Archive for the ‘Pest Questions’ Category

Sep 21, 2012 – Food Plant Pest Management

QUESTION:

What are the guidelines and procedures for treating a Food Processing Plant?


ANSWER:

In general you are simply required to follow the product Label for any pesticides you may use in a food processing plant. However, this can depend upon a couple of things. One is whether or not the plant you are working with is inspected by AIB – the American Institute of Baking – which is a private organization that more or less polices food manufacturing in North America. They provide food safety inspections, audits of these businesses, training, and certifications all in the name of protecting the quality of food produced in North America and other countries around the world. If AIB inspectors do oversee the plant you are working with you will be obligated to work with their on-site inspector to follow the AIB guidelines, and you can access all of their “Standards” on their website at https://www.aibonline.org// 

Another consideration will be whether or not there is any “Organic” production going on at the plant, in which case you would need to follow quite strictly the USDA requirements for the use of pesticides in organic facilities with their National Organic Program. You can find details on this at http://www.ams.usda.gov/AMSv1.0/nop . You may also want to talk with the plant management to find out if they have any other programs going on, such as LEED Certification for green buildings. If so this will also affect how you do your work and the kinds of products you may be permitted to use. 
But, in the absence of any other controlling circumstances you would need to ensure that any pesticides you use are specifically labeled for use in a food manufacturing plant, and if possible even more specifically labeled for the kind of plant – dairy, brewery, cannery, grain mill, etc. Most product labels seem to be fairly general once it gets to the “processing” stage of that production and they may not micro-divide it further than just Food Processing or Food manufacturing. 
Within the plant you need to determine which areas are “food handling areas”, meaning those locations where food is “held, processed, prepared, or served”. Many pesticide products may be allowed for use outside the food handling areas but not within them, and it is important to know this and adhere to it in that plant. Even within a food handling area, if the product you choose is labeled for that use, you need to follow the label with respect to how it can be applied, and the choices usually are crack and crevice or spot treatment. This will be important in determining whether or not you can treat general surfaces or if you need to confine the material to voids and crevices and not on exposed surfaces. 
I also believe that it is vital that you perform a careful and thorough Inspection before doing anything else. You should use a Written Inspection Report Form to document all of your findings so that you can present it to the management and discuss what needs to be done non-chemically. Clearly any pests residing comfortably within a food plant are there because of “contributing conditions”, and many of these conditions are unacceptable and should be fixed. This may include abundant openings from the outside that admit the pests and which can be permanently closed. It may be doors and windows propped open to admit flies. It may be exterior lighting that is inappropriate. It may be interior sanitation problems such as poor management of the waste stream, filth or spills on the floors, unnecessary wet areas, etc. 
Depending on the kind of pests you should consider the use of pheromone traps for monitoring and UV light traps for flying insects. Anything you can do non-chemically to manage or reduce the pest problem is preferred over the use of chemicals, which are important but which should not be relied upon as the only tool you use. This, hopefully, is a basic overview of what is really a much more complex topic. 

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Pest QuestionsSeptember 21, 2012

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Sep 18, 2012 – Got Blood?

QUESTION:

Do Horse flies have nests and why do they attack people?

ANSWER:

Horse flies and the closely related deer flies do not have nests, but deer flies, in particular, often hang out in groups waiting for food to stroll past them. That food, for the female horse and deer flies, will be the blood of warm blooded animals, and humans are perfectly acceptable. The males of these flies feed only on the nectar and other sweet plant fluids available, but the females also need blood in order to properly develop their eggs. They have mandibles similar to a pair of sharp scissors, and with these blades they slash open the skin, apply some saliva to act as an anticoagulant and keep the blood flowing, and lap up the blood rather than suck it out like a mosquito does. Attacks on livestock by large numbers of these flies can lead to serious blood loss, and when they bite people it seems they are not always kind enough to anesthetize the bite site first, so it can be really painful. 

