Spring Pests

Spring has sprung...sort of. I hear that we may be hit with another winter blast this weekend, but at least Thursday is technically the first day of Spring and mentally that means we can think warmer weather, birds singing, and trees blooming.

For insects, the "false" spring temperatures and/or sunny days we've had before the next cold front hits has fooled them into coming out of their overwintering sites, often into structures. I've seen many a boxelder bug or multicolored Asian lady beetle lately on it's back dying near a door or windowsill when it discovers that spring really isn't here yet (or it had some help from a hand or shoe).

So how can you get rid of these early, unwanted pests when they wander into your home or school or office? In most cases, a good old vacuum cleaner will do the trick, and of course sealing up any cracks and crevices and tightly sealing window screens around the building. Also, putting out sticky traps to catch any errant travelers can also be effective.

Here are a few of the potential late winter/early spring offenders:

Ants: It seems the Extension offices get a lot of reports of ants, especially in the spring and summer. I had an attack of odorous house ants myself once during spring, living in the walls in my bathroom and chowing down on my cat's food. There are species that live both inside and wander in, or ones that actually nest within the walls, cracks, or crevices of the home and are attracted to crumbs, sweet liquids, and pet foods that are easily accessible. Vacuums work well here, too, as do baits and good old fashioned sanitation.

Boxelder Bugs: These guys are notorious for coming out on warm winter or early spring days. Cracks and crevices should be sealed in the fall before it gets cold so they have no place to overwinter. When they get in the house, again, vacuums work wonders.

Flies: Nuisance flies, especially cluster flies (look like larger, slower house flies) and face flies, can get into buildings during the winter/early spring. A good old fashioned fly swatter can help, as well as sealing any holes, cracks and crevices around the structure.

Multicolored Asian Ladybird Beetles: If not targeted in the fall, they can overwinter in cracks near the home and may enter in the early spring. I saw one on my windowsill just yesterday!

And last but not least, I should mention a visitor that I personally found once during winter. I was at my parent's house over Christmas and my mom had seen a bug crawling on the floor and put a cup over it, wanting me to take a look. When I did, I was shocked to see a paper wasp queen! She apparently had overwintered near the house and decided she wanted to roast chestnuts by the open fire with us. It was a wonder someone didn't step on her...a wasp sting, in the middle of winter, would certainly have been novel. My pest control strategy was simply to put her outside in the snow. I admit I felt kind of bad about it, but better than her starting a new nest of paper wasps near the house that summer!

So now it's your turn...what spring pests have you seen so far this year? Let us know in a comment below!

Bed Bug Interactive Publication Now Available!

A new interactive bed bug publication is now available from UNL! Through text, links, and videos, Managing Bed Bugs, by Barb Ogg, Fred Baxendale, and Clyde Ogg, covers information about bed bugs such as biology, prevention techniques, and methods for control. It also covers the use of bed bug sniffing dogs to detect the presence of bedbugs.

In addition, the individual videos found in this electronic publication can be viewed on our PSEP YouTube Channel:

How Bed Bug Sniffing Dogs Work
Meet Spots, the only bed bug sniffing dog in Nebraska. James Pelowski, his owner, trainer, and handler, talks about the use of dogs for detecting bed bugs.

How to Prevent Bed Bugs from Infesting a Bed
This video highlights a few different ways to prevent bed bugs from accessing and infesting a bed and mattress.

How to Inspect a Bed for Bed Bugs
Learn where to look and what to look for when inspecting a bed for possible bed bug infestation.

How to Build a Bed Bug Monitoring Trap
Dr. Barb Ogg from UNL Extension in Lancaster County walks you through the process of creating a bed bug trap from common household supplies.

How-To Dramatization Webinar and Video

On Tuesday Pierce and I held a professional development webinar for AAPSE (American Association of Pesticide Safety Educators) about how to create and use dramatization videos in PSEP and IPM programs. We had a great turnout and received a lot of positive feedback!


