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To begin his presentation, Frishman briefly reviewed the avian influenza (commonly referred to as bird flu) that’s making headlines around the world and the role pest management professionals may play in the future as the virus spreads. “Zero rodents and wild birds will be allowed on the roofs of chicken facilities” since the disease is viable in bird droppings, he said. “This is going to be a big field for you.” For additional information, he suggested pest management professionals visit www.pandemicflu.gov.
For the majority of his presentation, Frishman discussed one of the industry’s hottest topics: bed bugs. “It’s too late to discuss how we’re going to stop bed bugs from spreading,” he said. “It’s a world problem” and the pests inhabit all continents except Antarctica, he said.
Despite bed bugs making a recent resurgence after falling off the radar for many companies, “bed bugs never went away,” he added. “They were here in caveman days.”
Frishman offered several tips to pest management professionals when offering control of bed bugs:
- Bed bugs run to people (their primary food source) so “leave your jacket outside when you go in to do a job.”
- If you go to an account you can smell it, wear a full Tyvek suit.
- Use needle nose pliers to pull back carpet to inspect. Inspect and treat all baseboards.
- Take off all electrical plates and treat with a crack and crevice application.
- Take every picture off the wall and treat with a crack and crevice application.
- Accounts that have too much clutter may require a monthly service for bed bugs.
“You will never find all the bed bugs once they’re established,” Frishman said. He said pest management professionals need to spend two hours per room when treating for bed bugs and charging appropriately for their time. He said he recommends charging $400 a room.
When treating customers’ beds, Frishman recommends the following if the customer is keeping the bed/boxspring:
- Vacuum the mattress
- Use an organic pesticide on the corners of the mattress
- Cover the mattress with a hypoallergenic cover
- Rip the bottom cover of the boxspring off
- Treat the boxspring with a residual pesticide (“Suspend SC appears to be the number one product used,” he said.)
If the customer decides to discard the mattress, Frishman said the mattress should be painted black paint so no one else can use it. Also, the pest management professional, not the customer, should get rid of the mattress so they don’t drag bed bugs down the hall.
Frishman said four of the most common areas PCOs miss when performing a bed bug inspection are:
1. Popcorn ceilings
2. On walls in hotels where wallpaper is peeling (PCOs need to steam it off)
3. In apartments, where cable TV wires enter from the outside
4. Clothes hangers (there are seven locations where bed bugs can hide)
So what does not work for bed bug control? Frishman noted the following:
- Cold – 40 degrees below zero will not kill bed bugs
- CO2 (carbon dioxide)
- Growth regulators
- Spending 20 minutes in a room – “You need two hours to do a treatment,” he said.
Heat does work but you have to get the area up to 130 degrees, Frishman said.
COCKROACH UPDATE. To wrap up the evening, Joe Barile spoke about cockroaches and flies while Vince Parman gave a presentation about termites.
Barile discussed cockroach bait aversion and said, “There’s something common in the older bait gels that some populations won’t eat.” To combat these populations, Bayer researchers developed Maxforce FC Select (the product was the 62nd version of the product Bayer developed to work on bait averse cockroaches). While cockroach bait aversion is the No.1 researched issue at Bayer, “We still don’t know what the mechanisms are” to aversion, he said.
Barile offered the following to determine if your accounts have averse roaches. Go into your account, find a great harborage spot, take a fresh reservoir of gel bait and put one pea-size spot an inch away from the roaches. “If they don’t come out in five minutes, they’re bait averse,” Barile said.
As far as treatments, Barile told PCOs to place multiple spots of gel bait instead of long lines. “Stop caulking your accounts with gel bait,” he told PCOs. In addition, he noted that cockroach bait aversion is now affecting one in four accounts and it’s not just food-handling accounts – cockroach bait aversion can be found apartments as well as other commercial accounts.
Pest management company owners and technicians alike gained valuable information at the seminar, as well as Continuing Education Credits. The traveling “roadshow” is nearing the end of its 20-city tour. Five locations remain:
- May 9, Philadelphia
- May 10, Westchester, N.Y.
- May 16, Las Vegas
- May 17, Phoenix
- May 18, Los Angeles
For CEU credit and additional information, contact Bayer at 800/577-5163, option 3.