Females hang out on vegetation, often in sunny locations, and home in on movement near them, indicating a potential blood source. They then quickly swoop in and find a comfortable place to feed. For deer flies this is often around the back of the neck and arms and for horse flies if the person is wearing shorts it is often the legs, but arms and other exposed skin work nicely too. 
The larvae of most species are predatory, living in holes in damp soils and damp, rotting plant matter on the soil. When they detect another insect moving past their tunnel entrance they lunge out, grab the prey, and pull it back into the tunnel to consume. This kind of habitat makes the control of deer and horse flies extremely difficult. You really cannot control or treat the vast areas where the flies are developing and must try to control the adult stage. Part of control is, of course, simply wearing long sleeves and long pants and perhaps even some head gear to protect the back of the neck. So, no they do not have nests and they attack people because we are food. 

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Pest QuestionsSeptember 20, 2012

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Sep 19, 2012 – The Nature of PBO

QUESTION:

Is the “synergist” P.B.O. repellant? Would adding it to Termidor or Phantom applications provide any benefit? My hope is that it is not repellant and I could use less Termidor or Phantom to obtain similar results.

ANSWER:

PBO is piperonyl butoxide, and it is the more common of two synergists frequently added to pyrethrum to enhance the killing ability of the pyrethrum, which by itself can “knock down” an insect rapidly but which may not completely kill it. Insects such as roaches may be stunned, but can metabolize the pyrethrum molecule and survive. In the olden days a product called Ficam was found to be somewhat ineffective on German roaches because of this – the roaches metabolized the active ingredient. So, the manufacturer came out with Ficam Plus, combining the a.i. with PBO to help overcome that difficulty. Another formulation was a Baygon aerosol that also added PBO, and it was found that this offered an enhanced effect on many pests. 

Used by itself PBO (Exponent, SynerPro, Prentox PBO-8) has a knockdown effect on insects. However, the label of Exponent, for example, offers its use only for mixing with other insecticides to enhance the effect of that other product. It states that the PBO has “no insecticidal properties of its own”, but only works to block resistance by the pests to the other active ingredient. Because of its rapid action as a knock-down material I wonder if it could have some repellent effect, but this does not seem to be mentioned on the literature I have seen. However, without knowing if there is repellency it may be best to allow the non-repellent insecticides like Termidor and Phantom to do their jobs by themselves, and so far they are doing a marvelous job. 
I suppose, given that I have nothing supporting the idea that you could use less of these materials by combining with PBO, it would be best to stick with the label rates where possible. However, most states do permit you to use lower rates if you feel like it and can justify this with effective pest management, and you may be able to use lower rates and still see the control you need for many insect pests. 

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Pest QuestionsSeptember 19, 2012

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Sep 16, 2012 – Got the Flies, Got No Reason

QUESTION:

The earlier this year I received a call to treat a house for flies. When I got there I did an inspection and found quite a few green flies all dead on the window ledge. I know that green flies associate with something dead. I also know that the green flies that go after a dead carcass are rather large, but the green flies I found are about half the size of the large ones. In any event I did a thorough inspection of the house, starting from the attic to the second floor and the first floor and finally the basement. I even checked the bottom of the furnace and the trap door at the bottom of the chimney. There wasn’t anything dead in them. I’ve been back three times to treat the house and I can’t find where they are coming from. The owner told me that they owned the house for two years and they had this problem from day one. They rent the house out and they have had other service techs there. No one has been able to solve this problem. I’ve spent hours treating every crack and crevice with chemicals labeled for flies and still no success. The first floor is where the majority of the flies are. Any ideas would greatly be appreciated.

ANSWER:

My first observation is with respect to your applications of insecticides into all those cracks and crevices. This probably was not justified since you had not really identified a need for it. I recognize that if blow flies are breeding indoors the maggots often squirm their way into gaps and crevices to pupate, but without really seeing any maggots or fly pupae, the use of a toxin in this case should have been avoided. It would be interesting to know what those “other service techs” may have used too, but I suspect that somewhere along the line someone spent time fogging the place just to kill the adult flies. This, of course, pretty much never resolves a fly infestation if the source is indoors. 

