Tips & Tricks: Fleas and Ticks

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Control Solutions Inc.

By Heather Patterson, Technical Service Manager

There’s growing public awareness and concern around ticks and tick-borne diseases in the United States in recent months, and alpha-gal syndrome (AGS) has been one of the biggest drivers of that attention. Alpha-gal, which is short for galactose-alpha-1,3-galactose, is a molecule found naturally in mammals (except humans), as well as in the saliva of certain ticks.

In some individuals, tick bites can sometimes trigger an immune system response that leads to AGS, causing allergic reactions after eating red meat or consuming dairy products. Lone star ticks (Amblyomma americanum) are considered the primary vector, but reports indicate there have been some AGS cases associated with other tick species.

As awareness of AGS and other tickborne illnesses continues to grow, pest management professionals (PMPs) remain at the front lines to help reduce tick exposure and protect public health. When tick activity peaks this season, remember these five tips:

▶ Wear appropriate personal protective equipment (PPE) when treating tick-prone areas. Long sleeves, long pants, gloves, boots and U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA)-registered repellents can help reduce exposure while working in dense vegetation and wooded edges. Perform routine tick checks throughout the day and after completing applications.

▶ Focus inspections on areas that support tick hosts such as rodents, raccoons, deer, and other small mammals. Identify and address harborage areas such as wood piles, dense brush, ground cover and fence lines where wildlife activity is common.

▶ Improve the environment to make properties less favorable for ticks. Recommend trimming overgrown vegetation, clearing brush, reducing leaf litter and increasing sunlight and airflow in shaded areas where moisture persists.

▶ Apply residual insecticides strategically to high-risk tick zones. Concentrate treatments around ornamental vegetation, shrubs, tree lines, fence rows, tall grass and ecotones, which is where maintained turf meets wooded or natural areas.

▶ Approach tick management education for both customers and employees as an ongoing process. Combining habitat modification, wildlife management and targeted residual applications provides more consistent, long-term suppression.

BASF

By Desiree Straubinger, BCE, CP-FS, Technical Services Representative

Flea and tick infestations remain a constant hurdle for pest control specialists, requiring both skill and well-planned approaches. To effectively handle these pests, start with a comprehensive inspection, pinpointing trouble spots like pet bedding, carpets, upholstered furniture and outdoor spaces where animals, including wildlife and stray pets, may roam or shelter in crawlspaces.

Implement integrated pest management (IPM) methods, blending targeted chemical applications with environmental changes to break breeding cycles. Once hotspots are identified, customers should apply physical measures indoors, such as vacuuming and washing pet bedding. Outdoors, they should consistently mow the lawn and trim vegetation to decrease shaded, damp conditions. They also should clear away leaf litter, tall grass and organic debris to reduce breeding grounds. Encourage customers to maintain ongoing prevention, including routine pet care.

Select treatment products specifically designed for fleas and ticks and rotate active ingredients to lower the risk of resistance. For indoor chemical control, pay special attention to cracks, crevices and baseboards, using residual sprays and insect growth regulators (IGRs) for lasting results. Outdoor control should target shady areas where fleas and ticks thrive.

By merging technical expertise with client education, PMPs can provide dependable, long-term solutions for flea and tick infestations.

MGK

By Anna Hansen, Technical Services Support Specialist

The foundation of superior service and treatment of any pest is customer communication. Cooperation from the customer is necessary for any successful treatment — whether it’s exclusion work for treating fall invaders, sanitation for cockroach infestations, or prep and exclusionary work for flea and tick treatments.

It’s essential that customers understand the type of conditions that make their property friendly to fleas and ticks. Explain how a neatly mowed lawn and trimmed property perimeter can deter ticks from inhabiting the area. If the property butts up to a natural environment, like a forest or prairie, suggest they put deer fencing up to keep host animals from entering the property. Also, explain how keeping areas clear of brush and debris can deter animals that carry fleas and ticks from creating dens and burrows on the property.

Additionally, make sure to communicate your expectations for prep prior to treatment. Be detailed in your description of your expectations. Also, manage your customers’ expectations following treatment and make sure they understand re-entry standards for the products you’re using.

