IPM in Multifamily Housing

Block out the bugs

Although I’m in denial, fall is approaching and pests will soon be to trying to enter our homes for the winter. Now is the time to do an exterior inspection and make sure your building isn’t welcoming to pests. One pest that is annoying Northeastern homeowners and devastating farmers—the Brown Marmorated Stink Bug (BMSB) is expected to invade homes again this fall. To learn more about BMSB and other fall invaders, check out last fall’s post "Stink bugs and other fall invaders." And for a peek into the science going into solving the BMSB puzzle, read the Northeastern IPM Center’s latest article on how entomologists are trying to figure out where the BMSB overwinters…other than our homes.

For guidance on maintenance repairs to pest-proof your homes, see our suggestions at stoppests.org.

 Recruit residents to help ward-off pests with this sample newsletter:

------------------Sample Newsletter-----------------------

Stop Pests from Getting in Your Home

Pests are like us—they don’t like to be hot or cold. Rats, mice, palmetto bugs, and other pests that can live outside will try to come in your home to escape extreme weather. Some pests, like mosquitoes, try to get to us for our blood!

Keep pests out or your home and help conserve energy with these simple tips:

• Make sure there are no gaps around AC Units. Take portable AC units out as soon as the weather changes.
• Trim plants so no branches or leaves touching your home.
• Make sure there are no holes in your window screens.
• Keep your door closed as much as possible and use a screen door when it’s open.

If there are gaps under doors without door sweeps or you see a hole in the side of a building where pests could get in, call in a work order: ###-####. Don’t wait—we want to prevent the pests!

New IPM Guide for Affordable Housing

Affordable multifamily housing presents unique challenges for those trying to manage bed bugs, cockroaches, and rodents. Pest-free housing is a realistic goal, but a network of staff, pest management professionals, and residents must cooperate to successfully manage pests building-wide.

Integrated Pest Management: A Guide for Affordable Housing is a new resource from the Northeastern IPM Center that will help affordable housing managers, owners, and agents use integrated pest management (IPM) to contend with a variety of urban pests in their facilities. It will also serve as a useful tool for anyone seeking to integrate IPM practices into a residential pest management strategy. The illustrated, 81-page guide gives readers

• a basic knowledge of pests and pesticides that will help them make informed pest control decisions with a pest management professional; 
• an understanding of how to implement IPM in housing; 
• and tools to orient staff to their role on an IPM team. 

Developed as part of a project called “Delivery of IPM Training to Public Housing Authorities,” the guide was supported through an interagency agreement between USDA’s National Institute of Food and Agriculture and the HUD’s Office of Healthy Homes and Lead Hazard Control. The guide is based on the IPM in Multifamily Housing Training that is reviewed and supported by the National Center for Healthy Housing, Regional IPM Centers, National Pest Management Association, Pennsylvania IPM Program, National Center for Environmental Health Strategies, U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, U.S. Department of Agriculture, and U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.

The complete guide and additional resources are available at StopPests.org/Guide.

Pest ID is Vital to IPM

The steps you take to solve a pest problem using integrated pest management (IPM) are:

1. Inspect and monitor
2. Identify what you find
3. Determine the extent of the problem in order to scale the response to the level of infestation
4.  Take action using at least two different control strategies (e.g. trapping, removing pest-conducive-conditions, pesticides)
5. Check back (see step 1) to see if your control strategy solve the problem—if not, try again, tweaking the control strategies you use

Today's post is about step #2: Identification. It is crucial to know the enemy before planning your attack. 

July seems to be all about pest ID. Probably because we are at the height of summer and the bugs are thriving. Recently, two friends posted pictures on my facebook wall for me to ID. One owns a horse farm in Maine, one in NY. Both had the same type of beetle that has the potential to infest grain. Now that they know, they can take steps to prevent the infestations from spreading to their grain rooms. My favorite caption on one of these photos was, "I hope they are friendly beetles and not evil home wrecker types." :)

I'm just one of many entomologists around the world who can help you identify the bugs you find. Cooperative Extension offices are often linked to diagnostic labs, pest management firms may employ board certified entomologists, and there are useful web resources out there too. This month's school IPM newseltter from the IPM Institute of North America, Inc. is all about ID and contains more resources for identifying insects. 

Enjoy!

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Pest Identification is Vital to IPM
From www.ipminstitute.org/school_ipm_2015/July12_eNewsletter.htm 

"Proper pest identification is very important, because if you don't know what kind of pest you're dealing with, it's very difficult to come up with a successful management plan," says Janet Hurley, school IPM extension program specialist with Texas AgriLife Extension Service.

Ants are a good example. Insecticide baits are available for many but not all species, and each bait product is effective for a limited list of species. With some types of ants, such as odorous house ants and carpenter ants, it is best to locate and treat the nest directly. In species such as pharaoh and Argentine ants, however, treating the nest with a spray like a pyrethroid can cause the ants to bud, or create multiple new colonies.

Hurley encourages IPM coordinators for school districts to have access to a microscope, jeweler's loupe or high-powered magnifying glass during inspections. "Some schools have science labs with microscopes that IPM coordinators can use for pest identification," says Hurley.

In many states, those who aren't well-versed in pest identification can contact their county extension office. "Seasoned county agents should have some knowledge of pest identification," says Hurley, "but those who don't still have access to extension entomologists." Most extension agencies are able to accept digital photos for identification, or pest samples can be sent in a vial or small container containing some rubbing alcohol or hand sanitizer. Websites such as bugwood.org or bugguide.net house libraries of insect images and make great aids for pest identification. Commercial identification services are also available, such as  IdentifyUS, LLC, founded by Dr. Richard Pollack. IdentifyUS provides identification of both physical specimens and digital photos, as well as guidance on pest management.

