Moving Beyond Mallis: The Veterans' Perspective

If you work in the pest control industry, and are even a little geeky about insects, you would probably like the National Conference of Urban Entomology.  Held May 21-23 this year in Raleigh, NC, the NCUE is the premier gathering for research and industry experts in structural pest control.  This year had more than its share of nerdy bug news.

In my last report I shared research papers presented by students. In this segment I will highlight talks given by “veteran” researchers, some of whom you may know by reputation or from state or national CEU conferences.

One of the most stimulating sessions this year focused on a term that was new to me: “assessment-based pest management.” Dini Miller from Virginia Tech thinks it might be the next big thing to replace (or improve) integrated pest management (IPM), a central philosophy of urban pest control.  Miller argued that because the IPM concept comes originally from agriculture, its logic has never resonated deeply with the public. Few people seem to associate the term “integrated,” for example, with the idea that using multiple pest control tactics (integrated controls) are safer and more effective than the "one spray to kill them all" approach. 

Assessment-based bed bug control will come if class action
lawsuits over failed control continue. Studies continue to show
that complaint-based service contracts do not solve bed bug
infestations. Pitfall traps, like this, can be used to detect bed
bugs early when control is more easily achieved.

Talking about assessment as a basis for pest control, she argues, might be an easier sell.  After all, all big companies assess their success by looking at the bottom line. Athletes assess their success with their batting averages and quarterback ratings. Investors follow financial assessments of their investments through annual reports. Shouldn’t consumers intuitively understand that assessment-based pest management is in their best interests?  Maybe.

But how would an assessment-based pest management program work? Without offering a comprehensive answer, speakers at the “assessment” session highlighted better ways to use monitoring and measurement in pest control.  Miller showed, for example, how by pre-assessing cockroach infestations in an apartment as low, medium or high, she could meter out how much bait a technician would need to get excellent control in that unit.

Rick Cooper, of Bed Bug Central, is successfully controlling bed bugs in low income, high rise housing—one of the toughest accounts for pest control. “Early detection is key,” says Cooper, who finds pitfall monitoring traps the most consistent way to detect bed bug infestations, even better than canines. Cooper assesses the success of his management efforts by looking at two metrics: percent of apartments with detected bed bugs, and severity of infestations based on numbers of bed bugs caught in traps. In one study he used an assessment-based approach, in combination with simple, non-chemical and low-impact control measures, to treat all apartments detected with bed bugs.  Using an in-house pest control company, they were able to reduce infestation rates from 15% to 2% over 12 months, while achieving a 98% reduction in bed bug counts. Given the success of class action suits against apartment management in recent years, it’s hard to see why managers would NOT demand this kind of information from their pest control providers.

Assessment based classes show the value of hands-on training
to teach both novice and experienced pest control professionals.
Faith Oi teaches at the University of Florida's Pest
Management University.

Faith Oi, University of Florida, focused her talk on assessing the effectiveness of continuing education through the Pest Management University (PMU) classes she offers. For any company wanting to recruit and maintain a well-educated workforce, Oi argues that training is key, including training for supervisors. Oi used pre- and post-tests to evaluate learning at PMU. For 330 students tested, she found an average 58% increase in test scores regardless of how long someone had worked in pest control. Surprisingly, supervisor pre-test scores were not significantly higher than technician pre-test scores.  Hands-on training, and training materials that are understandable to today’s technicians and even supervisors are critical. With a jab at EPA labels she observed that although pesticide labels are not infographics, perhaps they should be. What a great idea!

Michael Scharf, Purdue University, took assessment in a different direction. Imagine if, at the time of selling a big cockroach job, your company routinely collected cockroaches from the site, put a few in special, treated vials, and knew the next day precisely what insecticides would and wouldn’t work at that location? That’s what Scharf is pioneering. In a field trial he was able to predict ahead of time which insecticide combinations would work (some of his cockroaches were resistant to neonicotinoids and some were resistant to pyrethroids).  In a few years you might be able to purchase a set of pre-treated vials with instructions telling you how to run a resistance detection test. This could be a game-changer, because resistance can vary from one apartment complex to another—even within the same city or neighborhood.

To be effective, however, assessment must be affordable. Karen Vail, of the University of Tennessee, looked for a fast, cheap and effective inspection protocol for detecting bed bugs. First, she investigated whether residents, management and maintenance staff, and pest control professionals could be trained to work together to take over maintaining and inspecting pitfall traps. But after training these groups to find, report and clean traps, only 10% of apartments had maintained their traps (in place and dust free) after 22 months. She then tried a quick visual inspection of all apartments, followed by placing 2-8 traps only in apartments with a complaint or some evidence of bed bugs.  With as few as 2 traps per apartment (one against the foot of bed and one against a living room chair) she was able to detect 80-90% of the infested apartments in 3-4 weeks. It took only 2-3 minutes to conduct a quick inspection and place monitors in most apartments, and the method detected almost 4X more infested apartments than management was aware of. Her work provides yet more proof that relying on residents and staff to report bed bugs is ineffective, and that building-wide inspections are a must for effective bed bug control in high rise apartments.

