Urban Pest Management Conference

We just got back from the Urban Pest Management Conference (Feb 14-15), which is held every year here in Lincoln and offers recertification opportunities in several pesticide applicator categories. Our office always offers the pesticide safety talk for those who are recertifying.

Bed bugs were understandably a big topic this year (and the UNL saga continues, too!) as well as talks on other common pests such as cockroaches, termites, and grain pests. Bobby Corrigan was also on hand to talk about rodent management!

We had several IPM coalition members attend this year, including representatives from OPS and LPS as well as our new Winnebago/Omaha tribe Pesticide Circuit Rider, Christina Lee. We are working with Christina to schedule more IPM visits, including an educational one, with the Omaha and Winnebago schools. More on this as it develops!

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!

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!