As to why these green flies are smaller than usual I suggest a couple of possibilities. First may be that they are not blow flies at all, but some other kind of metallic green fly or even bee, such as mining bees, long-legged flies, or cuckoo wasps. I mention this only as a remote possibility as all of these common insects would have no business indoors, so finding a couple could mean they just got in, but finding many of them repeatedly over a couple of years would be unlikely. It’s also possible that these flies just happen to be smaller than normal, as sizes do vary within a species. 
Another possibility is that the flies are coming in from the outside, perhaps through doors or windows propped open with no screens in place. Blow flies can detect the wonderful odors of breeding sources, and quickly come indoors when the opportunity is presented. Besides dead animals they commonly breed in decaying vegetable matter, so filthy garbage cans and dumpsters are also common breeding locations. However, either dead animals or filthy garbage present for two years now should be pretty obvious with its odors and unless these tenants are, well, pigs, these breeding sources ought not to be there for so long. 
Another possibility that might draw blow flies is natural gas. Apparently the odor of methane gas from gas appliances and appliance vents closely resembles the odors given off by decaying carcasses. Perhaps these flies are finding their way inside through the roof vents of the appliances, and thus to the inside in some manner. It might be interesting to screen off all those exterior vent openings with screen with a mesh small enough to exclude flies, and see what happens. Maybe there is a gas fireplace with a leak, and the flies are coming down the chimney. 
Outdoor breeding sources might also exist that are producing large numbers of blow flies – rotting vegetation piles, dog feces, etc. – and this is providing plenty of flies to increase the odds that many will get inside. A close inspection of the exterior would be in order, including the garbage cans and the waste removal stream at this home. I once saw a garage filled with migrating maggots that were coming from a bag of household garbage that had not been properly disposed of for a couple of weeks. 

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Pest QuestionsSeptember 18, 2012

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Sep 17, 2012 – Maggots By The Millions……..Well, Hundreds

QUESTION:

I have an account that has maggots in the cracks of the concrete next to the building. The maggots are in the hundreds. The compactor is in the same area. I have treated the crack with a microencapsulated product which did not work. I have not dealt with this issue before and do not know where to go from here. Some guidance in the treatment would be greatly appreciated.

ANSWER:

I’ll go with the fact that these are, indeed, maggots, and thus probably from blow flies. I have also seen some great images of a rare phenomenon where thousands of small fly larvae of fungus gnats are migrating en masse out from under a concrete slab, perhaps heading off to a better place to pupate. But, this is pretty unusual and these larvae are far smaller than your typical maggot. 

Blow fly larvae do this. They move out from their food and move to some protected place to pupate, sometimes moving pretty long distances. They often fall out of ceilings from dead animals in the attic. They climb up out of filthy garbage cans and dumpsters and crawl across the floor or the parking lot. In your case, since these are outside, it tells you there is some source out there producing the maggots, and this needs to be found and dealt with at that point. Since the garbage compactor is nearby that does sound like a reasonable place for garbage to accumulate and rot, but I wouldn’t stop with that possibility. Investigate other things around there such as piles of lawn clippings, filthy dumpsters, maybe some dead animals in the bushes, etc. 
Treating the maggots in the crevices may kill some of them, but if you have an ongoing source its likely that many more maggots are growing and developing there and they will replace the ones you manage to kill. Fly control always relies on source control. So, find some way to dig into that compactor and get it serviced and cleaned. This is a sanitation issue that should not be left alone. It may require a technician trained in servicing this kind of equipment, but it really does need to be done. Otherwise, if it is dirty dumpsters or other sources they can be washed properly and maintained with lids closed and in good condition. 

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Pest QuestionsSeptember 17, 2012

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Sep 14, 2012 – Come For the Sugar, Stay For the View

QUESTION:

It is autumn in New England and holly bushes are being swarmed by wasps, bees and other insects. I believe this is caused by aphid secretions and the holly flowers that bloom at this time. Are there any treatments that will help deter this from happening?


