190083_Fly_Control

[ROLLINS] [This material is the property of Rollins, Inc.] [The material, or any part of it, may not be modified or reproduced] [without the written consent of Rollins, per the company policy. © 2019 Rollins, Inc.] [Flies] Hello. Welcome to this training session on fly control, fly service. [Frank Meek] Now houseflies are probably one of our major pest that we have to work with around the world. I don't care where you're at on this planet... In every month of the year, flies are active some place. In some areas, they're active, maybe 10 to 12 months out of the year the entire time. But in others, they're very seasonal. It doesn't matter where you're at though houseflies and many of the other flies are going to be one of the service issues that we have to face. So today, we're gonna talk about some general control strategies for these particular insects. With us on the video today is Dr. Ron Harrison, the other global Technical Director for Orkin International. [Ron Harrison] So Ron and I are gonna walk you through fly service and give you a little reminder of some of those important things about the flies, okay? So let's jump in. [The Enemy, House Fly, Blow Fly, Stable Fly, Small Nuisance Flies, Many Others] Now what flies are there out there? There's thousands, tens of thousands of different kinds of flies. The ones that we are the most interested in though are the houseflies... Something commonly called a blowfly, which also might be called a bottle fly or a metallic fly. So they're all the same thing. But they're the ones that are drawn to dead animals, decaying, rotting meat, rodents or birds that we've killed and controlled inside places. Stable flies are another one that are very common out there that we find, you know, associated with animals, associated with seashores, these sort of places. Then there's this whole small group of what we kind of refer to as a nuisance flies, fruit flies, forward flies, moth flies, drain flies. And as I said, there's many others. But those are the ones that we probably are going to face and do face in the majority of our accounts everywhere. Now, you know, flies are potentially dangerous. We know that the fly is capable of carrying and transmitting over 100 different disease organisms. Now think about this for a moment. When we're out in public someplace, we're out to eat, what have you... We're in the little restaurant grabbing a hamburger or something. And we're sitting there at our table, and a fly comes up and lands on our food or on the table. What do we all do? What did most people in the world do? Just sort of wave it away and keep right on eating. Not realizing how much danger that little insect is. We say it's the second deadliest insect on the earth, the mosquito being the first. But the housefly can carry, like I said over 100 different disease organisms very efficiently and spread them around very easily. So I don't think the fly gets as much respect for the damage and the harm that it can do. We know that regulatory bodies everywhere are starting to look more at fly populations as something that needs to be checked off and points removed from health ratings and things like that. So it is becoming more and more important for fly management. And I think with that, Frank, what we're finding is that communities are building around animal facilities or around slaughterhouses or even landfills, which is causing the fly problem to come more in contact with where people live and eat. So I think it's becoming, as I noticed, traveling throughout the world a bigger problem than even maybe a few years ago. Absolutely. Absolutely. Now this is not something new. We've known for years that flies are a problem. ["The Fly Must be Exterminated to Make the World Safe for Habitation"] This is a newspaper clipping from 1918 that says, you know, "The fly must be exterminated to make the world safe." So, you know... We've known about this problem for a long time that flies are potentially dangerous. And we have to work together with our clients, and as Ron indicated, sometimes, we have to work community wide or in more areas than just our paying customers' site to try to reduce this population. So this is probably I think in my experience and, Ron, you may have... I think the same attitude or opinion. This is one of our most difficult pest to treat because of their great mobility. And the fact that they're just everywhere and can breed in almost anything. Yeah, I agree. I would say right now, this is the number one pest that I face in and out of wherever I travel. Yeah. So, you know, as I said, there's a lot of different flies. [Flies (Diptera) - Very Many Species] So, you know, if you see here on this slide, there's at least 120,000 different described species of flies. Now, you know, we compare that to the number of mammals that there are, that's 22 times the number of mammals that are on this Earth. So, you know, these are massive biomasses in the world. Things like the ants might be a larger biomass, but this is pretty large. This is a large, large body of insects that are out there. But there's only a small number of these that we have to face and have to fight and take care of our customers. So let's just give you a quick reminder of a little bit of the biology of these things. And then we'll jump into the service and control like information. [Common Features - Development, Complete Metamorphosis Egg Larva Pupa Adult] Now... Complete metamorphosis, four stages, egg, larvae, pupa, and adult. And true with most of the insects and the fly is no exception. The egg