I should have made clear that what I interpreted about what Kramer said about “soaking” is what I thought he previously said on the subject, in his notes from the 2006 NPMA convention presentations, an article which has been linked here before and has been very useful to us:

We make voluminous applications (hose it down — at least 1 to 2 gallons/unit).

Anecdotally, there are other PCOs who also make voluminous applications. As you know, we take care to discourage people from “doing their own pest control” so that is not at all what was on my mind. I’m just concerned about the specter of widescale treatment failures. I just want to know what works in practice and whether PCOs who don’t share this view are likely to have less success.

As far as zero bug zone is concened I must say the several folks I shared it with all
had a good laugh. I wonder if that scientific explanation originated with Aldous Huxley as he was cleansing the doors of perception or by Jules Verne with an alternative power source for the Nautilus.

I confess I am a bit floored by it’s frankness, and it’s bleak view of IPM in relation to bedbugs:

At this writing, our industry is faced with a pandemic — bed bugs. Despite what you hear at conferences and read in trade journals, we do not have the tools (products) to effectively and economically manage these blood-feeding insects, much less eradicate them. What we must do to reduce their numbers smacks in the face of IPM.

In addition, there is this in reference to the author’s own methods:

While it is not what I prefer to do I have had the greatest success in soaking all potential harborage sites with residual insecticides that appear from the research to kill the most bugs.

Soaking. What some would call, especially if you frown upon it — and we’ve been taught that we all ought to frown upon it — an over-application. I’ve heard this before, despite what we’re told about why it’s wrong. So, why this technique that smacks of desperation? Well, this is how Kramer puts it:

[W]e have products (mostly pyrethroids) that kill some but not all bed bugs if you spray it on them; residual insecticides are relatively ineffective after they dry; dusts don’t work unless you have weeks or months to wait; there is documented resistance to registered insecticides; there are no new products on the horizon; and no one appears to re-examining those products we lost during the past 10 to 15 years. Perhaps the most successful technique is what I see in many apartments: crushed bugs and blood smears across the walls.

So, the pesticides mostly work if directly sprayed on the bugs. Is Kramer saying that the pesticides that are available are effectively little more than contact killers?

This is the bleakest assessment I’ve seen in print to date. I’ve heard all of it before, but this sounds a particular note of defeat that is unsettling.

Your thoughts, Winston?

Really glad to hear from you though, Buzinthehood, and I hope all is really well and bug-free chez vous!

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