Robert's Rants
Robert's Rants
A personal blog on the Canadian pesticide industry and other pet peeves and interests

Bancouver smarter than Ottawa?

So I’m certain by now you’ve all heard the news about the big neonic cancellation in the westerly coast city of Bancouver.   Just that one little city, where if you step across the street into Burnaby or West Van or Surrey or wherever you can use neonics to your heart’s content.

C’mon, I thought that was clever!  Bancouver.

But since the neonics are destroying the entire beneficial insect population on their side of the street the City Council or whatever they have there BANNED all neonics.

So Gardex, as upright citizens, sent an email out to all BC customers advising  they could not use a certain company’s (who will remain nameless, but it rhymes with Mayor or Layer) cockroach bait insecticide, since one of the actives contains a neonic.

Can anyone tell me the last time they had a major honeybee kill by putting out a cockroach bait, available only in a 30 gram tube?  I’m assuming there are about 10,000,000 cockroach jobs a year, and I have heard of maybe… ZERO… honeybee kills.  In 40 years.

Are there huge colonies of BEES and POLLINATORS residing under the sinks and toilets and pantries of your average Bancouverite?

Maybe there’s a new source of income we didn’t know about.

But it really makes you wonder where the scientific center of excellence is when it comes to pesticides, and why the government doesn’t step in when conflicting rules and regulations are imposed by local jurisdictions?   Like this one.

‘Course this is a dead horse, when it started years ago on the east coast with lawn care and raises it’s ugly head in some little city every so often.

But it’s still stupid.  Just plain and simple.

It’s like the new cannabis laws, where Richmond Hill is protecting it’s citizens by banning pot shops, although you can walk across the street to Vaughan and get all the green goodness you want.

But thank god the honey bees under the sink are saved.

 

 

What Moron thought of this? Soon the Label will be 837 pages of bird cage liner

This will be my last on this subject…riding a dead horse.

This was all triggered by a discussion about a label going from 16 pages to 60.  Who is going to slog through 60 pages?  We all should, but does it really have to be so much BS?  And having “Toxic to Bees” spelled out 18 times in 15 different ways?

OOPS!

Here’s my point(s):

  • If they continue to have special instructions and rates for every pest the product will be too confusing for the average tech.
  • The label will be like like the booklet in your Bayer Aspirin box.  You take out the bottle and throw the label and box away.  It will never get read
  • The product is for sale to Licensed Structural folks only.  You would hope they identified the insect as the first step in designing their control plan.
  • There are far better resources than this for entomology information.
  • There are better choices if you want to get into the Insect ID game.

The very Front Panel states this:

LICENSED.  Means you should know something.

But here’s the weird or moronic part:

The Statement below is a direct quote from the Label. (in Italics for all you dummies)   Not that it’s wrong, but does it need to be added at all?

Are you guys and gals a bunch of dumb Licensed Pest Control Operators?

On just this one pest?

Why Cluster flies?

Why not all 67 species?  With pictures. In color. And guides and keys to the insect. And other means of control, you know…IPM!!!!

And hey, you can put in the full scientific name, we’re even use to that.

Cluster flies Outdoor Perimeter,

Cluster flies are members of the Order (Diptera) and resemble house flies. They are distinguished
by their sluggish and erratic behaviour and by wings that overlap when at rest. They derive their
name from their habit of entering a building in the fall and clustering together to overwinter. The
search for protected places to overwinter begins as days shorten in mid-August. Warm sunny walls
draw the flies as the climate cools during this search. This offers an opportunity to control the fly
population outside the building.  Spray this mixture to the exterior walls including under the eaves, soffits and window trim. The effective time of application is between mid August and the end of September depending on weather conditions.

Beautifully written, chock full of brilliant info, much better than Mallis or any other of the 1000 insect resources we have.

But why put it in the Direction for Use?

Could FMC and the PMRA get the label rate right? I’m buying Prelude

In my on-going assault on stupidity, and basically how to make a label an unusable document, let’s do some quick math on the correct label rate.

So as you remember after using Dragnet for 25 years, the rate for permethrin is and always has been 0.5% solution. Except termites.

And their label has said put 50 mils in 4 liters of water (your common B&G size).  Or like todays label, 25 mls in 2 liters (your common pop bottle size – and don’t be idiotic, never use any other container to put a pesticide in)

Or 12.5 mils of product per 1 liter.

Simple.

So let’s go back to our 7th grade math class

25 mils / 2000 mils = 0.0125 or 1.25% dilution.  But wait!  The product only has 384 grams of active or 38.4%.

So 1.25% X (times) 0.384 =  hmmm…. 0.48% instead of .5%?  So my rate is short  

All these years and I’m under-dosing!  Guess I should have used 26 mils, but that’s off label.  Kinda.  Sorta.

But here’s the best one, and I swear this is on their label…multiple times.

When you mix 2 liters use 25 mils but when you mix 10 liters use….wait for it….130 mils.

What??????  (That should really should be WTF???? but I’m trying to clean up my act)

On one spot you say to use 12.5 mils per liter, but right next to it you say to use 13 mils per liter.

So which is it???

Maybe it doesn’t matter.

Prelude states use 42 mils of the 24% product in 2 liters of water to get 0.5% solution.  And guess what?!?   It really is 0.5%!

So when Cait, the PMRA inspector, swabs your tank and says you’re only using 96% of the label rate, tell her that’s exactly right and give her the 800 number for the Ottawa office.

Or switch to Prelude.

And they hold us accountable.

BIG CONTEST – WIN A BOTTLE OF DEMAND CS

Okay, here’s the contest and it’s easy peasy as my Granddaughter says:

The first person to accurately count the number of times “Toxic to Bees” appears on the NEW DRAGNET LABEL wins!

Use the label on the PMRA label search, dated last August.

Simply email me with your guess…I mean count…to rpercy@gardexinc.com.

I’ll give you a hint, it’s a hell of a lot more than needed.  Remember, your government considers us all to be ignorant.  I hope FMC didn’t volunteer the information.  More on that in the next rant!

Available to licensed Pest Control Operators working and living somewhere in Canada.  Except where void by law or in Quebec or somewhere else difficult about having contests.  Must be a Dragnet user that wants to switch off a 30 year old product to try something new, like a 16 year old product, Demand CS!

I was going to give Temprid but it’s too expensive!

I’m anxiously waiting to announce the big winner.