anyhow for burrowing bees and wasps, and making physical changes to cause these insects to look elsewhere for their larval chambers is a better long term solution. You would have to treat each individual hole in the sand if you could find them, and this is time consuming and make not work anyhow. Better to try to make it impossible for the bees to either access the sand or to dig tunnels in it. Dry sand is their enemy.

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QUESTION:

How do you control stink bugs? Are there any traps or pheromones out there?

ANSWER:

The Brown Marmorated Stinkbug (BMS) certainly has taken the country by storm in the past couple of years. I recall that just a few years ago this invasive species was still kind of a nuisance, but tolerable except for the occasional home that got a lot of them in it. Suddenly, it seemed, in 2010 the news exploded with reports on the BMS, not only in its massive invasions of structures but also its clear threat to agriculture. It is a fairly large stinkbug, and cannot be overlooked. It also now is firmly entrenched on the West coast, so we’ll see what impact it has on the enormous agricultural industry out here, along with another stinkbug species that recently entered California and Arizona, the Bagrada Bug. Read about these on BugInfo.com.

Since I wasn’t aware myself of any current traps for the BMS I went and Googled a bit, and found a few interesting things. There is one indoor trap being sold privately by someone who invented one himself, after toying with various concoctions that he found attracted the bugs to a lighted trap with a glue board in it. The attractive scent is just certain vegetables, and he has had both good and bad reports back from people who have purchased it from him.

In our market the manufacturer of the Sterling (Rescue) Yellowjacket Traps has announced they will soon market a pheromone trap for the BMS, and that this does use a sex pheromone as the attractant. The manufacturer claims it attracts both nymphs and adults, but since nymphs cannot fly the trap would need to be placed against foliage so the early stages could crawl onto and into it. It also has a very limited radius of attraction, so you can’t place a couple on the back fence and expect the neighborhood to be rid of the bugs. There appear to be a lot of home remedies offered on the internet, but hopefully the one from Sterling will be useful in landscapes to at least cut the populations down, or to place around the home in the Fall to capture the bugs before they enter for the winter.

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QUESTION:

Is it true? Is the reason Drywood termites expel fecal pellets from their galleries because the pellets release methane which can build up where they live, thereby killing them?

ANSWER:

Oh boy. A fun one, and I am going to have to use restraint to keep from discussing other deadly sources of, shall we say, methane gas?

I appreciate this question, and it allowed me to learn far more than I ever wanted to know about the methane gas produced by drywood termites, but……….heck, trivia is fun. Drywood termites, according to some references I could find, are fairly prolific producers of methane gas, at least in the Termite World they are prolific. And, in the obsession of many people to identify all the sources of this “greenhouse gas” that will be the end of mankind termites have been fingered as one major source of methane. Of course, so has cow flatulence, so we should still keep a skeptical mind on some of the reports. But, in termites the methane appears to be produced by the little colonies of microorganisms that are in the hindgut of termites – protozoa, bacteria, etc. – that are responsible for much of the actual digestion of cellulose and the release of byproducts that the termite then is able to use for its nutrition.

Methane is an extremely common gas in nature, and it is produced by bacteria and other microorganisms wherever anaerobic decomposition takes place. It also is the major component of the natural gas we use in heating and other gas-powered appliances. Drywood termites have a strong motivation to conserve moisture, since they live in such dry environments such as wood with little moisture content. To this end they squeeze out every possible molecule of water before shoving that fecal pellet out their hind end, making the pellet a very dry, hard piece of waste material. I guess that there must be some amount of methane gas still coming off this pellet, since some tiny number of the microorganisms must be excreted along with the pellet, but it would seem to me that this would have to be so infinitesimally small as to be of no consequence in the termite environment. Far more of the methane would have to be generated within the termite by the workings of those microorganisms, and the methane would just leave the termite as gaseous emissions.

So, without finding anyone or any reference to support my belief, I suspect it is just good housekeeping that causes the drywood termites to get rid of all those fecal pellets. These termites work slowly in wood, and probably cherish the small amount of space they have to work in, and having a lot of poop lying around takes up needed space for no reason. Dampwood termites also produce a similar fecal pellet, although it is larger and softer and is just taken to storage areas within the colony and left there. This does not seem to be harmful to the survival of these termites, and methane gas, if any, must be associated with their pellets as well.

Methane detectors are being offered to the termite inspection industry as one possible tool for detecting hidden termites, but if they work at all it would have to be by detecting the much larger amount of methane coming off the living termites rather than their fecal pellets. I say again that I did not find any specific information anywhere on the level of methane produced by the pellets, and this might be an interesting study for some high school student to do – confine drywood termites with their feces and see what effect it has on them.

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