Several pests that often get confused are bed bugs and bat bugs, blacklegged ticks and dog ticks, and common species of ants. Below is a brief guide to help with identification of these pests. If you are still unsure about what kind of insect you're dealing with, always check with an extension agent, entomologist or other expert before taking action.

Gary Alpert, Harvard University, Bugwood.org

Bed Bug   Cimex lectularius  

Bed bugs are broadly flattened, oval-shaped insects with greatly reduced wings. They are unable to fly or jump, but can move very quickly. They have segmented abdomens. They are light brown to reddish-brown in color before feeding, but become swollen and mahogany red after a blood meal. Eggs are white and newly hatched nymphs are translucent, becoming increasingly brown in color as they mature. Some individuals may exhibit skin rashes and other allergic reactions to bed bug bites, but not everyone exhibits symptoms after being bitten. Bed bugs typically leave small blood spots behind after feeding. Studies show that bed bugs can survive without feeding for up to a year, but they typically try to feed every five to ten days.

Susan Ellis, USDA APHIS PPQ, Bugwood.org

Western Bat Bug   Cimex pilosellus

Bat bugs feed primarily on the blood of bats, but will feed on other warm-blooded animals including humans if bats are not available. They will not become established on humans as a regular host. Bat bugs look very similar to bed bugs, possibly requiring microscopic examination to distinguish between them. A key difference is that the fringe hairs on the upper covering of the thorax (pronotum) are longer in the bed bug. 

Susan Ellis, USDA APHIS PPQ, Bugwood.org

American Dog Tick   Dermacentor variabilis

Dog ticks are predominantly found in the US east of the Rocky Mountains and are part of the family of ticks called hard ticks, which have a scutum or hard shield on their backs. Adults have eight legs and are brown to reddish-brown in color with a grayish scutum. Unfed males and females are about 3/16 of an inch long, and females grow to about 1/2 inch long after feeding, about the size of a small grape. They can be carriers of Rocky Mountain spotted fever. Nymphs feed on small rodents and adults prefer dogs or medium-sized mammals, including humans. They are most often found in the spring and early summer along animal paths in grassy, shrubby areas adjacent to wooded areas or forests.

Scott Bauer, USDA ARS, Bugwood.org

Blacklegged Tick (Deer Tick)   Ixodes scapularis

Blacklegged ticks are common in the northeastern and upper midwestern US and can be carriers ofLyme disease. They are also hard ticks. Unlike the dog tick, adult blacklegged ticks have no white markings on the scutum. They are about 1/10 of an inch long and dark brown to black in color. Females are often orange or red behind the scutum. Adults feed on large mammals, primarily white-tailed deer. Engorged ticks, or those that have had a blood meal, look significantly different from unengorged ticks, appearing swollen with a light grayish-blue colored abdomen. When identifying an engorged tick, it is helpful to focus on the legs and upper part of the body, which do not change upon feeding.

Alex Wild, alexanderwild.com

Argentine Ant    Linepithema humile

This is the most accomplished invasive species or "tramp" ant. It arrived in the US in the 1990s and is the predominant pest ant in California. It is also found along the Gulf Coast from Texas to Florida. Argentine ants have only one node (also called a petiole; a small bump between the thorax and the gaster, or abdomen), which is distinct but small and is never hidden by or fused with the abdomen. They are almost completely hairless, and are about 1/10 of an inch long. During the summer, multiple Argentine ant colonies may merge to form large supercolonies. They are monomorphic, meaning all ants within a colony are the same size.   

Susan Ellis, USDA APHIS PPQ, Bugwood.org

Black Carpenter Ant   Camponotus pennsylvanicus

Carpenter ants have only one node and a tuft of hair at the tip of the gaster. The thorax, when viewed from the side, is evenly convex with no obvious bumps and ridges. They are generally large in size, ranging from 1/2 inch to more than 3/4 inch long, and are polymorphic, meaning the colony includes several different sizes of ants that have different jobs. These include winged reproductive ants that overwinter and emerge in the spring. They prefer dead, damp wood in which to build nests, but they do not eat wood like termites. 

Pest and Diseases Image Library, Bugwood.org

Fire Ant   Solenopsis geminata

Fire ants have two nodes between the thorax and gaster. Their antennae are composed of ten segments, with the last two forming a distinct club. They have a visible stinger. They do not have any spines on their thorax. Thief ants have the same basic characteristics but are smaller, with fire ants greater than 1/10 inch long and thief ants less than 0.07 inches. Like carpenter ants, fire ants are polymorphic. 

Joseph Berger, Bugwood.org

Pavement Ant   Tetramorium caespitum

Pavement ants have two nodes, which are attached to the front of their abdomen rather than the top. They are dark brown or black in color and are about 1/10 of an inch long or slightly larger. They have distinct ridges on their face, which give a striped appearance, and no antennal club. They have a pair of small spines on the thorax close to the nodes.

Get your IPM Guide!

The team at the Northeastern IPM Center has been hard at work tying up loose ends as we close out our current grant and get ready for the future. I’ve been working with my computer more than pests. Sad, but true. 

During last 5 years, over 800 people have sat in community rooms at housing authorities across the country and participated in an IPM in Multifamily Housing Training. I love running these trainings—visiting communities that want to come together against pests and make a change in order to provide pest-free housing. The model of on-site training and implementation support for the property that received the training has worked well. Within the next few weeks we’ll have more case studies posted about our success stories.

But the trainings are resource-intensive and not every housing authority is immediately ready to make the changes that an IPM program requires. For example, some don’t have a staff member or contractor who can legally apply pesticides. Pesticides are used judiciously in an IPM program and it’s important to have a trained professional ready to treat if required.

One of the projects we’ve been working on is “Integrated Pest Management: A Guide for Affordable Housing.” Mary Maley, one of our IPM trainers, has taken the content from our IPM in Multifamily Housing Training and put it in print form.