The power of genomic testing never ceases to impress me.  Ed Vargo, Texas A&M University, shared the work of his student, Andre Eyer, who took a critical look at the tawny crazy ant genome (DNA fingerprint).  He wanted to know whether previous research was correct that found tawny crazy ants live in super-colonies.  Super-colonies house many queens per nest, may consist of millions to billions of ants and can extend for many miles.  Super-colonies may look like many individual ant colonies with individual nests; however, the ants in these colonies are all closely related and may in fact move freely from one colony to the next.  Previously the only way to test for super-colonies was to put together ants from different nests and record levels of aggression.  Eyer did this, plus looked at the diversity of alleles (different forms of a gene) in U.S. crazy ants vs. crazy ants from the native home in South America. He found low aggression among different TCA colonies and only half of the genetic diversity in introduced vs. native ant populations. His results confirm that TCA ants do form super-colonies, and that all the crazy ants he tested likely came from a one-time introduction (to the US).  This information may not be super-practical in terms of controlling crazy ants, but it puts scientific management of tawny crazy ant on a firmer scientific footing.

Thomas Chouvec, University of Florida, conducted some interesting experiments with Cryptotermes gestroi, a relatively new invasive termite in south Florida. Conventional wisdom suggests that fipronil is “invisible” to termites in the soil, making it possible to eliminate termite colonies through contamination. The idea is that termites travelling through contaminated soil blithely carry insecticide back to the colony, damaging or eliminating it. Using a more realistic lab assay technique with long foraging tunnels (similar to real foraging tubes), Chouvec showed that C. gestroi appears able to detect problems with nest mates returning from fipronil-contaminated tunnels.  In lab experiments the termites were able to maintain their colonies even when part of the colony was visiting so-called fipronil “death zones.” This finding suggests that fipronil may not work as effectively against C. gestroi, a cousin of the Formosan termite. More work, I’m sure, is coming on that idea.

Other worthwhile take-aways from this year’s meetings:

•  If you battle tawny crazy ant in your community, you might be interested in the new crazy ant videos shown by Kelly Palmer, Alabama Cooperative Extension.  Topics range from an introduction to the ants, their habitat, management and preventing infestations. Each is less than three minutes long and features an expert in ant management.
•  Johnalyn Gordon reported on what could be the next tawny crazy ant. Plagiolepis alluaudi, the little yellow ant, is a new invasive ant in south Florida.  It lives in leaf litter, and though it doesn’t sting, its large numbers and invasive behavior could make it a major pest in some areas, similar to tawny crazy ant. 
• Bob Davis, BASF, reported 30-60 days control of striped scorpions with the new microcap insecticide Fedona®.  Microcap products provide control even on tough surfaces like concrete and soil.
• Venerable, retired entomologist Mike Rust is still cranking out helpful information about flea control.  Using a statistical method developed for testing anti-cancer drugs he looked for synergism (a 2+2=6 effect) between common insecticides and insect growth regulators. He found variable results with some combinations working well and others not (for example, pyriproxyfen synergized fipronil, while methoprene did not; methoprene did synergize imidacloprid, but not vice versa). He concluded that IGR mixtures must be tested; and results cannot be reliably predicted.
• Dini Miller was one of the few speakers to talk about digital innovations in pest control.  She is field testing a new Delta Five remote insect monitor for insects.  As an insect enters a Delta Five trap a picture of the invader is sent to a phone app. With a technician’s time worth about $1.50 a minute, Miller thinks that remote alerts from traps like this could save a lot of labor cost, especially monitoring bed bugs in large hotels. She did not address efficiency of the units in detecting low level bed bug infestations.
• Coby Schal looked at behavioral aversion among German cockroaches to baits, and found that pesticide-resistant cockroaches may be at a disadvantage in a pesticide-free environment. For example, he found that glucose-averse, resistant-females have lower mating success.  This could be why bait rotation has been effective so long in keeping glucose-averse cockroaches from taking over the world.
• Freder Medina, BASF, reported that over 6 million homes have been treated with fipronil since its introduction as a termiticide in 2000. The newest formulation and application system, HP II, has been tested on 81 homes so far, with a 98% elimination rate after 3 months. The new system relies on high pressure injection and a unique waterless formulation to eliminate the need for tank mixing.
• Finally, if you haven’t seen it, you need to “meet the caste” of the new Tiny Termite House. Professionally produced and expertly photographed, NPMA worked with the City of New Orleans to build and infest an incredible, 1:16 scale house with termites. The purpose is to “raise awareness of the destructive nature of termites.” The videos show the house being consumed by 500,000 hungry Formosan termites.  If your company maintains a newsletter or blog, the videos are definitely post-worthy.  Your customers need to see this.

