[Cockroach Control] Multi-Family, Multi-Problems

Have you ever heard people use the term, “That’s our bread and butter”? Many pest management firms most likely have considered control of German cockroaches in apartment communities as their “bread and butter” accounts. In other words, due to significant occurrences of German cockroaches in the past, a high demand for ongoing professional pest management services has occurred.

Over the years there have been a number of changes in the products and techniques pest management professionals use to control cockroaches in multi-family housing units. More recently, there also have been some significant shifts in control priorities with different arthropod species. In this article we’ll take a look at German cockroach management in multi-family housing communities in the past and present, plus do a little speculating about the future.

THE GOOD OL' DAYS. I’m sure you’ve heard older people talk about the “good ol’ days” and wonder if those times really were all that good. When I think back about 25 years ago, during some of my “good ol’ days” of treating cockroaches in apartments, I have another vision come to mind. I remember lugging my B&G up several flights of stairs to “do battle” during the hot days of summer. I usually carried a can of pyrethrum and a bulb duster in the other hand.

When we would start service at a “new” apartment account it wasn’t unusual to have virtually every apartment infested with German cockroaches. Of course, back then, we had the apartment management notify all residents in advance regarding their day for service, and the residents were asked to clean out all of their kitchen cabinets to prepare for cockroach treatments. Preparation for treatment by the residents was fair, at best. I bet that at least once a week I would have a resident who hadn’t prepared for service say, “Go ahead and spray in the cabinets and I’ll wash everything before we use any of those dishes.” Another issue that we saw occasionally in the past was that some German cockroach populations were resistant to a lot of different products. At times this resulted in control failures and a lot of extra effort on our part to achieve acceptable levels of control.

When the new cockroach gel baits first came out it was amazing to see the results. I remembered hearing from my father how American cockroaches used to come up and eat phosphorus paste bait right off his spatula, and here we were now having German cockroaches eating gel bait right off the tips of our bait guns!

Our initial issues with using baits in treating for German cockroaches in apartments involved combining traditional treatment philosophies with newer technologies. During a relatively short time, most of the pest management industry shifted to almost exclusively relying on baits as our primary tool for controlling cockroaches.

GOING FULL CIRCLE. After what seemed like a few short years the “honeymoon” appeared to be coming to an end. Across the country, reports of control failures with German cockroaches began to spring up. In addition to this problem, it seemed that ant calls and other occasional invader calls were also on the rise in apartment communities. Even though many pest management firms rotated their use of different cockroach bait products that were available, it was apparent that German cockroach control was becoming more difficult and once again becoming a significant problem. Through research efforts led by product manufacturers and university researchers we later learned a new term: “cockroach feeding aversion.”

I like to refer to this time as the “gray days.” To tell the truth, for a while, I really wasn’t sure what the best control strategy was for German cockroach control. I found that our technicians had gotten pretty much in a rut of relying on bait treatments as a sole control strategy. In an attempt to improve our service success, our firm began to do a lot of retraining on the basics of Integrated Pest Management (IPM), cockroach biology and control alternatives. It definitely looked as if the effective end of cockroach control through baiting could be looming on the horizon.

WHERE WE ARE TODAY. Thankfully our industry has been blessed with some great research efforts, technology and new products that have been developed to address the cockroach feeding aversion issue. In addition, a number of the newer non-repellent liquid residual products have greatly improved our ability to control problem ant issues and other miscellaneous occasional invaders. With the return of the new critter on the block, the bed bug, a major service priority shift has occurred that almost overshadows issues with cockroach control. With all of the pest services associated with the multi-family housing industry, a high priority should always be made towards education and implementation of IPM strategies.

CURRENT SERVICE STRATEGIES. Pat Hottel, technical director, McCloud Services, Hoffman Estates, Ill., said that “ants, spiders and occasional invaders would top the list as pests of concern in medium- to high-income housing and not the German cockroach.” At McNeely Pest Control, Winston-Salem, N.C., we also find this true, with lower-middle and lower-income multi-family housing having the most cockroach concerns and issues.