The Guide:

•  provides basic knowledge of pests and pesticides needed to make informed pest control decisions with a pest management professional;

•  describes the parts of IPM and how to implement them in housing; and

•  can be used to orient staff to their role on the IPM team using the certificate of completion in the appendix. 

We’ll be happy to ship you up to up to three copies for free. To get your copy, fill out the form at https://stoppests.wufoo.com/forms/r7x2s9/

If you want more and have a distribution plan, e-mail me at stoppests@cornell.edu. 

We're always brainstorming ways we can get information about IPM to the change agents in affordable housing so that more housing authorities are prepared to take full advantage of on-site IPM training and implement an IPM program. The IPM Guide will be available for free download soon. This blog came out of our brainstorming. We ran a webinar on the benefits of IPM. And I’ve presented IPM information at many national housing conferences. 

A few weeks ago, for the first time, I ran a full IPM in Multifamily Housing training at a conference. The Southeastern Regional Council of the National Association of Housing  and Redevelopment Officials (SERC-NAHRO) kindly invited me to their Annual Conference and gave me a conference room for a day. I also had a wonderful moderator from SERC-NAHRO from 9am to 4:30pm. He had chosen to moderate my session because his housing authority switched to IPM a few years ago and has seen great success. He wanted to share their story, and in doing so he added much to the day.

For those of you who are not familiar with NAHRO conferences, the attendance at national and regional events is usually made up of housing authority executive directors, commissioners, and some directors of operation/heads of maintenance. State-specific meetings usually have more property managers and maintenance staff members too. These people can take IPM information and lead the agency-wide policy and budget changes.  Although we covered all the pest-specific training day content, what most of the attendees came to learn was what upper-level changes need to be made to help ensure individual properties use IPM to battle bugs. Lease and policy language, contracting for pest control, and lease enforcement were discussed more in-depth than they have been at any of the on-site trainings we’ve run. 

I think the day was a success. Many people took information we had on a table outside the conference room and signed up to this blog. It was great to see some familiar faces from our participating PHAs and others who have attended my sessions at NAHRO and PHADA conferences in the past. Inside the conference room, we had a small, but dedicated group—most of whom stuck with me the whole day!

Having the group there to brainstorm together was wonderful. I wish I could recreate (or had recorded) the 40 minute roundtable discussion we had. The resources I have on StopPests.org that link to the topics of conversation at SERC-NAHRO are:

• A sample RFP for pest control that also specifies the contents of an IPM Plan. (Note that it may take an extra effort to get new companies to bid on your request. I recommend including a cover letter describing your agency’s interest in and commitment to IPM. Let potential bidders know that you are ready to do your part in IPM and work with them as a team. Specifying that the contract will not be awarded based solely on low-bid may help too.)
• Information on hiring a professional or managing in-house pesticide applicators.
• Sample IPM Policy 
• How to work with/train residents.
• Sample housekeeping language 
• On-site IPM in Multifamily Housing Training for staff and residents...information on the day and how to request a training.

Thanks to SERC-NAHRO for approaching me about the training day.
I’d never been to New Orleans and it was high on my bucket list. According to my palm reader, I will live to 75 and be healthy enough to battle pests the whole time. (I added the pests bit.) The full training at a conference was an experiment that worked. And an extra thank you to those SERC-NAHRO members who attended the training session, asked wonderful questions, and now have the resources they need to improve the lives of their staff and residents through better pest management.

Dr. Merchant's encounter with bed bugs

I hope everyone had a fabulous 4th of July! 

Next week I'll report on the training we did at the Southeastern Regional Council of NAHRO's annual conference. This week's Insects in the City blog post (by one of our IPM trainers) was too good not to share!

Hop over to Dr. Mike Merchant's blog to read how he dealt with a full blown bed bug infestation—in his daughter's apartment!

NCUE Part 2

Happy Summer!

The season is starting off hot here in Ithaca. Although it might sound manageable to some of you, 91°F is a bit too much for me. I'm going to New Orleans next week...I hope I can go outside!

Anything shy of 113°F is okay for the bed bugs. Unlike us, bed bugs get really active just before they flop over dead from heat. But I’m getting ahead of myself. This week I want to finish reporting on the bed bug presentations I saw at the National Conference on Urban Entomology last month. Today’s topics are

• treatment protocols, 
• detection, 
• heat treatments, 
• pesticides, and 
• other bed bug presentations.

 

Treatment protocols

In-house preventative bed bug program (Molly Stedfast from Virginia Tech)

Stedfast wants to test a preventative protocol for bed bugs that can be carried out by licensed staff members of multifamily properties. She trained staff members on how to vacuum, apply diatomaceous earth, install encasements, use passive monitors, and build a heat box following the University of Florida’s instructions. The idea is that with the diatomaceous earth in wall voids and crevices and the monitors in place, bed bugs introductions won’t turn into infestations. We don’t know the long-term efficacy of this building-wide program, but preventing bed bugs from infesting and taking components in-house has the potential to reduce costs for multifamily properties. Preventative pesticide application of any kind in homes and putting bed bug control in the hands of building staff are controversial, but based on what I heard at NCUE, both are growing trends. If you want to know more about Molly’s work, listen to her present in our last webinar “Taking Control of Bed Bug Treatments” (www.stoppests.org/ipm-training/training-opportunities/stoppests-webinars/taking-control-of-bed-bug-treatments/). 

 

A ProActive approach for commercial bed bug control (Jason Meyers from BASF Pest Control Solutions)

BASF is confident in the residual efficacy of their Phantom® products, Alpine^TM dust, and Hydro-Py-300®. Because of the residual efficacy, BASF is piloting a prevention program for hotels. The program includes two applications of the spray and aerosol products and one application of Alpine^TM dust each year. The hope is that these applications will prevent an introduction from ever becoming an infestation. So far the results are good from the pilot hotel. Since this blog is for a housing audience I want to reiterate that this program is being designed for hotels, not homes (where people spend a significant amount of time).