I overheard one entomologist comment that for her, the NCUE was the most important conference she attends all year. I agree. The smaller size and narrow focus of the meetings, means that NCUE is usually a perfect fit for the geeks among us in the structural pest control industry. This year's meeting was no exception.

Urban entomologists in Georgia

Atlanta is home to historical memories of the Civil War and William T. Sherman's infamous march to the sea. It's also known for its peaches, the Atlanta Braves, Coca Cola world headquarters, and the Jimmy Carter Presidential Library.  It is lesser known as the home of Rollins Inc. and the Orkin University and Training Center, a state-of-the art training facility for Orkin sales and pest control staff. It is also lesser known for being the probable entry point into the U.S. for a new invasive insect known as the kudzu bug.

Orkin Trainer Jose Dolagaray explains the design and use of the
termite training facilities to conference attendees visiting the
Orkin University and Training Center at Rollins headquarters.

The last two points were of great interest last week, at least to the 220 or so entomologists attending the 2012 National Conference on Urban Entomology.  This is the largest conference in the U.S. (and likely the world) focused solely on the science of urban entomology, and is a great place to hear the latest news and research on bed bugs, cockroaches, termites, and many other urban insect pests.  Of the 43 talks I attended over three days, some of my personal highlights included the following reports [my apologies ahead of time to termite people--most of the talks I attended were bed bug-related]:

• Dini Miller of Virginia Tech provided a very practical case study of failure to control cockroaches in what she said was the worst multifamily housing cockroach infestation she had ever encountered (and for Dini, that's saying a lot). Student researchers averaged 200 cockroaches per unit per night in 36 "high-clutter and poor sanitation" apartments in a city housing authority. Miller showed that baits can be effective in such poorly maintained apartments when the infestation was reduced significantly with a simple service involving application of 30 grams of gel bait per unit followed by a 14-day followup treatment.  When the units were turned back to the pest control company for maintenance, the populations increased to above the previous infestations within 4 weeks.  The reason? One technician was not sufficient to service the number of cockroach infested units in the complex, and not enough bait was being used in each unit to halt cockroach population growth. Miller showed that 45 minutes was required to put out an average of 916 grams of bait per unit during an initial visit.  With a good first treatment it only took 6 minutes per unit, and an average of 494 grams of bait, on a 14-day followup visit.
      The take home lesson from Miller's research is that pest control companies can't just go through the motions of baiting to get control of out-of-control cockroach infestations. Adequate time to survey, locate and treat cockroach harborages, as well as enough bait to manage the population is essential to a good treatment.  Miller's baiting formula (she used Advion and MaxForce Magnum gel baits) required 60 grams of gel bait per apartment when overnight trapping yielded more than 500 cockroaches, 30 grams for 100-500 cockroaches, and at least 15 grams for 50-100 cockroaches. AgriSense Lowline traps were used for all monitoring in the study.
• The BASF folks generated food for thought with several studies of their products including two Phantom formulations, Alpine dust, and their pyrethrins aerosol, HydroPy. Jason Meyers reported that 4-month aged residues of Phantom SC, and 180 day aged deposits of Alpine dust, performed as well at controlling bed bugs as fresh deposits of the insecticides. Such long residual deposits are unusual in pest control, making it necessary for frequent re-treatments to prevent pest reestablishment.
       With this data in hand, Meyers made a case for what BASF will be calling proactive bed bug control.  Because of Phantom's long residual, the company is conducting field tests to see whether two proactive (=preventive) treatments a year can keep bed bugs from establishing in hotel rooms.  Treatments of Phantom aerosol are applied twice a year to bed frames/head board and luggage rack.  Alpine dust is used once a year and applied to hotel room box springs, electrical outlets, carpet edges, baseboards, picture frames, electronics and sofas/chairs.  So far no new infestations have occurred in a Kansas hotel being used as a proof-of-concept site.  Expect to hear a lot of discussion about whether this approach can be justified as IPM, and whether it works sufficiently well to write preventative contracts for bed bugs in hotels. According to Orkin entomologist Ron Harrison, Orkin is one large company that expects to do more proactive bed bug control with its hotel customers in the future.
• Standardized assay methods for testing insecticides for bed bug control are a hot topic right now with regulators. One of the points of contention is which bed bug strain(s) to use. Bed bugs vary wildly in their susceptibility to insecticides.  Currently it is possible to pick a strain, like the almost completely susceptible Harlan strain, that will make nearly every insecticide look like a winner. But, according to Mike Potter of the University of Kentucky, 88% of bed bug populations tested from 110 sites around the U.S., had at least one type of resistance to insecticides.  Hence testing products against only the susceptible strains is nearly meaningless as a predictor of real-world effectiveness. But which strain or strains to use? It turns out that even the search for the perfect test strain is a moving target. According to Sumiko De La Vega, of Sierra Research Labs, even insecticide resistant strains lose their toughness after a few years in laboratory colonies.  One of Sierra's standard colony types lost most of its 2000-fold permethrin resistance over a 2-4 year period of no exposure to pyrethroid insecticides.  Frequent resistance testing may eventually become necessary for the performance of insecticide testing with bed bugs, making such tests more difficult and expensive.
• Some of you may have wondered what happens to insecticide residues that are exposed to the high temperatures of heat treatments for bed bugs.  Apparently heat is not that destructive to residues of many of the commonly used bed bug materials. Temprid, Transport, Phantom SC, Phantom aerosol and a Phantom+IGR experimental formulation showed no loss in efficacy after 7 hours at 135 degrees F, according to PhD student Margie Lenhert from Clemson University.
• More of us may be providing dinner for bed bugs than we realize, according to an Orkin in-house study conducted by Ron Harrison.  Harrison noted that early research conducted 50+ years ago suggested that perhaps over 80% of people showed some kind of reaction to bed bug bites. However, his informal study, using over 1400 Orkin company volunteers, showed that only 3.8% reacted quickly to bed bug bites. Only 1.1% showed any delayed (4 days or more) reaction.  If these numbers are accurate, the number of biting cases in hotels may be substantially under-reported.  In addition, lack of skin reaction in many people could explain why many customers who report infestations wait until bed bugs reach high numbers in a home or an apartment.
•  