and the pupa, we really cannot have control over, we cannot kill the eggs, we really cannot stop the female from producing them. We can remove maybe the source the place where the female would prefer to put the eggs. But there's really nothing we can do to kill the eggs or the pupa either one as far as that goes. So the larvae and the adult are what we're focusing on. And these animals in these stages, they live in different places. The food source for the larvae is much different than the food source for the adult. You were not gonna find the larvae and the adults hanging out in the same place. Typically, we're not gonna find the pupa in the same place as maybe where the larvae are eating, not always. A few of the species we do, but many of them, that last stage of larvae will crawl away from the wet area to pupae to become a pupa and go on to its adulthood. So often we're treating in different locations for these particular insects and looking for different things, adult versus young, the larvae. And so an inspection process would be a big one because we're inspecting different places as well. Absolutely. Now let's kind of look at some cool video that our friends at Brandenburg provided for us. [The female fly lays eggs on a suitable breeding medium usually in batches of 100 to 200] The female produces these eggs one at a time, and she can lay large numbers of them at once. Depending on the species, she may be able to produce 100 to 200 eggs at one single time, sitting on a surface someplace... She's normally gonna try to find an area where there's food resources for those young when they come out of those eggs, wet decaying organic materials, garbage, dead animals, depending on the species. So she's gonna find that to produce and lay these eggs in. Now when those eggs hatch, they come out of this these little egg cases as the larvae. The common name for the larvae is the maggots. So these maggots, these larvae, crawl out of the egg cases... Wiggle their way around and work their way out. And then they just start eating, they eat continuously almost until they are going through their entire growth cycle as a larvae. They're gonna go through and molt... Four or five times on the way to becoming an adult. That last moult is when they turn into the pupa or become the pupa going into the adult stage. So these things eat a lot. So mother has to find a place where there's food resources for them. Without the food resources, the larvae don't survive. So when we think about attraction, she has an attraction for her own food but it's different from the food from her baby. So when she's got eggs to lay, like your picture was showing, she's out hunting for very different odor than the odor for her actually to get nutrients. Exactly. Now it's not uncommon to find hundreds of these little larvae, these maggots crawling over each other and just devouring whatever food source is there. We will often find... Just massive amounts of them. Rarely, at least in my experience, do you see just the one maggot inside a place, you're gonna see multiples inside there. They're heavy eaters. They're eating all the time. They just kind of scrape food into their mouth, eat, eat, eat to give them the energy to grow, molt, grow, molt on their way to adulthood. Now the next stage moves from the larvae to the pupa. [Pupa] And so that pupa is placed out there. It's kind of soft and vulnerable. After it's laid or becomes a pupa... It then exposure to air, it hardens and gets this hard pupa case that protects that developing insect inside. Now this pupa is gonna be completely motionless. It doesn't move very much at all. Its movement may be caused by wind, physical action by something else, but it itself is not gonna crawl around or move. When that larvae turns into the pupa... It's typically there until it matures into the adult and comes out. Okay. Now depending on weather conditions, environmental conditions, moisture, humidity levels, temperature levels, all those things determine how long it's going to take for that pupa to go through complete the maturity process to become an adult. So there's not a... You know, it's a question we get asked all the time as well, how long does it take to go from the egg to the adult? And we typically talk about these things in ranges 14, 21 days for houseflies. It can be much shorter if the environmental conditions are perfect. It can be a little bit longer if the environmental conditions are challenging. So it's all based on their environment. Temperature and humidity are the driving factors to their development. Now when that pupa is going to become an adult, this is something that's really unique, I think to the fly world. That adult when it generates inside there or matures inside there, it's got this little sack almost like a balloon on the top of its head. And it simply inhales and fills that sack. And that pressure from that little airbag on the top of its head causes the pupa case to burst open. And they work their way out of it like you see here on the video to emerge and become an adult. When they make that emergence, they're going to sit there for a few minutes, maybe an hour, depending on the temperatures because the wings are soft, they can't fly at this point. Those wings have to have time exposed to the air to harden up and to be able to support that animal in flight. The muscles are working, the muscles are fine, but the wings themselves are too soft to sustain flight at this point. So when they first emerged, as I said, they're gonna sit there, let the air harden those wings up. And then they