In addition to our powerpoint presentation, we showed the "How-To" Dramatization video, filmed a few months ago, which outlined the steps for making a dramatization video. To view the video, please visit: http://bit.ly/O4XrpL

We're on Flickr!

Recently our UNL Pesticide Education Office has completed work on a new Flickr page. In it you'll find categories for PSEP and IPM videos (including dramatizations); insects, birds, and mammals (pests or otherwise); plants and diseases; IPM coalition and demonstrations; conferences; calibration and equipment; and many other related topics.

These photos are available to download for free and you can search them by category at http://bit.ly/I45HjH OR by tags at http://bit.ly/I45OM5 .

Fall Nuisance Invaders

It's that time of year again...not only are people wanting to stay out of the cold, but many insects and their relatives are often driven into homes for the same reason. Common fall invaders include boxelder bugs, crickets, Multicolored Asian Ladybird Beetles, millipedes and centipedes, and wolf spiders. Using some good IPM practices, you can minimize the trouble these nuisance pests cause. Providing good seals around your home (perimeter, doors, windows), putting out sticky traps, and vacuuming up insect invaders can be helpful.

For more tips about the types of insects and spiders that can be bothersome in the fall and how to manage them, visit the following resources:

Common Fall Pests
Flies in the Home (Cluster flies being common in the fall and winter)
Managing Centipedes and Millipedes
Multicolored Asian Ladybird Beetles
Nuisance Pests
Wolf Spiders in Nebraska

Not Your Everyday IPM

I was looking forward to a leisurely evening at TCBY with my friend last night, but little did I know it would end up with an IPM adventure!

Forget about IPM in Schools or IPM in Daycare Centers, I have a new specialty...IPM in Cars!

When I arrived at my friend's house and we had just gotten into her car, she said "I know you know about spiders...do you know about mice?" I had to cringe a little at that. Mice are cute...I love pet store mice, and I even had a pet lab rat when I was in college, but when it comes to WILD rodents in the house, I get a bit nervous.

I told her I knew a little bit about mice and hesitated.."why?" I was sitting in the passenger side and she pointed out some chewed up kleenex in the box on the floor by my feet, and then opened her glovebox and showed me a chewed up napkin. My preliminary reaction was denial...a mouse wouldn't want to go into a car, would it? I'd heard of cases, but thought it was probably rare. Maybe her dog had done it! However, upon closer inspection I saw mouse droppings among the napkin scraps and knew I had to face reality.

I asked her if she had any rubber gloves and cleaner, so I went back inside and brought my "combat" materials out, along with a plastic bag and flashlight. I wasn't feeling particularly confident, as I wasn't enthused about a mouse running out quickly and scaring the heck out of me. But I put on a brave face and slowly started sorting through the items in the glovebox after spraying them with disinfectant (my friend was not happy to find out that mice are incontinent!). In the end, there was a lot of nesting material but no mouse. I threw away the chewed up napkin and the entire kleenex box, and put most the items in the glovebox in another area of the car. We also shook blankets and other items that were in the car...just in case. But we figured he was most likely in and around the dashboard and glovebox since that's where we found all the evidence. After all this cleanup and a couple false alarms (yes, I jumped!) as I moved stuff from the glovebox, I threw everything away and told her we had just implemented IPM in her car. By removing nesting material, the mouse wouldn't have any material to nest with now. In addition, although there didn't appear to be any food in the car other than a couple popcorn kernels (which could have been brought in by the mouse) I recommended she not have any food in there for awhile.

The background to this story is that my friend had been staying out at her sister's acreage for a few days in the country, and the nights have been getting cold, so the mouse probably thought that her Fit was a great place to spend the night. Since we didn't know if he was still in the car (she hadn't heard any odd shuffling sounds or anything else), I told her to be safe we should go buy snap traps and set them in the glovebox. I don't know why you never have a camera when you need one, but we did manage to take a cell phone photo of our night's work. Now I am anxiously awaiting word to see if she caught our unwanted passenger!