 

There were two other presentations relating to protocols that I wasn’t able to see. “Community-based IPM” by Dini Miller from Virginia Tech and “Bed bug management in hotels” by Ronald Harrison from Orkin LLC. I’m hoping the NCUE website will have abstracts for these presentations before the summer is over.

 

Detection

Exploring a novel detection technique for the common bed bug (Dong-Hwan Choe from University of California-Riverside)

We know that bed bugs release chemicals. Low concentrations result in attraction. High concentrations result in dispersion. Choe looked detecting these chemicals with a piece of equipment. He could detect bed bugs if they were disturbed. The chemicals seem to go away on the dead bugs that died by heat. But the ones that died from pesticides or cold treatment could be detected with sensitive equipment. Cast skins release some smell too, but they have to be crushed. The equipment needed to apply this research isn’t commercially available yet. If we can narrow down what live bed bugs vs. dead ones “smell” like, this technology could be valuable for detection. For example, one could take the contents of the vacuum bag after vacuuming and see if there is bed bug scent in it…if so, bed bugs were around.

 

Lab and field evaluations of factors affecting bed bug monitors (Narinderpal Singh from Rutgers University)

Monitors are an important part of a bed bug management program because they reduce human labor involved in inspection, improve the accuracy of detection, and help guide treatments and evaluate results. This study varied the color and size of the moat that captures bed bugs on both active and passive monitors. The researchers also looked at various release rates of CO₂ coming from the active monitor setup. Results: black monitors caught more than white. Bigger moats catch more bed bugs. There wasn't significant difference between 200, 300, 400, and 500 mL/min CO₂ release rates.

 

Skin reactions to bed bug bites (Ronald Harrison from Orkin LLC)

When Orkin employees go for training, they have the opportunity to feed bed bugs on themselves. A brave 1,400 volunteers have signed up and thus supplied data on human reactions to bed bug bites. Only 3.8% reacted right away! Only 1.1% showed a reaction after four days or more. These results show that less than 5% of people react to bed bugs when they are first exposed. We don’t know when or how sensitivity develops, but Orkin’s data adds to the argument that you can’t rely on skin reactions to detect a bed bug infestation when it starts.

 

Canine scent detection: their effectiveness and pitfalls (Richard Cooper from Rutgers University)

Cooper is taking a close look at the Bed Bug Sniffing Dog Industry. The results from his preliminary research were not very encouraging. The companies that did best tried to visually confirm that there were bed bugs wherever the dog alerted. Because every dog-handler team is so different, it will take a sampling of a lot of companies before we get numbers that we can make broad statements about. Working dogs have proven themselves in a number of fields (rescue, drugs, agricultural products), we just have to figure out how to make them (and their handlers) work for bed bugs. Fortunately, many of the firms with bed bug sniffing dogs want to work with Cooper to find the best approach. The big take-homes for me were: make sure someone is trying to visually confirm the presence of bed bugs wherever the dog alerts and have a plan in place for what to do in the areas where the dog alerts, but no one can find a bug.

 

Using bed bug monitors to maximize effectiveness of bed bug management programs (Changlu Wang from Rutgers University)

Wang, summarized the best practices for monitoring.

• Active monitors are best when a host is not present and is better than or equal to a visual inspection. Leave active monitors out for several nights for best results.
• Passive monitors work best when a host (or CO₂ source) is present. To get the best results (which Wang says is 6 times better than a visual inspection), place more than four and wait a week or two before using the results.
• For best detection results, Wang suggests using monitoring followed by visual inspection and resident interviews.

 

Active monitoring of bed bugs in occupied apartments (Susan Jones from Ohio State University)

The Verify^TM Bed Bug Detector is new to the market. It is an active monitor that releases CO₂, pheromone and kairomone to lure in the bugs. Jones presented the first research I had seen. I didn’t jot down numbers (I had to leave and catch a plane), but she said that she did catch bed bugs by placing the device near beds, upholstered furniture, and baseboards. She said it is comparable to the dry ice traps that Rutgers University researchers have studied.

 

Heat treatments

Effect of high temperatures on residual insecticides used for bed bug treatments (Margie Lehnert from Clemson University)

Lehnert’s robust research is looking at the efficacy of different pesticides on carpet backing, wood, and metal after the sprayed surface is exposed to 135°F for seven hours. Both the immediate kill and residual efficacy is being studied. In short, heat did not change the efficacy of Temprid ^TM, Transport®, Phantom® SC, Phantom® Aerosol, or Phantom® plus IGR, but they do have different residual on different surfaces. The carpet backing was the most reliable after two weeks. This study will continue for nine months—I can’t wait to see the final results! What she presented supports my advice: treat voids and areas that might be cold spots before the heat treatment happens.

 

Heat treatments and other non-chemical tools (Stephen Kells from University of Minnesota)

Kells looked at bed bug behavior when exposed to heat. More specifically, he looked at bed bugs exposed to hot air (as if the heater was blowing hot air over them) and bed bug exposed to hot surfaces (as if the object the bug was on got hot). Bed bugs were better at detecting and escaping heat when the object they are on warms up. Take home: the hot air needs to move around a lot (which is why you see fans during heat treatments). If you rely on objects slowly heating up to room temperature, the bugs near the edges of the killing heat (wall voids and cold spots) may escape.

 

Pesticides

Pyrethroid-resistant bed bugs: Characterization of the cuticle using SEM and GC-MS methods (Reina Koganemaru from Virginia Tech)

A number of factors could be at play in a pesticide resistant bed bug. Maybe there is a mutation in the bug so the chemical can’t do its thing inside. Maybe the bug population has developed an ability to detoxify. Or maybe there is something going on with the pest cuticle (their suit of armor) that prevents the pesticide from getting in. Every population is probably different. Koganemaru is looking at the latter by slicing through bed bugs, taking high-magnification pictures, and measuring the thickness of the cuticles. It looks like the resistant bugs do have a thicker skin, but her research is ongoing.