can take off and start searching for food for themselves first and then mate. Their only purpose is to mate and keep the species regenerating. So they're gonna find food to replenish their bodies, mate, and then start laying eggs and recreating their species. So the flies are out there... They move around in great areas, they can fly for good distances. But being in the family or in the order of Diptera, they only have two wings, which means that they're not the greatest flyers in the world. So they can travel long distances in short hops. So they may only fly a few meters, 100 meters, whatever the distance is. If the wind is blowing good, they can ride that wind but they get tired. So they've got to sit down and rest. And that's one of the problems is every time they sit down, they potentially deposit some of these bacterium that are on their body and put it in places or they pick it up from the surface they landed on. This is one of the ways that they're such great vectors of disease organisms. It's because of that flight or the lack of flight ability. They fly, but they don't fly great. So they have to keep stopping along the way... In order to get to their preferred area. Okay. [Common Features - Mouthparts Mostly Liquid Feeders in the Adult Stage Often with specialized mouthparts] Let's talk a little bit about the mouthparts of these animals because, yeah, this is kind of a unique thing for this animal too. These guys do not eat solids, they do not eat solids, they only consume liquids. Now the maggots... Okay, they do take in some solid food, yes. But as an adult, they can really only consume liquid foods. But we see them hitting, you know, our dinner plate, or that hamburger, or whatever, that sugar grain that spilled on the floor, that piece of candy, what have you. Well, what they do is they regurgitate, they vomit part of their stomach content onto the surface, which liquefies that surface and turns that solid into a liquid, they then can just simply take their mouthparts, as you see here on the video, which is like a sponge, and absorb that liquid into their system to pick up. Now one of the problems also is everything they put out is not necessarily taken back in. So the saliva and vomit that they put out on the surface, they don't eat everything that it creates, they don't take all that material back in, so some of that is left on the surface as well. So we get this potential bacteria transmission from the animal's body but then also from its biology of eating, of creating food the way that it has to go about doing that, right. It's what makes them so dangerous. Now for me, you know, as an entomologist, I love these animals because they're so interesting to look at and to understand. Their behavior is very different from a lot of the insects that we work with... Their ability to move around and the way that they kind of make their own food. They use ours, but they have to make it so they can take it in, okay? So controlling these insects are very important... Because of the danger of the disease transmission. So, Ron, let's... Take us through some of the steps and the approach to controlling these flies 'cause I know we get calls all the time about I've got this big fly problem. I've sprayed this, I've done this, I've put up these light traps, and I still got a problem. So take us through some of the basic control steps that we need to be thinking about. Thanks, Frank. You know, the fundamentals of any good pest control program is understanding the animal itself. And so these morphological and biological characteristics that Frank talked about are essential. [IPM in Fly Control] That will help us lead to actually identifying the fly properly. And as Frank mentioned, several different species that are out there, we won't be able to control unless we understand which species it is and actually how it's behaving. Frank talked about distances that they'll fly. We know that blowflies can actually travel or can detect a food source a mile away. So that's 2 kilometers. We know that houseflies are closer than that, but even maybe 100 meters, 200 meters away, they can smell that gas coming off of some type of an organic material that they're attracted to. So again, housefly IPM or housefly control is always IPM, integrated pest management. And therefore, as we've talked about in our discussions when you come to class, there are four components of IPM. [If I were a __? ___ fly, where would I want to be?] Always, there is a biological component, a cultural component, a physical component, and a chemical component. And so therefore, as we implement these components, we wanna ask ourselves the question, "If I were a fly, where would I want to be?" Now go back to the specifics. Which fly is it? Frank articulated that if you're a blowfly, you're dead or organic animals. If you're a housefly, it's gonna be more fecal material or break it down organic materials. If you're a fruit fly, it's gonna be fermenting material. So if I were a fruit fly, where would I be? What would I like to be? Now having said that then, what are some of these common IPM practices that we want to talk about? [Common Locations] So first of all... Is there anything biological that can work for flies? Well, flies attract organic material, carrion on the slide, animal excrement. So let's talk about that. Now, Ron, so carrion is a word that may not be common to a lot of people. - Sure. - Explain on that a little bit. Dead animals. It can even dead carcasses. We know that criminal investigators use entomologists to go when there's a dead body, there's