In the end, we still did get our TCBY, but we certainly had to work for it! Just goes to show you never know when you might have to implement IPM!

IPM in Schools Coalition

We had a great half day educational IPM in Schools coalition meeting today! In addition to the donuts and pizza, there were a lot of great reasons that people joined us :-)

About 22 people attended, including representatives from OPS and LPS, child care (Lancaster County Health Dept and Dept of Education), pest management professionals, UNL Extension, EPA, and NDA. Presentations included Clyde's introduction to Nebraska IPM projects, including tribal IPM, the revision of the IPM manual, and the completion of the "Conducting IPM in Schools" video. Barb presented about bed bugs and James Pelowski and Spots from K9 Bed Bug Detection did a bed bug sniffing dog demonstration. After the break, I spoke about pests, pesticides and health, including findings in recent studies such as the Ag Health Study and Farm Family Exposure study. Finally, Brad Smith, a PMP in West Des Moines, IA, talked about his experiences working with school facility managers on implementing IPM in their schools.

Following the meeting, we had lunch and networking and got a lot of good feedback and ideas for future meetings. We also spoke with the coalition members involved in child care and are planning to do presentations and projects in that area in coming months.

"Mock" Bed Bug Inspection

Last week Clyde, Barb, our UNL videographer and I went to an apartment to stage a mock bed bug inspection for an interactive video project. We walked through all the steps of what someone might do to check for and treat for a bed bug infestation, including many IPM strategies. I will highlight some of these steps here.


One of the first things to do is inspect in and around the bed by taking down the bedclothes and checking the bedspread, pillowcases, sheets, and mattress pad. These should then be put into a large plastic bag, carried to the laundry room, and washed and dried.

Next, inspect the mattress, especially around the seams. You should also look at the box springs, including removing the dust cloth. In addition, remove the headboard if possible, check behind picture frames above the headboard, and pull the bed away from the wall.

Besides the bed, you should look at drawers, cracks and crevices, and other potential hiding places within the infested room. Couches and recliners are also good bed bug harborage locations.


After examining the mattress, you can put bed bug encasements on the box springs and mattress, which prevents any bed bugs that are already on the bed from getting out and feeding on you at night. It also prevents new bed bugs from getting into the seams of the mattress and in and under the box springs.


To prevent bed bugs from other locations from crawling up the bed posts, you can install "intercepters," which are little plastic devices that can be placed under bed posts at night. Bed bugs can crawl up these, but then fall into a "pit" that they are unable to get back out of. This is good for monitoring the bed bug population and an additional benefit is capturing bed bugs that otherwise would be feeding on people!


In addition to a human inspection, you may choose to hire a bed-bug sniffing dog! These dogs are trained to hone in on the scent of live bed bugs and can find bugs that a human may not. In our video we featured "Spots," a rat terrier from Nebraska's K9 Bed Bug Detection. According to his handler, Spots is 95% accurate in finding bed bugs, where humans average 30-40%. After putting some "scent" from bed bugs in the couch and the bed, we watched as Spots did his job, and he hit on these areas very accurately!


If there is a heavy infestation, pesticide application may be necessary. Some low toxic products, such as diatomacheous earth, can be placed in hard to reach areas, such as behind electrical outlets. Pesticides such as DDT that were used in WWII and before to control bed bugs have been banned due to the health risks to humans. Research is being done to find new treatments, as bed bugs have shown resistance to a lot of chemistry that used to successfully control them. In our video we spoke with a PMP, who explained inspection and treatment options for a homeowner dealing with bed bugs. With the resurgence of bed bugs, more PMPs are responding to calls about this pest and serving as educational resources. They are using a combination of techniques, including not only what has been mentioned here, but also vaccuming, steam, and heat treatments.

