Use Caution When Storing Firewood

Another pest control tip from Servall Pest Control:

Fireplaces and wood-burning stoves are very popular ways to heat, creating a demand for firewood.

Although wood, considered a renewable fuel resource, is relatively inexpensive, often readily available and can quickly warm a cold room, it also can serve as a home for certain nuisance insects and their relatives.

Homeowners become alarmed when sawdust is pushed out of the firewood, faint rustling or gnawing noises are heard and insects emerge to crawl or fly within the house.

For the most part, firewood insects are a nuisance by their presence and cause no harm to the home, household furnishings or humans.

Most firewood insects and their relatives are active from April to October. Many round-headed and flat-headed borers complete their life cycle in one year or up to two to four years. Keep in mind, most insects and their relatives found in firewood are considered either wood boring or shelter seeking.

Some adults prefer recently cut logs and others seasoned logs. Bark beetles and ambrosia beetles might have two to three generations per year and often attack weakened, dying and dead trees. Powderpost beetles complete their life cycle in three months to one year.

Powderpost beetles prefer wood that has been cut for several months (seasoned). Carpenter ants and termites prefer damp, moist wood such as old tree stumps and wood in soil contact. Carpenter ants can develop from egg to adult in about two months or up to 10 months in cooler weather. Termite colonies vary in their life cycle with low populations the first year and active, larger colonies in the fourth year. (Termite establishment is slow depending on moisture, temperature and food.)

Tips for storing firewood

Never stack wood against the house or other buildings. Store firewood outdoors in an open area, as far away from the house as practical, to keep away insects and dirt (debris).

Stack firewood off the ground to eliminate serious soil moisture problems leading to wood rot and pest problems. Stacking firewood in loose piles raised off the ground, as well as splitting or sawing into smaller sizes, accelerates drying.

A simple storage rack can be made by placing two-by-fours on concrete blocks. Stack the firewood on top of the two-by-fours, allowing an air gap of at least 10 inches between the ground and firewood.

For a cover, one can use a sheet of dark polyurethane plastic or sheet metal roofing to keep the wood dry. During the summertime, the area under the plastic will build up heat, evaporating the moisture and killing various stages of insects and other pests within. Provide proper ventilation if water vapor collects on the plastic cover from the green, unseasoned wood.

Bring only enough firewood into the house to be burned immediately. As cold weather arrives, pieces of firewood can be moved nearer to the house for easy access.

Firewood again should be stored on a rack, patio or deck instead of on the ground. Firewood stored inside the home for more than an hour or so may warm up enough for insects to emerge from within or under the bark and start their spring activities early. Also, do not store firewood in a heated garage or basement for the same reason.

Burn older wood first. Try not to carry over large quantities of firewood from season to season. After one to two seasons, unprotected firewood left outside on the ground will become tunneled and full of frass from many wood boring insects, develop loose bark for nuisance insects to take shelter and decrease in heat value from wood decay fungi.


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Pest Control Q & A

Servall Pest Control brings you a Q & A session from Ask Mr. Pest Control:

 Question:

I was told that there are certain laws to follow when it comes to treating a school that is public or receives govenment assistance or payment. Yet, if it's Private then just follow the guidelines on the label because it's different from a public or government assisted school's laws. Does this make sense? I just turned down a good job that came up because I wasn't sure if the laws for public versus government assisted schools were different than for private schools. Are they? Thanks for your answer and advice.

Steve, FL

Answer:

This is a very important question, but a single answer is not going to be appropriate for all states, and it is important for you to investigate the exact regulations in place in your state. You can begin on PestWeb by going into our "Business Tools" tab and selecting "IPM In Schools". You the can select your state and find links to the specific regulations and forms for your state. Florida, where you are, is very active through the Univ. of Florida in producing many tools and forms on this subject, and they do have regulations pertaining to pesticide use in schools, as does nearly every other state.