been sitting there for a while and analyze beetles and fly, larvae, maggots, and adults. So that helps with some of the species in understanding. So let's talk about our four components of IPM. First of all, being biological. Is there something biologically we can use to control? Well, there is. In the United States and throughout the world, one of the largest horse races is called the Kentucky Derby, which is held in Louisville, Kentucky. And this race brings horses throughout the world. They have stables of hundreds of horses that are on site, and we take care of that problem. Well, there are small little parasitic wasps that go after the larvae and pupae of houseflies. So we release them to help reduce populations in manure pits. There are some soldier flies, they do the same thing. Point is always is there something natural that I can implement that will be helpful, doesn't work with all, I know that chickens like to eat cockroaches, and you wouldn't wanna release any chickens inside of a restaurant. But on the other hand, you certainly could use some types of parasitic wasps and other flies, so other flies to help dominate. But then that leads us to the other three components of good IPM. What can we do culturally to help? And Frank alluded, and I love that slide. If you've got dead animals, if you have fecal material, if you have organic material, all of those need to be addressed. As long with their food source, if you've got garbage cans that you're not replacing, meaning the food or debris in the garbage cans, that's a problem. If you don't have lids on top of the garbage can, if you have big dumpsters that are full of gook running down the sides, that's a problem because, those are odors which are going to attract the fly either to deposit eggs or for food for itself. So any type of cultural control is essential [IPM] to be able to help with the... And so that's habitat modification, which is actually on this slide right there. Another point about habitat modification would be physical control. Not long ago, I was visiting a customer, and they were complaining about flies in the hospital rooms. Well, the weather was always nice outside. And so people had windows open, the patients had windows open. And unfortunately, there weren't screens. How many times is a door open? Another location, where the employees come and go, and they said, "Well, we leave the doors open because there's so many employees." Well, when you have a door open, that is a habitat modification, that's a physical thing that we need to do or you can talk about cultural, they kind of fit together, that makes a big impact. Here's an example when you have these type of conditions that are on the slide. You're going to have flies that are attracted, probably for two reasons, one for them for food to eat. The other one is for them to lay eggs on those decaying materials. Cultural control, helping customers realize the severity of it is essential. Now physical control ties a little bit into the garbage as well but how can I physically keep that fly from coming inside? Not long ago, I was actually in a big mall in the Middle East. And flies were in the center of the mall in the grocery store there. Boy, that seems like a long distance from doors to get in? Well, when I talked to the mall facilitation, they said, "Well, the weather is so nice, we're turning off the air conditioning." So what does that do? A door opens up. And rather than having air pushing out of that door, there was no air at all. In fact, it was kind of being sucked in. And then as I watched the doors, security guards like to have some dogs there with them. Particularly they were kind of stray dogs, but still they were feeding them, they were defecating, urinating there. So you have an attraction at the door, doors opened up, and now you had actually a negative air pressure, which was sucking the air in. Physical control is physically then whether it's air curtains, whether it's pressure of a building, or whether it's actually a flylight that's catching them, or a door sweep, or there's something around actually some type of penetration. Those are all physical methods. Now, Frank, a lot of times we jump quickly into these physical methods, and particularly flylights, we say, "Okay, I got flies inside. Can you give me some ideas on how we should properly use the physical IPM method... A physical method to catch flies with the flylight?" So, you know, I think one of the problems that I hear quite often is, you know, the client will say, "Well, I want fly control, I've got six of those flycatchers on the wall, give me 10 more because those six are not keeping the population down." So in our clients' minds quite often more is better. Give me more, give me more, put those lights up. Don't talk to me about cleaning and things like that, just hang up those lights and that'll control my fly population. And we know that's just not, that's not gonna cut it, that's not going to do the job by itself. ILTs, insect light traps were really designed not to be control devices. They were designed to be monitors of the sanitation. By that, we mean this. If we observe that we look at that flycatcher, and we say, okay, what's captured in this trap or on this glue board is a housefly. That means, there's a source of decaying garbage or feces or something like that in the area that brought that fly here. Where is it? So we kind of say, it's a monitor of our sanitation conditions. Ron mentioned the fruit flies earlier. Fruit flies are not really attracted to light, but just for a few hours after