To read more about bed bugs, check out this article from the Lancaster County Extension Office. You can also view more photos of our mock inspection from our PSEP Facebook page.

NOTE: No live bed bugs were harmed during the filming of this video :-) We only used ones that were already dead!

NRD Nature Nights 2011

Last year I blogged about the Nebraska Resource District Nature Nights, which are held annually at various local Lincoln schools. This environmental education program features booths from UNL Extension, NRD, Lincoln Children's Zoo, Pioneers Park, Morrill Hall, and many other nature-related organizations or programs.

About 150 youth and parents attended last night's event (one of several offered in 2011). I had a booth that provided youth with information about various Nebraska insect species (including large number of pests!) using insect displays and live insects. They also received a set of insect trading cards and Pest Private Eye comic books. I was asked a lot of questions about pests, and was really excited to see the interest kids had in insects. I also had attending parents and teachers point out pest problems they had and was able to tell them more about using IPM for catching and controlling pests (cockroaches being a big one).

Happy Earth Day!

Happy Earth Day!

This seems a great time for us to reflect on what we can do to improve our environment and make it a healthier and safer place for humans and animals (the non pest kind!) to live! Recycling, using less water, maintaining rain gardens, keeping our thermostats down...all are great strategies. And of course, IPM fits very well into this because by using fewer pesticides and instead using more "environmentally friendly" ways to control pests such as exclusion, trapping, habitat modification, and sanitation, we are helping to improve human health as well as protect our environmental resources.

Keep up the good work, IPMers!

Tribal School IPM

Mike Daniels, Nebraska tribal Pesticide Circuit Rider, contacted us about doing an IPM in Schools demonstration project for two Omaha tribal schools, two Winnebago tribal schools, and one Iowa tribal school. On April 5-7, Clyde, Mike, and I visited the Nebraska tribes and conducted our initial assessment of their schools. We looked for conducive conditions, especially in kitchens, teacher lounges, science and home ec rooms, bathrooms, and around the perimeter; visited with administration, teachers, and custodial staff to find out what types of pest problems they had experienced; and took notes and photos that we'll use to write up recommendations for the school.

School staff reported having seen mice, flies, and an occasional roach in their facilities. They also said that boxelder bugs and multicolored Asian lady beetles were a problem. We observed this ourselves as many of the school perimeters had aggregated boxelder bugs around open holes or pipe penetrations. In one case, a panel was falling from the outside of the building and boxelder bugs were congregated on the windows on the inside as well as the outside. Sealing these areas will be a pretty simple fix to keep out these accidental invaders. Surprisingly enough, we also spotted queen paper wasps in some of the same areas, "getting along" with their boxelder bug neighbors as they searched for a nesting spot.

As with most schools, sanitation, sealing gaps, cracks, and areas around pipe penetrations, and installing good doorsweeps is a general recommendation that will help these schools reduce any pest problems. Throwing away cardboard in food storage areas, keeping food in pest proof containers, and reducing clutter is another good strategy.


We placed sticky traps out in locations such as custodial closets, kitchens, storage rooms, teachers lounges, and under the sinks in home ec rooms. We will check these on our next visit to monitor pest populations and determine any "hot spots."

As with LPS and OPS, our tribal school demonstration project will be year long and consist of 5 visits. On Tuesday we'll be visiting a tribe in Iowa, and Mike, Clyde and I will be joined by Mark Shour of Iowa State.

Stay tuned to this blog for updates about this project as it moved forward!

IPM Process Video filming

On March 22, 23, and 29, we went on location to our LPS school to film a fictionalized version of the IPM in Schools process. The video follows the steps we've taken during visits to our OPS and LPS demonstration schools. Actors from Omaha and Lincoln played all the major roles...UNL Extension, the principal, food service staff, the head custodian, a pest management professional, a teacher, the school nurse, and other school staff.