ANSWER:

Yes, the sugary “honeydew” produced in potentially copious quantities by aphids is a major attraction to sweet-feeding insects, and as the weather dries and cools in the fall there may be fewer other options available, making the honeydew that much more attractive. Insects like honeybees, in particular, are trying to increase their stores of honey so they can survive the winter, while wasps and other bees may just be there to live as long as possible. Who knows but other insects may be predators that feed on the aphids or even on the bees and wasps that frequent these plants. 

If you are hoping for some product that will repel the bees and wasps from these plants I think the answer will be “no”. While some insecticides may very well be repellent in nature they are not designed as bee or wasp repellents, and none others exist. Your best bet, if the bees and wasps are a problem that must be eliminated, is to eliminate the reason they are coming. Do an inspection of the plants to be certain that aphids are present and producing the honeydew and you then can apply a labeled insecticide to the plants to eliminate them. This will also be likely to kill the bees and wasps, which would be unfortunate given their beneficial behavior. You also could try spraying the plants with a strong stream of plain old water. This will wash the aphids off and at this point in the year probably prevent them from climbing back on. It also will help to wash away the honeydew accumulations. 
If aphids are the problem and this appears to be an annual event, a better approach might be to use a soil-applied systemic insecticide, such as Merit, earlier in the year. The active ingredient will move into the foliage and be there for the season, killing only the insects that feed on the foliage but not affect other insects that walk over that foliage. Be sure to read the product label to be certain holly is approved as a site. 

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Pest QuestionsSeptember 16, 2012

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Sep 15, 2012 – Bathroom Roaches

QUESTION:

In a bathroom on the second floor of my home there is one solid window above the bath which lets in light but does not open. It has an extraction vent and an air condition vent. In the past couple of days I have seen roach nymphs in there, always high on the walls or on the ceiling. Yesterday I used DeltaDust in and around the pipe openings of the toilet and under the sink, dusted around/behind the mirror, and treated crevices of the kick board at the
base of the cupboards that the sink is on. I dusted around the small window. I walked
into there tonight with my daughter and there was another active one walking around on the ceiling. What am I doing wrong here? Obviously an Ootheca has been dropped somewhere. Could they be coming through either one of the vents around the window?

ANSWER:

A couple of things are a little out of character here. It sounds like you may be seeing these roaches during the daytime, in some instances, and of course this would be unusual for German roaches. You don’t indicate that you have determined the actual species of these roaches, so I am assuming (perhaps incorrectly) that they are Germans. In fact, are you absolutely certain that these are cockroaches? Since they are in the nymph stage is there a chance that you may be encountering some other similar insects, even immature stink bugs or some other “true” bug? The ID could be important as there are some kinds of roaches, including the Asian cockroach in Florida where you are or in the west perhaps the Vaga roach, that are drawn to lights. Just in case the window is where they are gathering perhaps it is the bright area that is drawing them, and if so then they would be just accidental visitors to the interior and the source would be outside. 

A second out-of-character issue is that very early instar German roaches tend to stay in hiding, feeding on fecal pellets of other roaches or dead insects they find there. To be finding them out and about on different occasions is curious, but I am at a loss to explain why, particularly if you had not treated the potential harborage sites previously. As we know, German roaches most often enter structures with infested materials and packaging, and many other roaches enter from the outside where they may live in foliage or beneath things on the soil. The Asian roach adult is drawn to lights and since it can fly it could make its way to that second floor window, but this does not seem likely if it is only nymphs. I suppose a gravid female may have entered and dropped the egg capsule inside, but once again the gravid females also tend to remain inactive and in hiding while they are carrying the egg capsule. 
So, I’m not of much help here. It could be useful to get an ID to species, which can be tough when dealing only with nymphs. You might try sealing off those vents around the window temporarily to see if this presence inside stops, and maybe even use some glue traps right there to see what is caught by the vents. 