In general the purpose behind regulating / restricting pesticide use in schools is to reduce the exposure young children have to toxic substances. It is believed that their developing brains and other organs are more susceptible to exposure to toxins, and yet this must be balanced with the need to prevent their exposure to public health pests as well. Thus, nearly all states mandate that each school have a written IPM program in place so that a total reliance on pesticides is avoided. I think this is a good idea. Ultimately the states are not going to distinguish between public versus private schools, and in many states already include private schools or private day care facilities in their School Pesticide Use regulations. Obviously if these laws are in place to protect children it should not matter if that child does not attend a public school, but I suspect that initially it is easier to regulate government institutions. If we carry this to the obvious extreme, do these regulations have the right to impose themselves on home-schooled children and the private homes where they are being taught?

So, I will dance around this issue a little bit but invite you to go to the links provided on PestWeb and dig into your own state's regulations. This actually is a fabulous opportunity for our industry to step up and show its professionalism. In many cases it removes the ability for the janitorial staff at a school to buy pesticides at the local hardware store and spray them themselves. It invites LICENSED applicators in to help schools handle this delicate situation. Your time is money, and IPM can take more time but in the long run be more effective with minimized use of pesticides, and you have the opportunity to increase revenue at these accounts.

A direct answer to your question of whether private schools are viewed as outside of regulations pertaining to public schools is that old expression - it all depends - and it depends on your state. For example, in California where very specific laws on school pesticide use are in effect the current law specifically exempts private school facilities, but I have no doubt that this issue is still rolling around in the minds of our politicians.

Mr. Pest Control


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Top 5 Most Brutal Insects!

Servall Pest Control brings you the 5 most brutal insects from softpedia.com:

This particular top 5 is not conceived based on which insect kills the most people, which carries the most venom, which is the most vicious, or which is the most brutal. Rather, the classification ranks these little buggers based on their overall nastiness and appeal (or lack thereof).

5. Soldier (Army) Ants
The insect Eciton burchellii is familiar to many, even if they don't remember it by name. Have you ever seen the documentaries on TV, showing a raft made out of living insects, crossing a river because why not? Those are soldier ants, whose soldiers reach as much as half an inch in length.

They are in the nasty habit of not building their own colony, which can be avoided by animals that want to live. They are constantly on the move, trotting on the forest floor in a thick column numbering in excess of one million individuals on occasion.

Now, what makes these ants worse than, say, other ants, is their utter disregard for anything in their path. There have been unconfirmed reports that they have even killed horses that were in their way as they were migrating. These ants tend to consider everything that moves a threat to them.

 
4. Africanized Honey Bee
At number four in our top, we have the Africanized honey bee (Apis mellifera scutellata), which was obtained by breeding honey bees from Europe and southern Africa, with the purpose of making their offspring capable of surviving in the jungle.

However, someone dropped the ball big time, releasing 26 queen bees of the new species in Brazil. Now they are spread throughout the Western Hemisphere, and no external clues separate it from the normal, European variety.

The differences become quickly visible when they chase any intruder that spends more than a second near their hives for about a quarter mile. What makes them especially dangerous is the fact that they swarm easily, and also that their colonies number in the tens of thousands of individuals.

3. Japanese Hornet

The third spot in our classification is occupied by everybody's friend, the 1.62-inch (4-centimeter) long, venom-spitting Japanese Hornet, known among scientists as Vespa mandarinia japonica. Its best recommendation is this YouTube video.

These insects are not particularly violent by nature, in the sense that they would tolerate quite a lot before taking action. However, when they do, there is a high probability that what upset them will no longer be alive within a few hours.

When they sting and release their multi-toxin venom, they also release a pheromone that calls all other Japanese Hornets in the vicinity to take part in the action. Suffice it to say that an enzyme in their venom can dissolve tissue, and that another chemical attacks the nervous system.

2. Tsetse Fly

The reason why the tsetse fly made it to the second position in this top is that it's responsible for the deaths of between 250,000 and 300,000 people every year. This little bugger mastered the art of infecting humans and other animals with trypanosomiases, also known as sleeping sickness.