Ineffectiveness of Over-the-Counter Total-Release Foggers Against the Bed Bug (Susan Jones from Ohio State)

This study was not presented at NCUE, but Jones mentioned it. It's an important one for the multifamily housing audience! The study showed that bed bugs had little, if any, adverse effects after 2 hours direct exposure to the aerosolized pyrethroid(s) from three over-the-counter total-release foggers ("bug bombs" or "foggers"). Even the Harlan strain, the long-term laboratory population that is susceptible to pyrethroids and that served as an internal control in these experiments, was unaffected if the bugs were covered by a thin cloth layer that provided harborage. Tell residents: don't use total-release foggers!

Efficacy of Phantom® SC termiticide-insecticide & Prescription Treatment ® brand ULD ® Hydro-Py-300® on field collected and lab reared bed bug populations (Robert Davis from BASF Pest Control Solutions)

Alpine dust remained effective after 180 days. Phantom products took a while to kill the bugs, but still worked after four months. Lesson learned: know the residual of your product and don’t re-apply if you don’t have to!

 

There were a few other presentations on pesticides that I was unable to attend. I’ll look carefully at the abstracts when they are published and see if there’s anything to report.

 

Other bed bug presentations

EPA’s collaborative efforts to combat bed bugs (Susan Jennings from the Environmental Protection Agency)

Jennings discussed the value of collaborating on solutions for the bed bug problem and EPA's collaborative approach to bed bugs. EPA has a multi-pronged strategy that addresses expediting registrations, improving education/outreach activities, and encouraging IPM efforts. Many of EPA's efforts involve collaborating with stakeholders, including the federal partners. Jennings also presented information on key EPA activities such as the Federal Bed Bug Workgroup, the newly released communications clearinghouse for bed bugs (www.epa.gov/bedbugs/bedbug-clearinghouse.html), and the upcoming revisions the efficacy guideline for bed bugs.

 

Success stories in low-income multifamily housing (Allie Taisey from the Northeastern IPM Center)

I described a few success stories from your properties!

• Portland, OR staff members committed to meet with residents two times before bed bug treatment to assess needs and make sure homes were prepared to receive effective treatment.
• Portland, ME works closely with their pest management firm, a cleaning company, the School IPM program, and residents. Having a contractor routinely steam baseboards in the homes that have a history of bed bugs increases resident participation. Also, an after-school program on IPM resulted in four kids (from different sites) reporting bed bug infestations in their homes. Turns out, communications never reached these homes because the parents spoke a little-known dialect. Tracking language has helped Portland predict the social activities of their residents and thus target bed bug education efforts.
• The executive director of a property in Chambersburg, PA was so knowledgeable about bed bugs that she was able to make the media her friend. She educated the reporter who came to her. Rather than publishing a negative story, the reporter used her as a source of good information.

 

Bed bug distribution and pesticide incidents in the U.S. (Kaci Buhl from the National Pesticide Information Center)

The National Pesticide Information Center (NPIC) populates a robust website on pest control information and staffs a hotline (npic.orst.edu). Buhl presented some of the data the call center has collected over the past nine years on bed bug inquiries and incidents. Inquiries increased from 45 to 1072 from 2002 to 2010, but dropped to 845in 2011. Inquiries came from all over the country, but New York, New Jersey, California, and Ohio were at the top. Most of the questions were related to health or medical treatment. The most common scenario leading to bed-bug-related pesticide incidents was the caller not following the pesticide label.

 

NPMA perspectives on bed bug best management practices (Jim Fredericks from NPMA)

If you haven’t checked them out, visit the NPMA sites:

• Allthingsbedbugs.org
• Bedbugbmps.org
• Pestworld.org

 

That was a long one. Thanks for tuning in.

Stay cool!

New info on keeping bed bugs alive

As promised, this week I'll continue to share my notes from the National Conference on Urban Entomology (NCUE). I've categorized the 28 presentations on bed bugs under the topics of:

• rearing bed bugs, 
• biology and behavior, 
• treatment protocols, 
• detection, 
• heat treatments, 
• pesticides, and 
• other bed bug presentations.

This week I'll cover 7 presentations that fell under the first two topics. Knowing basic information about bed bugs helps us find their weak points and design treatment strategies that work.

Rearing bed bugs

For a pest that seems so ready to infest, bed bugs are awfully hard to keep happy in a lab. A good study takes hundreds of bugs, so learning how to rear them right is important to research. Plus, you can learn a bit about a bug by essentially keeping it as a pet.
Four presentations covered bed bug rearing:

• A novel method for artificially feeding bed bug (Ronda Hamm from Dow Agrosciences LLC)
• Lessons learned in bed bug rearing (Joshua Bryant from Ohio State University)
• Optimization of an in vitro system for rearing bed bugs with notes on their development on different host bloods (Alvaro Romero from New Mexico State University)
• Assessing bed bug control programs using mock environments (Kyle Jordan from BASF Pest Control Solutions)

Lessons learned from these researchers:

• A practical rearing system uses a simple heating pad or hot plate to warm containers of blood. Bed bugs access the blood by feeding through a membrane. The jars holding the colonies are placed upside-down onto the blood source membrane. Bed bugs crawl down (or are tapped to the bottom) to feed on this system. It’s easy to set up and if the membrane breaks, the bugs don’t drown.
• Bed bug colonies do best (stay alive and lay eggs) on chicken blood. Rabbit blood came in second followed by bovine. Human blood was not evaluated. Researchers don't use human blood to rear bed bugs that will be used for peer-reviewed studies. It's really hard to get permission to use humans as food from the powers-that-be so researchers buy blood. My bugs are used only for teaching purposes...and my blood is free.
• Chicken blood will stay good for up to three weeks in the refrigerator.
• Those trying to maintain colonies must be wary of their blood sources because the shipped blood can contain chemicals from animal medication or pesticide treatment of rearing facilities—it’s hard to know about your source so don’t feed all your colonies on one batch of blood.
• It takes about 27 days from when the female feeds before laying an egg to get to the 5^th instar (the last stage before adult).
• Building a mock bedroom and trying to infest it with bed bugs is not as simple as you may think! Perhaps the lab colonies have lost some of their natural behavior.

