FaCilities What’s Pestering You? By Wayne Walker Integrated pest management plans can help bring the green in while keeping the bugs out of facilities. A facilities technician at the University of Florida steams a wall junction to eradicate pests. Pest management in college and university housing is always an interesting and challenging task. The variety of residents and situations offer challenges that are not normally seen in the more traditional settings of an urban environment. The Department of Housing and Residence Education at the University of Florida in Gainesville recently encountered a situation that bears out this fact. Wasps were reportedly getting into one of the ground-floor apartments in one of the graduate and family housing villages. There were four to six wasps observed each day in an apartment where two young children ages 1 and 3 years lived. One of the parents had been previously diagnosed as allergic to the sting of insects and to pesticides sometimes used to control them. The pest management technicians inspected the apartment thoroughly and discovered that the wasps were getting into the apartment through a heater air supply vent that exits through the roof. When they accessed the roof, they discovered that the wasps had formed a nest inside of the air vent. Not wanting to expose the residents to pesticides through the air supply, they treated the wasps and nest with soapy water to immobilize them and then removed them with a vacuum. The air vent was then covered with window screen material to prevent future infestations. In the distant past this approach would have been considered an example of thinking outside the box. Today, this is an example of an Integrated Pest Management (IPM) approach to solving the problem. Residents were not exposed to pesticides, possible future 22 Talking STick Photo credit: Wayne Walker