Currently, it lives in an area of Africa that is inhabited by more than 60 million people. Access to treatment is scarce, and this, too, accounts for the high number of casualties it produces. The insect only feeds on vertebrate blood.

In order to control tsetse fly populations, some projects even sought to capture males, irradiate them, and then release them back into their colonies. But these efforts proved to be insufficient, even if infection rates have decreased slightly over the past couple of years.

1. Bot fly

The “winner” in this top is not an especially vicious insect per se. The thing that really makes it a nasty piece of work is that it puts its larva inside animals. Of the 150 species in the family Oestridae, one is specialized for putting its larvae inside humans.

There are videos showing how a bot fly larva living in a human host looks like, but none will be linked here, out of sheer humanity and compassion for those who fell prey to the fly. Suffice it to say, the larvae constantly eat as they grow immediately under the skin.

The good part about infected people is that they tend to figure this out sooner rather than later, and extract the flesh-eating demon out of whatever part of their bodies the larvae were attached to. In some cases, however, when the larvae grow in the brain, there isn't really that much anyone can do.

Visit www.servallpestcontrol.com to find out more or call us at 1.800.264.1433!

Blood-Sucking Mosquitoes Keep Their Cool

Servall Pest Control bringing you an interesting article about our annoying friends: mosquitoes...

No one likes being bitten by whining mosquitoes, but have you ever considered what the experience is like for them as their cold-blooded bodies fill with our warm blood? Now researchers reporting online on December 15 in Current Biology, a Cell Press publication, have uncovered the mosquitoes' secret to avoiding heat stress: they give up cooling droplets of their hard-won meals.

The study shows for the first time that blood-feeding insects are capable of controlling their body temperature, the researchers say.

"During feeding on a warm-blooded host, such as a human being, mosquitoes ingest quite a large amount of hot blood in a short period of time," said Claudio Lazzari of Université François Rabelais. "We aimed to determine to what extent these insects are exposed to the risk of overheating during the blood intake."

Mosquitoes have to be quick, lest their host turns into a potential predator, Lazzari points out. But that influx of heat could send their internal body temperature soaring past physiological limits.

Insects' body temperatures generally do depend on the environment around them. However, earlier studies have shown that insects, including bees and aphids, can control their temperature with beads of nectar or sap. Mosquitoes, too, will give up drops of fluid during feeding.

"What intrigued us was why they eliminate fresh blood, which is a precious and risky-to-obtain nutritive element," Lazzari said.

To find out, he and Chloé Lahondère used a camera that depends on heat to form images, much as a regular camera depends on light. Those images highlighted differences in temperature between the body parts of mosquitoes as they fed. Their heads reached temperatures close to that of the ingested blood, while the rest of their bodies remained closer to ambient temperature. That temperature variation wasn't observed when mosquitoes dined on sugar water instead.

The researchers showed that the cooling depended on those drops of fluid the insects excrete from their backsides as they feed. Lazzari and Lahondère say that the mosquitoes' strategy no doubt protects them and any malaria-causing (Plasmodium) parasites they might be carrying. The new understanding of mosquito physiology is more than a curiosity; it could lead to strategies aimed to control mosquitoes and the diseases they spread.

"Blocking or delaying the production of the excreted fluid would have a double impact on the physiology of mosquitoes: on water and thermal balance," Lazzari said. "Indirectly, this would affect microorganisms transmitted by insects by modifying the thermal environment to which they are exposed."

Now you can say you have learned something new today! Visit www.servallpestcontrol.com to find out more or call us at 1.800.264.1433!

Pest Control Q & A

Servall Pest Control bringing you a question and answer session from PestWeb.com:

Question:

Is it unusual to see Springtails (Snow Fleas) in the south during November/December? I had a customer last week that had a large amount of these little creatures around a garage.