Bed Bug Biology and Behavior

Effect of various blood alcohol concentrations on bed bugs (Ralph Narain from University of Nebraska)

You read right—this research looked at what bed bugs think about a night out at the bar! As fun as the study set up sounds, no alcohol was consumed by researchers. They fed bugs on blood that had varying levels of alcohol and observed the results. In short, bed bugs are not alcoholics. They consumed less blood if there was alcohol in it and went on to produce fewer eggs. 

Bed bug egg morphology (Brittany Delong from Virginia Tech)

Many treatment failures are blamed on bed bug eggs. Yet we don’t know a lot about the make-up of the eggs. Delong is trying to remedy that by taking high magnification images of the 1mm long life stage. In the process of her research, she has gotten to know the bed bug mothers quite well. She sees them beginning to lay eggs 24 hours after feeding and continuing to lay eggs for 11 days. A well-fed bed bug female can produce 147 eggs in a lifetime. 

Susceptibility of multiple field collected strains of bed bugs to selected insecticides (Sumiko De La Vega from Sierra Research Laboratories)

The major finding from De La Vega’s research was not about insecticides, but about the bed bugs. She found that the resistance levels of her colonies went down after two to four years of being in colony without any pesticide exposure. This complicates pesticide research done with “field” strains because researchers can’t count on resistance levels staying the same between studies. Just when we thought we had it figured out...another wrench in the study of bed bugs!

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For those of you who attended the "Taking Control of Bed Bug Treatments" webinar, I am sorry to say I am not going to have the recording posted this week. They will be posted next week and it will tie in nicely with the treatment protocols presentations from NCUE. I have the files ready to go, but our website guru isn't in the office and Molly Stedfast, my co-presenter, is riding a bike for a few days alongside Phil Cooper of BedBug Central. Phil is riding across the US for MS. Check out www.philacrossamerica.com to support the cause!

Cockroaches cause asthma

Yesterday was the last day of asthma awareness month. Hopefully you participated in some way. I was reminded of the connection between integrated pest management (IPM) and asthma last week at the National Conference on Urban Entomology (NCUE). NCUE brings together the people who are dedicating their lives to managing pests in structures to share research and honor students. The next few blog posts are going to be about what I brought back from this year’s conference. Heads-up: there was a lot of bed bug information!!

This week, I want to focus on what I heard about asthma and cockroaches. If you read no further, remember these tidbits:

• The more cockroaches there are in a home, the more potentially asthma-triggering allergens there are.
• Regardless of housekeeping, if you put out enough bait, you can significantly reduce a heavy cockroach infestation.
• If you kill the cockroaches (even without cleaning them up), you can significantly reduce the asthma-triggering allergens.
• The IPM process—routine inspection and monitoring (made easier when paired with good housekeeping)—helps new infestations from ever reaching a high level again.

Did I keep your attention?

Here’s more detail on the link between cockroaches and asthma.

Asthma disproportionally affects minority children and children living below poverty level. Many of these children live in affordable housing. I’m echoing parts of a message released yesterday about the Coordinated Federal Action Plan to Reduce Racial and Ethnic Asthma Disparities. To read more, see the press release. You hear a lot about the kids with asthma, but remember that caretakers and PHA staff members who work in homes may have asthma too.

One thing you can do to fight asthma is control cockroaches. Cockroaches are a known asthma trigger because of proteins in their skin and feces (collectively called “frass”). Both on the cockroach and for a few months after the roach dies, poops, or sheds the skin, these protein “allergens” can get in the air and trigger asthma attacks.

“In the 1970s, studies made it clear that patients with cockroach allergies develop acute asthma attacks. The attacks occur after inhaling cockroach allergens and last for hours….Now we know that the frequent hospital admissions of inner-city children with asthma often is directly related to their contact with cockroach allergens—the substances that cause allergies. From 23 percent to 60 percent of urban residents with asthma are sensitive to the cockroach allergen” (from www.aafa.org/display.cfm?id=9&sub=18&cont=227).

 There are a lot of great resources available for families dealing with asthma. For example, EPA and CDC have a booklet that guides families through identifying asthma triggers and setting up an asthma action plan. The following quote is in the booklet, and it hit home for me:“‘We used to have cockroaches all over our kitchen counters. Now we put bread and crackers in plastic containers, and guess what? No more roaches. And that means I am having fewer asthma attacks.’ —Becky, age 12” 

Less kid-focused—one report that many of you enjoy is “Asthma: A business case for employers and health care purchasers.” Produced in 2010 by the Lowell Center for Sustainable Production and the Asthma Regional Council, the policy and practice report makes the case for funding preventative measures like IPM. View the full report at: http://www.asthmaregionalcouncil.org/uploads/documents/hria_asthma_report.pdf

At NCUE, two of the leading cockroach researchers—Drs. Miller and Schal—presented some of their work.