they emerged from the pupa case, that adult will go to light, into light traps. But after she's been out for a day, she has no interest in the light. She's looking for someplace to lay her eggs. So if we find one inside a light though we know that we're looking for some decaying organic materials that are fermenting, breaking down. So these are our monitors of sanitation, not control devices. Now I don't want to discourage us from selling them because, you know, customers want them. And part of our job is to satisfy the client and make sure that we're taking care of them and controlling their problems. But we need to be careful about overselling flytraps to someone. I don't care how many traps you have in there. If you don't have the sanitation to go with fly service, flycatchers are not gonna solve the problem long term, they're gonna still be there. They're still gonna be there. I know I've been into marketplaces around the world and you walk into the grocery market, and there's 20 flycatchers hanging in the produce department. And the store's complaining about flies still. "Maybe I need 10 more." "No, you don't." Why don't we focus on figuring out where they're breeding at and control that, take that away? Or like Ron said, do we need to do something to the doors or the vent openings, or something to stop them from coming in in the first place? Now we do use flycatchers, we use them a good bit. And so let's look at a little bit about placing those things properly. [ILT Placement] And then we'll get into the chemical components of things in just a little bit. Now we know that the ideal height... For these devices is about 2 meters off of the floor. Why? Because when a fly is questing for food, they're typically flying between that one and 2-meter height... To find food. So if we've got this light trap in that range, they're more apt to find it. I would say the lower side rather than the higher side of that 'cause I see some 6, 8, 10 feet high. Exactly. Get it closer to that... - That 1 meter. - One me... Excuse me, meter, I meant 1, 2, 3-meter high closer to that 1 meter. Yeah, absolutely 'cause, you know, they like the warmth. So as the day progresses and the building heats up, heat rises, so through the day, our temperatures go from cool down here, get warmer. And then just gradually warm upwards through the building because, like I said, heat rises up, that's a matter of physics, we can't change that. So those flies as the day progresses are gonna move up. So if we wanna capture them as much as possible, while people are there, in the daytime, they need to be a little bit lower into that 1, 1.5 meter range as opposed to the 2 or 3-meter range. Now there are situations that maybe we need to have them at different heights... Daytime, and maybe a nighttime device, so that when they're moving up to catch that last little bit of warmth before they sit still for the evening... They have an opportunity to find it. The light to the fly... Equates to the outdoors. I can get outside where I know it's warm because the sun is shining on me. So as they're moving up trying to find that warmth, you know, maybe we need to consider sometimes having them at two different heights inside a place, it might affect our captures a little bit more. Maybe they need to be on a different times. The one that's at 2 meters, maybe it doesn't need to be on in the middle of the day, maybe that one needs to come on closer to, you know, mid afternoon as the fly start moving. So, you know, there's a lot of variables that we have to think about in putting these devices out there. One of the problems they have are the customers themselves. The facilities, we have to put them in, you know, we say we want to put them in that 1 meter to 2-meter range, well, how many places do we go into where there's an open spot on the wall... In that height range near an electrical source... To put this device. You know, a lot of times the environment that we're happening to put it in will unfortunately dictate where it goes. And it may not always go in the optimal place. That's the other reason why we cannot depend on them to be control devices. We can't always get them where they really need to be at. Okay. Now there's a lot of different types of traps out there. [Insect Light Traps - How do they Work?] They're the insect light traps, the ILTs, they use ultraviolet light to capture flies. We know from studies done years ago in the UK that there's a very specific range of ultraviolet light that these insects are attracted to. [The Electromagnetic Spectrum] The graph here shows kind of what ultraviolet light is, the spectrum is a very narrow range. So these traps give off this specific range of light, this specific spectrum of light that is attractive to the fly. And by attractive, we don't mean that they're going to come in and see that and magically run into it, we mean that it's something they can see. You know, just like we cannot see that light spectrum that they can, they cannot see the light spectrum that we do, not in the same way. So that range of light, which is very, very small is extremely important to the fly. Now that means that the tubes inside those devices have to be kept fresh. We know that most of them depending on the model and the type, they're not gonna last forever, most of them have to be changed out at least once a year. And some of the lower cost units, you may have to change out two, three, four times a year. Just if the better quality the unit is, the longer we can leave those tubes in. The best ones on the market, however, we're still not