Gerry Wegner, technical director and staff entomologist with Varment Guard Environmental Services & ProGuard Commercial Pest Solutions, Columbus, Ohio, said that at his firm “we try to enlist as much involvement/cooperation from site management as possible with respect to mandating advance notification and preparation. Our strategy is centered on considering cockroaches a ‘migratory pest,’ meaning it is assumed to have moved from somewhere, or to somewhere, when cockroaches are reported in a unit of a multi-housing building. When we encounter cockroaches in a unit, we always inspect units above, below and on both sides, expanding the ‘cloverleaf’ if roaches are found in one of the adjacent units. We always schedule follow-up visits in units treated for cockroaches.”

Jay Breusch, technical director of Plunkett’s Pest Control, Fridley, Minn., said, “Cockroach control was a medium issue and became a much lighter issue once baits, combined with insect growth regulators and monitoring, became our default method of control. We experienced about the same level of bait averse cockroach populations as people elsewhere in the country did. We occasionally have to do conventional treatments, but some of the newly developed bait materials are helping us.”

WHAT'S LOOMING? It seems that just about everywhere you look in the media today there is something about “going green,” our “carbon footprint” and other environmental issues. I feel that these trends have, and will continue to, impact the way we provide pest management services in the future.
One of the biggest challenges that we will continue to face is providing the highest quality service possible at the service rates the multifamily housing industry is willing to pay.

In response to my question of what he might see developing in the future as far as cockroach control in multi-family buildings and housing communities, Varment Guard’s Wegner said, “We have observed a disturbing trend among multiple unit housing management companies — they are enlisting the services of third-party administrators who mandate of PMP providers: 1) the payment of separate administration fees for each complex/site serviced, in addition to 2) unreasonably high liability insurance limits, resulting in a significant increase in premiums — to the point of making such contracts unprofitable.”

On a slightly brighter note, McCloud’s Hottel said that there “is some movement under HUD which may help.” At NPMA Legislative Day in March, Tom Neltner, director of training and education, National Center for Healthy Housing, gave a presentation about a U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development green incentive program for federally subsidized housing. HUD is seeking IPM/green type programs in conjunction with rehab grants.

I definitely agree with my good buddy Jay Breusch with his final statement that he made for my interview: “If I had one prediction, it would be: We will get complacent again, and we’ll fail to rotate materials and inspect carefully; we’ll get sloppy in the thoroughness of our treatments, and we’ll run into either bait aversion or actual resistance again. And the manufacturers will scramble to bail us out again.”

As time passes we may see cockroach control issues shift back and forth in priority in the multi-family housing industry, however; I would say that it’s just about a sure bet that the German cockroach will be a pest of significant importance for years to come!

The author is owner of McNeely Pest Control, Winston-Salem, N.C.

Multi-family Housing Opportunities

In December 2007, the National Pest Management Association launched its QualityPro Green program, an additional certification that QualityPro companies can attain by meeting green service standards. The centerpiece of QualityPro Green is the “QualityPro Green Orientation Manual,” which requires that participating companies adopt green service standards for those accounts at which it is providing a green service. This 13-page document currently is in the draft phase and NPMA asked that Green Council members review it and provide their feedback. NPMA hopes this document, upon completion, will be the guideline for QualityPro Green companies and also serve as the industry-wide standard for companies performing green services.

One of the benefits to becoming QualityPro Green-certified is potential market opportunities. For example, at NPMA Legislative Day in March, Tom Neltner, director of training and education, National Center for Healthy Housing, gave a presentation about a U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development green incentive program for federally subsidized housing. Right now, this green incentive program includes 2,000 developments, 10,000 buildings and 200,000 units, all of which are (or will be) in the process of being rehabbed.

For this green incentive program, HUD is seeking pest control companies whose service programs must include a designed and implemented IPM program. HUD has been selecting participating pest control companies that have been certified through programs such as EcoWise, GreenShield and QualityPro — programs that have service standards, including third-party auditing.

“You probably are thinking how in the world can I develop a new market now and who would buy these services?” Neltner said. “There is money available now but not from the market you would expect.” — Brad Harbison