German roaches, Blattella germanica, are nasty little pests that are typically brought in to the home, workplace, resteraunt, food processing plant, etceterra, by 'hitchiking,' meaning that they are transported from one location to another by accidental human transportation.  They are typically, as adults, a touch over half an inch long are tan to dark brown in color with two longitudinal, roughly parallel, black stripes on their pronotum (sheild like area behind the head).  These roaches have a practically world wide distribution thanks to their hitchhiking ways. 

Blattella germanica  are omnivourous meaning they will eat just about anything including each other.  In the home they are typically associated with the kitchen and bathroom areas because of these areas provide a water source.  However, in severe infestations, they can be found throughout the home. 

The german roach has the fastest reproductive cycle in any peridomestic roach species.  They go from egg to reproductive adult in about 124 days.  The german roach female, once fertilized, developes an egg capsule, or ootheca, at the tip of her abdomen which she carries until roughly 24 hours before hatching occurs.  The small black nymphs which hatch out will go through 7 instars (periods between molts) which means they shed their exoskeleton 8 times before reaching adulthood. 

Roaches do not have colonies but they are a social roach.  They leave frass in safe areas creating fecal focal points which a) let other roaches know that a particular location is safe to congregate in and b) provide a food sourse for young nymphs.  They are thigmotactic which means that they feel safest in tight comfined spaces like cracks and crevices in your kitchen cabinets. 

Further reading can be found at the source of all knowledge: Wikipedia.  en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_cockroach


Now, dear reader, you may ask:  How do you eliminate these vermin?  Well, what follows is how I go about treating them.  Some situations are different, such as in schools, daycares, senior living facilities, food processing plants, and hospitals, but for the purposes of this article I will focus on the home.

1) If situation is severe I like to take a hepa vac and vacuum up as many roaches as possible removing as much of the population as I can and disposing of them elsewhere.
2) I like to use a flushing/knockdown agent to further reduce the population from behind refridgerator, under stove, around dishwasher, inside can openers, behind medicine cabinets, cracks and crevices in furniture, around light fixtures, around door hings, counter lips, baseboards (yes they do actually hide there), molding, door trim, inside window blind mechanisms, sometomes from shower and curtian rods...anywhere I see evidence of roaches.
3) Bait cracks and crevices throughout the home including in any infested piece of furniture in which I find them.
4) Spot treat corners, baseboards, around bases of counters, behind refridgerator, etc. with a nonrepellant and insect growth regulator.
5) Place prebaited roach bait stations in ares where in is not feasible to bait such as on backs of t.v.s, computer towers, computer monitors, in dresser drawers, and the like.

Then, again depending on the severity of infestation, perform a follow up service in two weeks to a month.  Sometimes this involves all five steps and sometimes it involves going through with a different bait gel and rebaiting.

The biggest key to eliminating German roaches is sanitation.  Keep cabinets, stove, counter tops clean and grease free and moisture to a minimum.

Adventures In Exterminating: No bugs today. As a pest management professi...

Adventures In Exterminating:      No bugs today.  As a pest management professi...:      No bugs today.  As a pest management professional it bugs me to see other "bug guys" not taking pride in their work.  I try h...

     No bugs today.  As a pest management professional it bugs me to see other "bug guys" not taking pride in their work.  I try hard to do a good job for my customers because I want to keep them and, as most of us know, sales is service.  You resell yourself and your company every time you set foot on a customer's property.  I saw a guy from a competitor spray in the rain.  Not only is this illegal for environmental reasons, it won't do the customer any good.  How can someone care so little for their reputation, the reputation of their company, the customer, and most importantly, the environment?

     Every company has its method of operation but here is how I think a 'typical' service should go.  First you go to the door and attempt to engage the customer.  It is also a good idea to call customers on your list the night before to see if they are having a particular issue that you need to address.  If they don't answer, leave a message.  I confess that I don't do this every day, but I should.  If they answer, and they are having an issue indoors that you need to address, do so.  Going to chase a squirrel here, but on your interior treatments use the least amount of product possible that will do the job.  Baseboard spraying is, usually unnecessary, a waste of product, and a waste of time.  Modern pest control products offer a wide variety of dusts, baits, aerosols, and others that let you treat the source of the problem.  And yes, I do know that there are customers that no matter how you try and educate, they insist on it.  Okay, done chasing the squirrel.  If they don't answer, go around the outside of the home and inspect for spider webs, wasp nests, fire ant mounds in the lawn, ants trailing on or near the home so you know what is going on.  I usually do this step while I am removing webs, wasp nests, and mud dauber constructions with my webster.  I also take this time to move any toys and pet bowls away from the house so no accidents happen.  This step doesn't take long unless it is a lake house or house in the woods with webs all over it.  Next, I treat the perimeter of the home while spot treating around windows and doors (make sure your product of choice allows for this as it might say to crack and crevice treat those areas instead).  Then, I treat any ant trails and ant mounds I find within 100 ft of the house as my limit in those palatial estates or on large lots.  I know that some of you pest professionals have to have a separate license  for that depending on your state. Final step is to fill out ticket with products used, location and amounts of those products used, put ticket on door and move along to the next location on my list.