Listening to Dr. Coby Schal is an honor. To get a sense why, skim the list of over 200 publications his lab has produced. He has conducted much of the foundation research upon which we can build IPM programs in housing. At NCUE, Dr. Schal summarized what we know about cockroaches and asthma. I encourage you to read his 2007 review, “Cockroach Allergen Biology and Mitigation in the Indoor Environment.” In this paper, the authors reviewed the understanding of cockroach allergen biology and the demographics associated with human exposure and sensitization up to 2007 when the review was published. The article critically evaluates allergen mitigation studies from an entomological perspective, highlighting disparities between successful and failed attempts to lessen the cockroach allergen burden in homes. http://www.annualreviews.org/doi/pdf/10.1146/annurev.ento.52.110405.091313

Schal also mentioned two papers that have been published since the 2007 review on the topic of using IPM to reduce cockroaches:

• “German Cockroach Allergen Levels in North Carolina Schools: Comparison of Integrated Pest Management and Conventional Cockroach Control”; and
• “Survey of Pest Infestation, Asthma, and Allergy in Low-income Housing”.

If you like these and want more, e-mail stoppests@cornell.edu and I’ll tap into my “Motivation for Using IPM” folder...that’s really what I call it. :)

Dr. Dini Miller (one of our IPM in Multifamily Housing trainers) presented some research on using cockroach gel bait to reduce cockroaches at a housing authority. Some gory details of her study included:

• In April, before she used bait, her team monitored to figure out how to focus their efforts. They placed 3 traps in each of 83 units. In 24 hours they caught 8,186 cockroaches!
• There were some delays so they had to re-trap in July. Conflicting with the June report from the pest control company that only noted cockroach activity in two units, Miller’s team trapped way more cockroaches than they had in June!

What I took away from Dr. Miller’s presentation:

• If you don’t do quality assurance on your contractor, you can’t know whether “pest control” is actually controlling pests.
• If you rely on a contractor for pesticide application, you needs to pay for a contract that stands a chance of controlling pests. This housing authority was paying $2,478 per quarter for extermination in 458 units ($5.41/unit). Dr. Miller broke this down for us. Treating 458 units working 8 hours a day for one week would give TWO technicians: 229 units each, 46 per day, 6 per hour, 10 minutes per unit (minus walking, opening doors, breaks, etc.).
• An infestation of cockroaches can be controlled using gel bait alone, but there has to be enough bait to feed all the cockroaches—a few dots aren’t going to cut it. The units with highest cockroach levels got 90g of bait over the course of the 14 day protocol.
• If there is enough bait out, you can get control of cockroaches without changing housekeeping practices. (You read right! And Dr. Miller isn’t the only researcher who has found this.) But poor housekeeping presents two major challenges:
  •  To apply bait in “cracks and crevices,” you need cracks and crevices that aren’t full of gunk or covered by piles of stuff. Dr. Miller’s team overcame this challenge by making their own crevices—“cockroach canollis” (a dot of bait in a piece of a straw) and “bait burritos” (a dot of bait in the fold of a small piece of paper).
  • If a home has poor housekeeping an introduced cockroach will likely go unnoticed and well-fed until the infestation is heavy. Once an infestation is controlled, good housekeeping, monitoring, and inspection keep another infestation from reaching a high level again.

The only side note I want to add to the gel bait information is: allocate pesticide applicators’ time to homes where there are active infestations (found by monitoring). Having your PMP spend time applying “preventative” cockroach gel bait is not the best use of his or her precious time. If a cockroach doesn’t show up to eat it, the bait dries up and is no good to anyone. For more on cockroach control options and our cockroach FAQs, check out www.stoppests.org/pest-solutions/cockroaches. 

To end on a happy note, the housing authority where Dr. Miller did her research hosted an IPM in Multifamily Housing Training and is now working with us to implement IPM. We hope to write a case study on their progress. It takes some work to get cockroach-free, but remember—cockroaches cause asthma. Spending time and money on IPM is a sound investment in healthy housing.

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Through this blog, I want to thank Drs. Miller and Schal, as well as all the other industry professionals and university researchers who continue to give us the research-based information we use to develop IPM program recommendations.

Ticks (Sample Newsletter Article)

Fall is my favorite season, but spring is a close second. If there wasn’t so much mud, it would win. In central NY, the forest floor is covered with wildflowers and the trees are turning green. Everything is growing.

Two of my favorite things are plants and bugs. I can experience both by wandering around in the woods. This week I’ve hiked, camped, ridden my horse through trails, pulled weeds from the garden, and spent about four hours mowing grass. All these activities bring me great joy, but they are also risky. Amidst the leaf litter and at the tips of grass and branches, I know there are ticks waiting for their next meal.

There are many different kinds of ticks across the U.S. and each is a little unique. If you want to know the risks in your area, contact your cooperative extension office (http://www.nifa.usda.gov/Extension), health department, or browse the pages of http://tickapp.tamu.edu. This post will be about the hard-shelled ticks that are most likely to transmit disease to our pets or us.

What you need to know about ticks is that they need to drink blood. Just like bed bugs, it’s their only food. If you want to know the difference between ticks and bed bugs, check out the Southern IPM Center’s blog post on the topic at http://ipmsouth.com/2012/04/16/the-difference-between-bed-bugs-and-ticks/.

Ticks have four life stages—egg, larva, nymph, and adult. They take a blood meal at the larval, nymphal, and adult stages. They attach to the host while feeding, but when they’re full they drop off. That means they may feed on a different animal or person for each meal. That’s how disease organisms like Lyme get transmitted between different animals.

A likely story of a blacklegged (“deer”) tick:

Early in the spring, the egg (often in leaf litter) hatches. The emerging larval tick is tiny, hungry, and she’s on the ground. She grabs onto a white-footed Mouse that is carrying the bacteria that causes Lyme disease.  As the tick feeds on the mouse, she gets both the blood and bacteria. Once full, she drops off and molts into a nymph. Then it gets cold and she goes dormant—perhaps nestled in a pile of grass clippings.

The next spring, she wakes up hungry—or should I say thirsty—for another meal. This time she’s a little bigger, about the size of a poppy seed. She crawls up about two feet to the tip of a piece of grass and catches a ride on a deer that wanders by. As with the mouse, she feeds, drops off, and molts to a bigger size.