gonna leave those tubes in more than a year. Let me comment on that just for a moment, Frank, because I think sometimes we say a flylight is a flylight. We say the same thing, a glue board is a glue board. And there's a lot of science that goes into those. So when you say, "Well, there's another one on the market, it's the half the price, I think I'm gonna go for that." Boy, there's a lot of things we'd like to talk to you about the angling of actually the metal that usually is what they're made off, that will help direct, that will increase sometimes the reflection that's bringing them in, the positioning, whether it's on the wall, whether it's laying flat. So I was recently in an account where there were no flies on the flylight with the glue board behind the flylight, but there were lots of flies. Point is the lamp was an old lamp, and it wasn't even the right type of UV that was needed out of it. So be very cautious about getting a cheap lamp, a cheap ILT, it may not be providing what you need. Now I believe I'm a scientist, I don't believe I am. So the point is you can try a couple of them to see what the percent of catches are. But I've noticed that if you want better fly control, you replace your lamps every six months rather than a year because they're certainly going down. And the flylight, the design of it, we see some very fancy ones that can go out in the restaurant area but they're not very effective in catching flies. So you might have a fancy light, it looks good but isn't really effective. Exactly. Now we kind of mentioned what they see. So I wanna give you just a little illustration of that if we can. So what does a fly see? So I'm not there yet. [What Does a Fly See?] Do it again. So we talked about what the fly see. So let's see kind of an example of that. So I have a little illustration here that I want you to look at. What does a fly see? Well, when we hang in a light, that's what we would see is this, the light hanging there. What does the fly see if this is done correctly, they see this. The brighter, that bright yellow and reds in the middle are the heat sources. That's what the fly is seeing is that brightness. So when we say they quake these traps to the outdoors, it's a means of escape. You know, I don't think these insects really want to be inside any more than we want them inside. They'd really rather be out there where there's a lot of food unless they're in the supermarket. But in the supermarket, the temperatures are a little cool. At least in the ones I've shopped in, you know, they're a little bit cooler to protect the integrity of the product inside. So yeah, maybe that's not exactly the environment they really want to be in from a temperature standpoint. Okay. [Important Considerations] So some important considerations about these, the response to the light, it varies depending on the different species of flies. They're really not gonna see these things more than about 30 meters. We get outside of 30 meters, we're not really attracting any of them. We know that it's best if they're in 15 meters or less of the entry points. So that's why we tend to try to get them close to doorways in darker areas 'cause the idea is we want that trap to capture that fly within minutes of it coming in. If it's in there for an hour flying around, it's already deposited the bacteria, it's already potentially laid eggs. So, you know... The response we want is really, really close, 3 to 4 meters of a doorway if possible because that's gonna be our first chance to prevent this problem from happening in there, okay? So, you know, just be careful in depending on these devices, they're not 100%, they're not designed to control. - Frank, can I just jump in for a... - Yes. Quick point. Absolutely. So there are three or four things to pay attention to. Number one, even though it's only 300 meters, excuse me, 30 meters or so they're going to attract, you still don't want them to be seen from the outside. Sometimes, I see them placed right by windows. And so a fly can be saying, "Hey, well, maybe that's my escape route." So position them, so they're not... A fly can't see from the outside. Position them so the first thing that the fly sees is your flylight if it comes in a door. We don't want to attract it in but if it comes into being blown in or comes in from some other reason, we catch it. Also highly placed flylights are not as good as getting them down to that 1 to 2-meter range is pretty important. And a fourth concept that I like to think through, they all most of them work by plugging them in. And I have seen people say, well, this is the perfect location but there's not a plug in there. So if you can't have an outlet placed there properly, then you're gonna have to adjust that. So analyze a flylight on itself is not gonna work unless it's been put in the proper locations. And those are four things that I like to pay attention to. You know, Ron, there's a lot of different types of flylights. We have, you know, ILTs, the insect light traps, which use glue and ultraviolet light to bring them in. We also have the electrocutor, the older ones, the electrocution devices that a lot of people like because they're less expensive. The service, you know, fees or charges that most pest controllers use for these devices are a lot lower for the electrocutors. They're cheaper units as far as price of the actual device themselves. So let's go through and talk about those things a little bit. What are the different types of lights that are out there? [Types of Insect Light Traps] Yeah, Frank. Thank you. So these