Answer:

I don't think this would be at all unusual, and in fact California has been having unusually dry weather in December this year, with cold nights but very nice, sunny, and relatively warm daytime temperatures. Since all insects live through the winter in some way or another, some in their adult or nymph stages, a warm day could easily generate some activity on their part. My front yard faces south and it gets pretty toasty during the day, and I assume this warmth moves into the soil and under materials and mulch on the soil as well, bringing bugs out of hiding for awhile. Since you are in Georgia you too may be experiencing enough warmth during the day to activate these insects, and as you mention with their nickname of "snow fleas" they typically will be active at cool times of the year. 

Since these are around a garage it also is possible there could be some interior source for them, so I wouldn't dismiss their presence as just one of those outdoor things. Since springtails are nearly always associated with moisture they sometimes are indicators of moisture problems within the structure. Perhaps the water heater is leaking, or some other plumbing leak that could even be hidden within walls or under slabs. It's at least worth the second look to be sure that they are only from the outside in this case.

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Servall Q & A from Ask Mr. Pest Control

Question:

I have done research regarding the mode of action that pyrethroids have on labeled target pests. Generally, I understand that a pyrethroid opens neural passages and leaves them on. I understand it paralyzes them and leaves their chances of recovering almost zero. But, most sites I tried then say the insect just eventually dies. What is it that kills them (heart/lung failure?), and how long does that likely take before they are more than just poisoned/locked 'on'?

Answer:

This really is a fascinating topic, to me at least. First comment is that the internal workings of a bug - any arthropod - are strongly similar to the internal workings of humans and other mammals. Both bugs and mammals have hearts, digestive systems, blood, and an exchange of oxygen for carbon dioxide. Bugs, as do humans, have a nervous system made up of individual nerve cells that pass a nerve impulse along from one point (the antenna of a bug or the finger of a human) to the brain, and illicit a response that travels back to that sensory point. This impulse is carried from nerve cell (neuron) to nerve cell by essentially the same chemicals and processes in both bugs and people. There are some differences though, such as the presence of a neurotransmitter called Octopamine, found only in arthropods and not mammals, that many of the plant oil insecticides work on.


So, with that preamble behind us, what do Synthetic Pyrethroids do? Their specific mode of action is Axonic Poisons that affect the GABA Gated Sodium Channel. GABA means "gamma amino-butyric acid", and it is an inhibitory neurotransmitter that acts to stop a nerve impulse and allow the neuron to calm back down again. Another "channel" along nerves is the Chloride Channel, and these channels exist as pathways for proteins that help regulate the nerve impulse. When an active ingredient "blocks" that channel it prevents the proper function of the nerve, and generally this causes the nerve to continue to fire the impulses along, resulting is over-excitation and eventual collapse of important organs in the insect. Sort of like running a motor at too high a speed until it finally overheats and dies.


GABA-gated Sodium Channel blockers include our pyrethroids, natural pyrethrum, and DDT, all of which open that channel and leave it open to cause over-excitation of the nerves and organs. Other active ingredients may block that channel to actually stop the nerve impulse and shut down the important organs, and these include Indoxacarb (Advion). You can see the relation between old DDT and our current pyrethroids, and understand why bed bugs, resistant to DDT, also became so resistant to pyrethroids in a short time.


It takes only miniscule levels of a pyrethroid active ingredient to cause this effect on arthropods, and once exposed the a.i. attacks the neurons very quickly, generally causing loss of function within minutes and death a short time later. They die because their organs and their nervous system shut down. Natural pyrethrum has the same general mode of action, but some insects have the ability to rapidly metabolize the pyrethrum molecule, excreting it before it has the chance to kill them. This is the case with the German Cockroach, which may fall over comatose from the exposure but lie there still alive and still working to rid its system of the pyrethrum molecules. Then, it recovers and goes on about its business. The addition of the synergists, such as PBO, to most pyrethrum formulations helps to block the insect's ability to metabolize the pyrethrum.

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