When the tick dropped off, the deer was wandering through someone’s lawn. Having grown to an adult, she’s hungry again. So she crawls up a nearby bush and out to the tip of a branch—she’s waiting a few feet off the ground—about the height of a tasty human’s waist.

Just her luck, a shorts-wearing man who didn’t put on any tick repellent walks by and brushes her branch. Bingo. She finds some skin and latches on. The man doesn’t check himself for ticks that night and she keeps feeding for more than a day. Still carrying the bacteria from the mouse last summer, she regurgitates and some of the bacteria get in the man. She gets her meal (enough to charge her up for some egg laying outside) and he gets Lyme Disease.

There are many variations to the story. Different types of ticks carry different diseases. Hosts may be squirrels, deer, dogs, kids…anything a tick can grab. The ticks may be waiting to hitch a ride on any vegetation where warm-blooded animals frequent. Many pest management companies offer treatments that can reduce the number of ticks on your property. Regardless, everyone needs to take precautions. For our purposes, the result of successful tick management is no disease transmission to people or pets.

Share this information with residents by using the following sample newsletter article.

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Avoid Ticks

 Ticks in our area can transmit disease. Want to know more? Check out http://www.cdc.gov/ticks

Take the following steps to prevent getting bit:

• Wear protective clothing—ideally light colored so you can see the ticks. Long sleeves, pants, socks, and closed-toed shoes help keep them from your skin.
• Use an EPA registered repellent—find one that works for you at http://pi.ace.orst.edu/repellents/
• Perform daily tick checks, especially after being outside.
• Use caution in tick habitats—avoid brushing up against long grass or branches.
• If you find a biting tick, remove it with tweezers. Grab it close to the skin and pull straight out. 
• Got pets? Ask your veterinarian about tick preventatives.

Want to know what kind it is? Check out http://tickapp.tamu.edu. Save it for a few weeks, just in case the bit person gets sick and the doctor wants to see it. 

April Showers Bring…Mosquitoes

Many argue that the mosquito is the most deadly animal on earth. I’d go along with that. One of my dear friends died of Malaria and another flipped a car when she went to swat one on her leg. Luckily, she walked away…and didn’t get bit. In addition, I just spent some of my hard-earned money on a vaccination for my horse to guard against the mosquito-transmitted West Nile Virus. 

I grew up in Maine, where the mosquito is the state bird. Luckily, my skin doesn’t react to their bites, but I have many friends who plan their time outside to avoid the itchy welts. This pest is part of our culture. It even took center stage at last week’s Cornell Fashion Show when a designer and scientist paired-up to create a design that protects the wearer against mosquitoes!

Attracted by our heat and breath (just like bed bugs and many other blood-sucking pests), mosquito moms are great at finding us. Males spend their time courting the ladies and sipping nectar (not us). We’re not entirely sure what makes some people more attractive to the bloodthirsty females than others—studies continue to look at everything from lactic acid to dirty socks.

The key to battling this pest is to get the babies—before they grow up and can bite. Mosquitoes are flies. As such, they have four life stages: egg, larva, pupa, and adult. The early life stages happen in and around water. Mosquitoes can breed in water that stands still for more than 4 days. Once the adults take flight, anyone’s game.

IPM for mosquitoes is a lot of simple steps that, when put together, takes the water and shelter away from this pest. In your communities, do the following:

• Drill drain holes in, turn over, or get rid of old tires, wheelbarrows, buckets, toys and other objects that catch water
• After a rainstorm, empty water from cargo trailers, tarps, truck beds, trashcan lids, recycling bins, plant pots and other water-catching objects
• Tightly cover rain barrels
• Fill tree holes with sand or cement or drill holes to allow drainage
• Clear aquatic vegetation from around the edges of ponds to allow fish to feed on mosquito larvae and pupae
• Organize your community to clean up mosquito breeding areas. Neighborhood clean up days can be organized through civic or youth organizations.

If you have areas with standing water, ask your pest control operator about Bti, a naturally occurring bacteria, to kill mosquito larvae. Bti comes in small, donut-shaped form, often called "mosquito dunks", which are useful in small areas of standing water. Granular Bti is also available, and effective for larger areas, such as ponds. NPIC has lots of information on mosquito control. 

If you live in an area with agriculture, check out Cornell’s Veterinary Entomology website for their recommendations for pest control on farms. (Vet. Ent. Is where I got my start with bugs!)

Check with your local health department and see if they have any brochures you can give to residents. At the very least, put the following in your newsletter...

----------------- Sample Newsletter Article--------------------

Stop Mosquitoes
“If you think you are too small to make a difference, try sleeping with a mosquito.” ~Dalai Lama 

Mosquitoes grow up in still water that’s at least 4 days old. The babies are in the water—only the fully-grown moms will bite. Get rid of pooled water to stop mosquitoes.

• Drill drain holes in, turn over, or get rid of old tires, buckets, toys and other objects that catch water
• After a rainstorm, empty water from trashcan lids, recycling bins, plant pots and other water-catching objects
• Change water in birdbaths at least once a week
• If there is a constant pool of water, ask housing to get a mosquito dunk. It kills young mosquitoes, without harming us.

Keep the blood suckers out of your house. Keep screens on windows and doors. If one gets in, use a fly swatter.

Going outside? Wear light colored clothes that cover as much skin as possible. Avoid times of day when mosquitoes are out. Use this phone app to find an insect repellent: Npic.orst.edu/myrepel. Before using a repellent or insecticide, be sure you thoroughly read and understand all directions and cautions written on the label, especially if you are using it on a child, pregnant woman or elderly person. 

Want to know more? Check out:

• http://mosquitosafari.tamu.edu
• http://www.cdc.gov/
• http://www.stoppests.org/pest-solutions/flies-outside