The story revolves around UNL Extension personnel, including IPM, entomology, turfgrass, and wildlife specialists, who visit a school to help solve their pest problems and implement an IPM program. The video covers the team's interactions with the principal and staff, IPM Coordinator (head custodian), and pest management professional (PMP). It also focuses on the importance of developing good communication between the PMP and the school in order to maintain the IPM program after the demonstration project is over. The characters cover important tools needed for a successful IPM program, including recordkeeping, education, non-toxic or low-toxic pest management methods, and teamwork. It also uses a narrator to guide viewers through the process as it unfolds on screen.

It is our hope to distribute the final video to schools across NE (and maybe even nationwide!). It will serve as another way to publicize IPM in addition to our current demonstration schools, youth programs, and the IPM coalition. The more we can educate NE schools about IPM, the more knowledgeable they will become and the more likely they will be to implement IPM practices. After watching the video, if schools have questions, are interested in learning more about IPM, or want to develop an IPM program in their own facilities, they can contact our Pesticide Education Office for more information on how to get started.

Thanks goes to all of the actors and UNL cameramen who helped with the IPM video! They did a wonderful job and I know it's going to be a great production.

Look for the video to be available through our YouTube page after final editing. Keep an eye on this blog for the latest updates!

LPS 4th visit

On Monday we completed our 4th visit to our LPS demonstration school. It was spring break so very quiet! After a short meeting, the head custodian led us to the kitchen and other locations listed on our recommendations sheet.

The kitchen was greatly improved from past visits. There were two "hot spot" locations where we still saw evidence of cockroaches...near the "cooking" areas and near some back wall sinks. We told the custodian to place more sticky traps in those areas, and to deep clean under appliances. He noted that the drains had been cleaned since last time, which is very important in reducing food and water sources.

Stephen Vantassel made note of some things in the courtyards (one behind the kitchen and two student courtyards) and the perimeter. The main issues in these area were drainage problems (slopes going toward the building), and holes or gaps (under eaves and in the walls) that are big enough to allow insects and mice to enter.

We also visited the home ec and boiler rooms, which still had evidence of brown recluse spiders. We advised the custodian and PMP to continue to monitor in these areas.

The custodial closets looked good...pesticide was removed or in locked cabinets and mops were hung.

Overall, the school is doing very well, and the custodian informed me the next day that he'd already put in work orders to fix some of the things we had noticed! So LPS is well on it's way to IPM implementation!

My next blog will talk about our two day film shoot at this same school. We are doing an "IPM Process" video that highlights the things we do during these demonstration visits. Dramatized by actors, this video can be distributed to Nebraska Schools and nationally to show what steps are involved in implementing an IPM program.

Omaha Public Schools 4th visit

On February 24th, our Extension team visited the OPS demonstration school for the 4th Integrated Pest Managment walkthrough. We had a really good turnout...with three PMPs from the contracted company; the IPM Coordinator (head custodian); and environmental and operations professionals from the main OPS office, who have been heavily involved in this effort, all attending.

As we did with LPS, we first spent some time in the conference room discussing questions they had about the recommendations we had provided from our third visit, and about IPM Star. The school and the district are still working out a good system for communicating pest sightings to the pest control company and keeping records in the log book. Although the log books are in place, we encouraged the IPM Coordinator and PMPs to strive to write more details about what has been seen by the school (including teacher and other staff reports) and the resulting treatments done by the PMPs. This will be an important element for IPM Star Certification.

After our meeting, we conducted a walkthrough...visiting the kitchen and kitchen storage, staff lounge, home ec, portable perimeter, boiler room and custodial closets, all of which we'd had concerns about in the past.

The kitchen had had a pretty bad German roach problem when we first began these visits and this has improved dramatically due to better monitoring and cleaning. We did find some active oriental roaches in one corner of the kitchen near sinks and manager's office, which will need to be addressed. We also found some phorid (humpbacked) flies and a moth fly on some of the traps, indicating there is still some moisture and sanitation issues. We encouraged the school to continue their sanitation (especially deep cleaning) efforts, and the PMPs to place more sticky traps to provide for more extensive monitoring.