electrocutors... And sometimes, grocery stores or other chains will require so many of those. I would again recommend or encourage us to say, "Are you placing them in spots that may attract?" I know in some grocery stores, flies are becoming a bigger problem because they have those on. Second of all, Frank, it's very interesting the way they work. An insect light trap catches it into glue board, usually behind the light or underneath the light, somehow it's positioned, so when the flight comes in, it gets caught. That's not how it works with the electrocutors. The fly is attracted by the light, and it explodes. And I think there might be even a picture or a slide of that where... [What Happens to the Fly? High Voltage Traps] Now so what happens is when it gets exploded, yes, fly parts will go in a variety of directions. But, Frank, it has been articulated very well that there's all these bacteria on side of the fly. So you're sharing those all over. So think about that. You put one of these above the deli. Flies come, they get attracted and explode out, and now you have got meat and cheeses and vegetables that are being covered with not only insect parts but also the bacteria that's associated with them. So, yes, there are locations that are appropriate, but I don't want to buy the sandwich and have a head of a fly let alone all that bacteria that's associated with it. So positioning of these electrocutors versus the positioning of the actual trap, which is the glue board and catches it, doesn't explode. It's very important. Okay. So, you know, we've said before also that it's not just traps, we've got to also combine this with cultural changes, the only permanent control for any fly population. It doesn't matter which species of fly it is, the only permanent solution is proper sanitation. Reduce the attraction, reduce the ability for this insect to breed to lay eggs, to procreate the species. Sanitation is critical. It's one of the things that we have to work with our clients to maintain. Now not all sanitation problems will become fly related. Garbage that is, you know, dry paper, cardboard boxes, these sort of things, those are really not necessarily fly attractants as they are attractants for cockroaches or rodents. So not all sanitation problems are directly related to flies, but all flies are directly related to a sanitation problem. So always remember that we got to be taking care of the sanitation, helping our customers identify where their problems are and then offering them recommendations on how to fix it. Our job is to assist our customers in those recommendations. Now, you know, one of the things Ron and I've talked about, I know with a lot of you out there is, you know, if we have an ongoing sanitation problem and our service is not performing the desired effects, controlling flies... If we just keep spraying chemical or depending on traps and changing glue boards, we're spending a lot of time and money on items that are not working. Why not just clean it? If it's a small thing, you know, part of our service could be, "Well, I've got this little small area of refuse that needs to go away, why don't I just bag it up and take it away?" That is flight control. And maybe we need to consider some of those types of actions in some of our accounts. I'm not suggesting that we become a cleaning companies and go out there and scrub a kitchen floor. That needs to be the responsibility of the client. But sometimes, it's just a small little thing and that small little thing will make a big difference. So, you know, don't always reach for the can of spray or sell them a flytrap, maybe sometimes, we just need to do a little cleaning ourselves, instead of bringing it to the customers attention, just bring it to their attention and then do it. If it means results that the customer likes, why not. At the end of the day, we're controlling the pest, and I don't think anyone's complete job description is spraying chemical, it's controlling the pest. Absolutely. Now talk to... You mentioned chemicals. [Chemical Applications] Yeah, you bet. But that is part of the service. We've got to use chemical still sometimes, most of the time I would say. We're gonna use chemicals with traps, with sanitation. - That's right. - So take us through with that. Idea means a variety of methods. And so there are some residual products and non-residual. So let me chat with you just a little bit about those. Something that has revolutionized the treatment of flies are baits. Frank, you know, way back about 20, 25 years ago, cockroach baits were developed. Well, now we have... Where in last 10 years, I guess, maybe a little longer, but we have very good fly baits and that has changed things the way that we think about. These are products that can be used inside as kind of a liquid that you spray in locations, they can be used outside in granular or actually painted on surfaces. But usually they are more highly attractive than even some of the natural foods that they like to feed on. I have used them at fish fries outside, where, you know, fish are just such an attracted, and I put my baits, maybe 20, 30 feet away from where they're cooking or where serving and the flies go over there. You'll need to decide which fly bait is available in your market. Do you want to use it in a granular form or a liquid form or a painted on form that you dissolve? But the point is these are great methods that give you long-term residual control of flies. Now, Ron, let me jump in a little bit about some of the baits 'cause, you know, Orkin has been involved with the