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Pest QuestionsSeptember 15, 2012

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Sep 12, 2012 – Rice That Wiggles

QUESTION:

I need help. I have maggots in my kitchen for the 3rd time in two years. I see flies all the time but never more than 5 or 6 at a time. I know the life cycle of a fly, but don’t they need rotton food to lay their eggs? Please help.


ANSWER:

Maggots squirming across a kitchen floor, or better yet the counter tops, are a certain reason for a homeowner to call a pest control firm. There is just something about these important recyclers that give us the creeps. In a home these will nearly always be blow fly larvae, and the two most likely sources are going to be dead animals, and recently dead, or filthy garbage that has not been disposed of for awhile. In a home it may be more likely that the dead animal is the culprit, as really dirty garbage receptacles may offer a noticeable and unwanted odor that alerts the homeowner to that problem. However, OUTdoors the rotting garbage can be much more possible when dumpsters or garbage cans are not emptied on that weekly basis and the contents begin to rot. This will lead to maggots crawling out and across patios or garage floors.

This is the nature of the blow fly larvae – they tend to leave what they have been feeding on to move some distance away until they find a small, protected crevice to get into so they can pupate. This migration is what brings them to our attention. When a dead rat or bird is in an attic the blow flies definitely are going to find it. This is their role in Nature, and they tend to make a single pass through that recently killed or dead animal. You will not have blow flies feeding on and emerging from some carcass that has been lying around for a couple of months, so in your case these 3 episodes with maggots represent at least 3 separate dead animals somewhere in the home. You often will be able to smell the distinctive odor or a rotting corpse, but when it is a smaller animal in a more ventilated area, such as the attic, the odor may not move down into the living areas. The maggots, however, will fall into light receptacles and other openings in the ceiling and from there down onto the counters and floors below. 
Control, in a sense, is simple. You need to carefully inspect to find the source of the problem. If this were a customer’s home the first question you might ask is “have you done any rodent control yourself lately?”, and if the answer is that they tossed some bait blocks up in the attic then the source probably is going to be a dead rat. The difficulty is in finding it, but this needs to be done, and the carcass removed (while wearing gloves) and disposed of in a sealed plastic bag. Then, the area it rested on should be sanitized and deodorized and possibly even treated for the parasites (fleas, mites, etc.) that likely were on that animal and now are wandering around the area looking for a new blood host.
If the carcass turns out to be within a sealed wall then it may have to be a waiting game. Ideally the carcass is still removed so that it is over and done with, as leaving it there will ultimately lead to the flies, then the carpet beetles, and to the other scavengers in the lineup that decompose this leftover material. But, if it cannot be accessed directly you may want to dust within the void to kill the insects and then provide some deodorizing technique to minimize any smell that will linger until the carcass is completely dried. This may be with the use of deodorant bags such as the Earth Care products. 
You inspection should include both inside and outside, and a careful look at the waste storage for the home. It still could be a large plastic bag of garbage that has been forgotten and left for too long. But, dead rats are a very common source in homes and a big reason that rodenticide labels must be followed with respect to their instruction to remove all dead or dying rodents as quickly as possible. This also emphasizes the reason that using rodent poisons indoors can lead to this secondary problem, and why trapping is a better idea. 

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Pest QuestionsSeptember 14, 2012

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Sep 13, 2012 – Who Started The Bed Bug Chain?

QUESTION:

How active are bedbugs during the day and does this painter’s claim sound right? I did a heat treatment to a second floor apartment about 2 months ago. The tenants moved out a month later. I set Verifi traps in the apartment 3 weeks after I did the treatment and used double sided tape along the baseboards and bed frame legs. A few days ago the apartment manager tells me a painter, who was painting the now empty apartment, went home and his wife found 4 bed bugs in his clothes. The painter was informed the unit was treated for bed bugs before he painted. I went out and checked the traps and found nothing in the traps in the second floor apartment, however I did find bed bugs in the unit below, which has 3 people living in it. I also did a treatment to that apartment 1 week after I did the treatment for the second floor.