The kitchen storage room didn't have many problems, although we did find that the trash can handles were made with holes that provided harborage sites and a good place for debris to accumulate. We recommended that these holes be sealed. We also recommended that plastic pallets being used for storage be moved further away from walls so that they don't hinder inspection efforts.

The staff lounge was also vastly improved from it's original high German roach infestation. Much of this probably had to do with removal of conducive furniture (couches, etc.), old wallpaper, and an old pop machine. We encourage continued monitoring in this room.

The boiler room was in good condition as well, but we recommended a continued effort to keep floor drains covered to discourage rats.

One custodial closet had a German roach problem, with nymphs found on traps. Increased sanitation and application of roach gel bait is necessary in this room.

Finally, we visited the home ec room...although we didn't find any roaches as we have in the past, there was a lot of sanitation issues, such as grime under and around stoves, a large hole in the wall under one sink, and clothes behind the washing machine. We spoke with the home ec teacher, who told us about seeing roaches in the past and believing it was a pretty bad infestation. This is another place where sanitation measures should be increased as well as continued monitoring.

Outside,Stephen Vantassel took a look at the perimeter around the portable classrooms. There was evidence of animal entry in holes around the portables. The school will need to take measures to fill in these holes (after making sure the animal is gone) to prevent new inhabitants from moving in.

Overall, the school has made some good improvements, especially in the reduction of German roaches in the kitchen and staff lounge areas. But there are still other improvements and ongoing general IPM practices we are going to encourage them to implement.

Pest Private Eye in JOE

I am very excited to announce that an article Clyde and I wrote about our IPM game for youth, Pest Private Eye, was published in this month's issue of the Journal of Extension! Read it here!

IPM Website updated!

Here at the Pesticide Education Office, we've been working recently on updating our website to fit the style of the new UNL template, and in the process have reorganized the content, including integrating our old IPM website into this new Pesticide Safety Education Program one. Please check out the new site: http://pested.unl.edu/schoolipm!

Science Cadre

Clyde and I have been discussing ways to better get the word out about our educational video game, Pest Private Eye, which teaches children and educators who work with them about IPM.

Now that the game is complete and in its final version, we would like to do a small project working with Nebraska elementary/middle school teachers in the classroom, using the game to teach IPM as part of the science curriculum. We would give teachers copies of the game for their students to play, then follow up with an in-classroom activity/survey about what they learned based on the Nebraska/National Science standards.

After contacting some ESU (Educational Service Units) around the state, we were invited yesterday to attend a "Science Cadre" at ESU9 consisting of science teachers in Hastings and surrounding towns. I presented about IPM and then demoed the game, explaining how we'd love to work with them on a project in the classroom. There were several questions about IPM and the game and also interest in doing the project! We look forward to using the game to further educate both children and teachers about IPM! Stay tuned for more info on this project as it progresses.

LPS Second Visit

On Sept 23, Clyde, Barb and I began our second visit to the Lincoln demonstration school by meeting with the staff, which included the principal, operations manager, head custodian, director of food services, and two PMPs, including the technician who services the school. We discussed that we'd be checking traps set last time and visiting vulnerable areas. We also talked about the recordkeeping process they have in place. Currently, this school keeps a pest log in the custodial office, but they are likely going to make a second set of pest sighting sheets available in the main office to simplify the pest reporting process for staff.

After the short discussion, we made our way to visit the food storage and kitchen areas, home ec, staff lounge, boiler room, and custodial closets/offices.

Food storage was good about primarily using open metal shelves! They did have a few wooden pallets and lots of cardboard boxes, but the area was clean, neat, and dry. We recommended they just discard the pallets and reduce the cardboard.