manufacturers in developing these things over the years. And just a word of caution, you know, Ron mentioned the fish fry, that's a very odorous area. So what makes them go to something else? An odor that they like more. And so some of these products as good as they are, you got to be careful where you use some of them because the odor would be offensive to the people. Very good point. Yep. No, I think you're right. And also there's a variety of baits out there, Frank. Some are more odors than others and they may not be as attractive. I've worked in... I've had three of them sitting there inside of an office. And all the flies only went to one, and I thought that doesn't seem to work over in this location. So test them, try them, check the odor of them. I agree, I have been, whoa, that stinks and that would not be appropriate for food location. We have liquid products that we can apply. And think about these sometimes as repellents or pyrethroids are quite good repellents. On the other hand, sometimes, they're formulated in a wettable powder that when the flies, Frank said, they will land on surfaces if we can put some type of product that kills them if they land there. I've used these on dumpsters and other things where you have a residual product that sticks there, the fly doesn't know it sometimes isn't really repelled by it. And so therefore, it will be able to die right there on the spot. So you're looking from an external standpoint, most of the time to try and keep those flies from coming inside. Now we also have some kind of friendly products, some insect growth regulators, they've been very effective for some of the flies that are inside breeding. Your houseflies that are breeding outside not so good, but for a fruit fly or a phorid fly that concentration of IGR can build up, it can be very, very effective. Now remember, these are residual products, whether it's a bait, whether it's an aerosol, whether it's a liquid, all of these, whether it's even an IGR, they stick in place and they help. If you have an emergency, and I was recently in a grocery store in one of our foreign countries and the flies were so bad. I said, "We just got to get that population down inside." People won't even shop here. So then we go with our fogging type, which is our last point there, but again, that's a non-residual. And if the flies keep coming, and to Frank's point... If you're not stopping them, then you may end up having to do daily to keep these fly populations down. So fogging definitely could be something of a last resort in an emergency, but most of the time you want to do those other chemical things that will have longer lasting that are more effective. Yeah, you know, and that's a little sensitive too because a lot of customers demand that fog, fog, and not understanding, you know, some of the dangers of doing that. You have not only the contamination potential of what's there, but you know, with flies we know that we can develop tolerance levels and resistance levels very quickly by continuous use of fogging these non-residual products and continuous use of some of the residuals on surfaces. We know that that can develop in a relatively short period of time. So we want to try not to depend on chemicals totally. It's part of a system. It's part of an approach, an integrated approach to flight management. It's one component, it's not the component. - Do you agree? Yeah. - No question. We can't rely on, and flies have become highly resistant. So some of our chemistry that we're using, Frank, so, yes, without a doubt. On the other hand, IPM doesn't mean no chemicals, it means, using them judiciously. And I would without a doubt put all of your tools out there so that the customer is not harassed by flies. So on Scout, again, you have the fly control manual that Orkin has developed for you to use. And in that manual, that breaks down a lot of the biology and the habits to help us understand. I have this specie of fly, this is where it wants to be at. This is the habits that it likes and is looking for. And it goes into more detail on placement of chemicals, placements of the bait products. So, you know, please look for the fly manual on Scout and also in your franchise material that you have there in your operations. As also, you can contact and a lot of you do, so please continue that. Contact Ron or myself or any member of the staff to ask questions and get ideas on fly management in specific situations that you have. I know Ron and I both have been involved in situations that were pretty simple... Where just a little cleaning and maybe repairing some doors or screens solve the problem. But then we also have been in those that are much more complex, where we have prevailing winds bringing insects into an area that they don't normally want to be at and causing problems. So we have to get into analyzing the entire environment outdoors to figure out how to stop them, so these can be relatively simple. Most of them I think can be relatively complicated and difficult. So you run across the situation that you're struggling with, please shoot us a line on email... Give us a call on our phones, and we'll help you through those. Look for the information on Scout, and your training materials, and then also in the technical manuals for more information and details on that. So, you know, thank you for watching this video. And, you know, call us with your questions, call us with your problems when you have them. And best of luck to you all. - Thank you so much. - Yeah. [ROLLINS LEARNING Produced by Media Services © 2019 Rollins, Inc.]