So, I am catching bed bugs in the first floor and none on the second floor. Both have the same number of Verifi traps and were set the same day. I don’t understand how a painter could get that many bed bugs on him and have them in his bed a few days later after
painting a empty apartment with no signs of live bedbugs. Little off my question but I
would like to mention I have used dogs in the past. One company I used alerted on 5 apartments – one never had any bed bugs and the other 4 were treated over a year prior to the dog inspection. This dog inspection was a year ago and there are still no signs of bedbugs in those apartments.

ANSWER:

First on the dogs. This can be an extremely valuable inspection tool with properly trained dogs, but you mention some of the drawbacks to them. They are so sensitive that you may not be certain immediately if the dogs are hitting on active infestations or just the lingering scent of previous infestations. I think the proper protocol is to use the dogs to quickly find possible bugs, but then to do a very thorough visual inspection of those locations to verify whether or not the bugs are actually there. 

On the painter’s problems, I believe it can be difficult to pinpoint exactly where the bugs found in his home came from. While the monitoring traps for bed bugs are really improving and increasing our ability to detect their presence, I would not consider them yet to be fool proof. The monitors may not draw bed bugs out of hiding in an empty apartment where no people are present to add to the signals the bugs alert to. Your traps in the second floor apartment that you treated could possibly be empty even though some bugs were still present and hiding there. Or, if we want to state the possibilities, that apartment being painted could well have been free and clear of bed bugs and the painter picked them up somewhere else, or even perhaps had them in his own home prior to all of this. It is really hard to pin down exactly who is “to blame”. It would be important to do a very thorough inspection of that painted apartment now to see if any bugs are still hiding there. This would be important for the apartment management in particular, to ensure that apartment is free of bugs before they rent it again. 
On that note, if the unit below also had bed bugs then it suggests that this entire complex is at risk. Bed bugs move very quickly, and it has been demonstrated before how rapidly they will move from an initial infested room to many other rooms in a complex, above, below, and to the sides. Is the management of this apartment aware of this possibility and are they having you do your thorough inspection of ALL adjacent rooms and others in the complex? Bottom line is that sure, it’s possible the painter did acquire the bed bugs from this vacant apartment and its possible he got them somewhere else. Bed bugs are just that flaky and inconsistent in their habits. What’s needed now if for you to offer to inspect this entire complex so that the extent of the problem can be determined. Just what the painter plans to do with respect to pointing the finger remains to be seen. However, that should be considered a hazard of his profession and like PMP’s and hotel house keeping staff a protocol ought to be in place for him to ensure he does not take live bed bugs into his own home at the end of the day. 

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Pest QuestionsSeptember 13, 2012

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Sep 10, 2012 – A Threshold Level of ONE?

QUESTION:

In your last article you said “Be liberal with a use of insect glue traps, placed in many locations so you can monitor to see where hot spots may exist.” When servicing restaurants we would love to place glue boards out and the health dept encourages this, BUT if they see 1 live one in the traps they can shut the restaurant down! I call this entrapment! What are your thoughts?

ANSWER:

Well, my characterization of this, if it truly does happen, would be to call that action rather short sighted or narrow minded, or perhaps a bit ignorant of good pest management practices. If, and I qualify it with “if”, a health official were to shut down a restaurant because a single, or even a few, roaches were found in properly placed monitoring devices the end result would be pretty obvious. They would be stifling the use of these monitoring devices that are important for determining if and when pests enter these kinds of places. Non-toxic insect glue traps are an important part of an overall IPM program for good roach management. 

Hopefully there is just some misunderstanding here that can be cleared up with some discussions with the health department itself. Maybe it was a single over-exuberant health inspector who did this or maybe even just claimed that he had the authority to do so, but I would hope this was not the policy of any local health department. Perhaps a meeting with the upper management of your local health department would be beneficial for everyone involved. 

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Pest QuestionsSeptember 12, 2012

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