The kitchen is a pest vulnerable area, as we have seen in visits to many other schools, and we did find traps with Orientals and Germans, as well as a German cockroach hiding behind a bulletin board! We gave them similar recommendations as OPS of deep cleaning everything (behind and beneath equipment, floors, drains, etc.), caulking around the bulletin boards, and setting out more traps to continue monitoring.

The staff lounge was in overall good shape...the traps primarily had incidentals but we had found some mouse droppings under a sink last time, so encouraged them to put out snap traps.

The Home ec room looked good...sinks were clean underneath with no storage of pesticide, and stoves, sinks, etc. were clean overall.


In the boiler room, we saw two live wolf spiders...as big as half my thumb! I got this great picture of one before Clyde started telling me it would jump on me. I wasn't sure whether to believe him, but I wasn't taking any chances :-) so I moved back and let someone perform some "mechanical" IPM on the spider with his shoe! We also saw some dead Orientals on the floor, a bag with pop cans, and various areas with debris and dirt. We encouraged the school to address an area of standing water near the water softener, especially since Orientals love and thrive on lots of moisture.

We looked at several custodial closets and with the exception of some clutter/debris and some cans of pesticide that we recommended they remove, they were in good shape. Mops were hung, trash bags were changed daily, and most buckets were dry.

The LPS school, like OPS, is well on its way to implementing their IPM program. Both schools have or will be receiving recommendations after this second visit that will help guide them in the process.

Healthy Tribal Communities Training

September 14th brought Clyde, Barb, and myself from UNL, Mark from IA State, Jim and Jon from South Dakota State, and Sue Ratcliffe from Illinois to Sioux City, IA to provide training on IPM to tribes in EPA region 7. Mike Daniels, who has joined us in both our South Dakota and Nebraska IPM in Schools projects, organized the training with the help of Dick Wiechman from EPA.

The agenda included talks on general IPM, pest ID, pest species (cockroaches, ants, flies, bed bugs, rodents, and head lice), pesticides and pesticide labels, and recordkeeping.

Following the presentations, we took the group of about 35 people, representing tribes from several states, to a local high school, where we did a walkthrough of the kitchen, home ec room, special ed room, custodial area, and perimeter. It was a great educational opportunity to teach the participants about IPM and what process we have followed when visiting schools. We showed them particular conducive conditions and vulnerable areas and what pests might be common in those situations. We hope they are able to take what they learned into their own school systems and practice IPM!

Second IPM Visit to Omaha Public Schools

On Sept 9, we visited our OPS demonstration school for the second time. Clyde, Barb, Stephen and I met with administration and staff to discuss how they were progressing on developing a recordkeeping book. They are going to create a print notebook that will either be housed with the IPM coordinator or in the main office that both the staff and the pest management professional can access. The principal mentioned that she will also send information about it out on a school listserv to make staff aware that they can report pest sightings.

After these discussions we visited the kitchen, staff lounge, food storage area, custodial closets and other areas we had seen during the first visit. There is still a roach problem (primarily German in the kitchen and primarily Oriental in the boiler room) and we gave recommendations on how to approach this issue. We were very pleased to see that the Roach prufe that had been applied under Home Ec sinks had been removed. We encouraged the head custodian (IPM Coordinator) to also remove other pesticides, such as Raid, from the facility. We also checked sticky traps and noted what pests were found and replaced with new traps in the same areas to continue monitoring.

Outside, Stephen gave advice on how to better "insulate" portable classrooms from wildlife and rodents, including using hardcloth, sealing holes, and putting crushed gravel or other appropriate materials around foundations where there are gaps.

We will be sending out written recommendations soon...some of them are general practices we have told other schools...remove pesticides such as Raid, check entryways and replace doorsweeps where necessary, reduce moisture and clutter, and increase sanitation in vulnerable areas.


At the tail end of our visit, we also found a great biological control, a Chinese praying mantis, who was in the landscape. I took him home for a few days, then let him go on some bushes at UNL :-)