    Other things I look for at an account are:
1. Are they a termite customer?  I should leave a quote.
2. Are they a mosquito customer?  I should leave a quote.
3. Do they have rodent, nuisance wildlife, or bat entry points that need exclusion?  I should leave a quote.
4. Are there any other issues that need attention?  examples:  broken sprinkler, broken windows, open doors (standing open, don't try people's locks), poor drainage, lawn pests, etc., that I don't handle but I would want to know about if I were the customer.

     I am not giving away any secrets here, but it amazes me to watch technicians from other companies get out of vehicle, spray around the house as fast as they can without moving anything out of the way, put a bill on the door and run.  This is why techs should be paid hourly and not on production.  This is why a mandatory amount of services, other than one, is also not a good idea.  It can take a good chunk of time to find the source of a pharaoh ant, or pantry pest, or carpet beetle, or even roach infestation, treat properly, and give instructions to the customer on what to expect next.

    Sell yourself and your service.  Make yourself indispensable.

    If your pest control company sprays and prays, shop around.

This short video was shot today and I share it just to demonstrate Argentine ants (Linepithema humile) at work.  Wikipedia has a great page devoted to them: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argentine_ant

I, and a potential new hire accompanying me for a ride along, had a fun time with these ladies today.  A customer had set an appointment because she had ants trailing in her kitchen and I was dispatched to solve her problem.  When we arrived we, of course, let the customer know we were on her property and would like to do an inspection of the exterior of her home.  The ants were everywhere.  It was cool.  She had ants trailing from an oak tree across her clothes line and on to the house.  She had ants trailing from the neighbor's yard into her yard, up a rake and up into her gutters.  She had ants trailing along the cable wire down into her crawl space then up pipes into kitchen and bathrooms.  She had ants trailing from a shrub down to the ground, up a piece of pine straw, then up wall into attic.  Inside, the ants were trailing in the attic, in the kitchen, in the bathrooms, and in master bedroom.  It was, for her, a nightmare.  For me it was fun and a great training opportunity for new guy.

So, you want to know, how did we resolve this issue?  We baited all interior trails with Optigard Ant Gel.  We treated trails on structure with 0.06% finished dilution of Termidor  as well as treating 18" around doors, windows, and other potential entry points per label directions.  We then applied a 4 ft band around the home of Intice Granular Bait at 4lbs per 1000 sq ft (4 lbs in this instance...235lf x 4 wide).  Next we went around the lawn and baited trails on and adjacent to home after Termidor had dried.

Argentine ants are difficult to control because of several factors including enormous colony size, queen may not even be on the property being treated, they can enter through a hole or crack as small as 1mm, they feed on both sweets and proteins, they may enter home at one location and trail throughout, and those are just some factors.  Usually more than one trip to the location is required.  Argentine ants are managed not eliminated.  Keep this in mind when treating.

ALWAYS READ PRODUCT LABELS CAREFULLY AND FOLLOW THEM!!!
To do otherwise is a violation of Federal and State law.

   A few weeks ago i received a call from a customer who believed she had ants in her pantry.  Now to give Mrs X credit, she had very recently lost her husband and is on quite a few medications, but what I found in her pantry was most definitely not ants.  Instead, it was a few thousand of these:

For those of you who do not know, this is Stegobium paniceum, better known as the drugstore beetle or biscuit beetles if you are in the U.K.  These tiny bugs are cylindrical, 2.25 to 3.5 mm long, are all a uniform brownish red (or reddish brown) color with longitudinal lines of pits and hairs on the wing covers, or as we in the business call them, elytra.  not visible in this picture are the 3 clubbed antenna usually found on this critter.
The life history of the drugstore beetle is as follows:  Females lay as many as 75 eggs in or near a food source.  The egg hatches into a white c shaped larvae.  The larval period lasts from four to twenty weeks depending on temperature, availability and quality of food source.  The larvae spend this time tunneling through the food substrate (flour, spices, damn near anything really) until they molt several times and reach full grown larval stage.  They then build a cocoon and enter a non feeding resting state called a pupa.  in the cocoon they transform over a period of 12 to 20 days into an adult beetle.  Adult beetles do not eat.  The females live approximately 12 to 65 days.

They can be a difficult pest to deal with for a few reasons.  They eat and infest anything from any spice in your cabinet to dog biscuits to prescription drugs to, well, you name it, including but not limited to birds nests, seeds, cookies, will bore into books, leather, and wood.  You must find and remove any and ALL infested products.  This is not always as straight forward as it seems,  I, for example, had a multiple callback situation where every time I thought I had them killed off more would appear.  In this case, rats (already eliminated) had carried off some dog food and bird seeds and stashed it in the wall where these guys were breeding.  It was driving me nuts.  Finally I noticed some crawl out from under the baseboard.  I dusted the crack and crevice along the baseboards in the pantry with Delta dust and problem solved.

So, in summation, if you find these in your home or your customers home, step one is seek out the source of the problem and eliminate it from the house.  Vacuum up as many as you can and throw away the bag or dump the bin immediately and dispose of outside. If the situation warrants it treat the cracks and crevices with a non residual knock down product such as CB80, 565, or the like.  Read any product label carefully before applying it to make sure that 1) product can be used on the pest you want to kill, 2) product can be used in the location you want to kill said pest, 3)how long do you or the homeowner need to stay out of the treated area (re-entry period), and 4) what, if any, clean up measures should be taken by you or the homeowner after re-entry.