  

  NPMA graphic illustrating words that people use when
  asked what comes to mind when they hear the name
  "bed bug". The larger and bolder the word, the more
  common the response (graphic courtesy Jim Fredericks).

  Jim Fredericks of the National Pest Management Association reported on new online bed bug resources.  Allthingsbedbugs.org is a new consumer oriented site published by NPMA.  Its best management practices tab, however, would be a good place to compare your company's practices to see how they hold up to industry standards.
• Rick Cooper, graduate student at Rutgers University, attempted to conduct field evaluations of bed bug sniffing dogs.  He noted that previous canine detection research reported in 2008 showed that dogs were capable of relatively high (95-98%) detection rates (correctly pointing out all bed bugs) and relatively low false positive rates (approximately 3% of the time dogs pointed to bed bugs that weren't there).  Cooper pointed out that the 2008 study was conducted under controlled conditions with planted bed bugs.  His study was conducted in real apartments, where bed bug infestation sites were well-known from previous, thorough checks by trained inspectors.  In one of his trials, he worked with 11 companies that claimed 95-98% detection rates (generalizing based on the published 2008 results).  In Cooper's study, actual detection rates in 48 apartment units averaged only 50% (ranging from 10-83%) for these companies, and the average number of false positives was about 20% (ranging from 0-43%). Even narrrowing the trial to his best, most experienced, teams, he was unable to replicate the high success rates of the controlled studies. Despite his respect for canine detection, he concluded that canine accuracy rates in the field are likely much less than what most canine handlers advertise, and that false alerts are higher in rooms with past history of bed bugs.  
       False positives are undoubtedly costing the public lots of money.  In a widely publicized bed bug infestation at the University of Nebraska, dogs used to inspect campus dorm rooms alerted in 197 of the 3256 rooms.  Evidence of bed bug infestations, however, were found in only 10 of the 197 rooms. Because of the publicity, and high public profile of the effort, all 197 rooms were treated, at a cost to the University of $400,000.  According to Cooper, the philosophy about canine detection is changing. In the past it was "trust the dog"; today, it's "check the alert" (with a visual inspection).

Strategically placed Plexiglas cutouts show trainees at the
Orkin house, normally out-of-site construction features
important to pest control, such as this bathtub plumbing. 

In addition to hours of Powerpoint slide shows, participants in the NCUE conference were treated to a field trip to the Orkin University and Training Center. The facility is very impressive with mock kitchens and grocery stores, numerous outdoor termite treatment training stations, and the Orkin House, a full sized home with numerous examples of pests, pest damage and structural cut-aways to show how homes are constructed and how insecticide treatments might interact with a building.  One of the highlights of the tour, for at least a few of us entomologists, was searching for the infamous kudzu bug on the kudzu vines so common in the Atlanta area.