Nisus

By Dr. Jamel Sandidge, BCE, National Director of Technical Services

Fleas and ticks are more than just annoying pests. They can spread disease, trigger allergic reactions, and quickly become difficult to control once established indoors.

An IPM approach starts with reducing the conditions that allow them to thrive. Wildlife such as rodents, raccoons, stray cats and opossums often introduce fleas and ticks into yards and crawlspaces, so exclusion and habitat reduction are critical first steps. Keep grass trimmed, remove debris and seal entry points around the home.

Inside, mechanical interventions like frequent vacuuming play a major role in control by removing eggs, larvae and adult fleas hiding deep in carpets, furniture and cracks. Discard vacuum bags immediately after cleaning. Use contact sprays as appropriate to target active adult fleas and developing larvae in areas where pets rest or where wildlife activity has occurred. Combining sanitation, exclusion and targeted treatments provides long-term relief while reducing future infestations.

Neogen

By Andrew Fisher, BCE, PHE, Business Unit Specialist

Flea management programs often focus on areas where pets rest, but don’t overlook floor-wall junctions and other protected harborages. After being deposited by the host, flea eggs readily fall from fur and accumulate in cracks, crevices and carpet edges, beneath furniture and along baseboards. These areas provide the sheltered microhabitats that developing larvae require.

Unlike adult fleas, larvae are negatively phototactic, meaning they avoid light and migrate into protected locations where they feed on organic debris and dried blood excreted by adult fleas. Floor-wall junctions frequently collect dust, hair and other organic material that support larval development.

During inspections, pay particular attention to carpet tack strips, gaps beneath baseboards, furniture edges and inaccessible perimeter areas. Treatment plans should account for these locations rather than focus solely on open floor surfaces. Thorough vacuuming and targeted applications to identified harborage areas can improve contact with immature stages and help reduce the likelihood of persistent infestations and follow-up service calls.

Ensystex

By Stephen Vanias, ACE, Technical Director

Here’s a good way to get your technicians’ attention: Let them know the average American spends 15 to 20 minutes sitting on the toilet every day. While most people spend their idle moments mindlessly doomscrolling, they often are missing a prime opportunity to do a health check — and it has nothing to do with what’s coming out, but rather, what’s trying to dig in.

One of the best opportunities to perform a tick check is while sitting on the toilet. You don’t even need to put your phone away; just switch on the flashlight and start checking those personal cracks and crevices. Bathroom lighting is generally good. You have privacy and, more importantly, fantastic sight lines to parts of your body that often are overlooked but are prime real estate for ticks: the back of your knees, waistbands, armpits and other places where clothing tends to bunch up or have elastic bands.

I first learned of this strategy from a talk by Dr. Thomas “The TickGuy” Mather, director of the University of Rhode Island’s (URI’s) Center for Vector-Borne Disease. It might sound silly, but this is a serious public health initiative. URI even produces official, waterproof toilet check cards with actual-sized tick images. Learn more online at web.uri.edu/tickencounter.

Knowing and understanding tick biology, modes of vector transmission, and exposure times is critically important when dealing with ticks. Time always is of the essence, but it is even more important when mitigating the risk of tick-borne conditions that are quickly triggered by salivary components, such as Alpha-gal syndrome, vs. those that harbor in the midgut, such as Lyme disease, which typically requires over 24 hours of attached feeding for transmission.

Rockwell Labs

Nick Godfroid, BCE, Technical Specialist

Although fleas and ticks are not closely related, they do share basic behaviors that can be used to control troublesome populations. Both prefer areas protected from sunlight with plenty of cover to hide in and around. Like many arthropods, they also like humid conditions. This makes piles of dead leaves and brush, as well as unkempt shrubs and overgrown grass, key areas to target for treatment. By focusing on shaded, plant-covered areas rather than open, mowed lawns, you can improve the efficiency of granular and spray applications.

Because overgrown areas can be difficult for contact-kill-only sprays to fully penetrate, using botanical granules or sprays is an effective way to increase repellency and lethality deep within these spaces. Botanical products with vapor-phase effects in particular can reach into dense cover, helping to flush out, repel and kill fleas and ticks that would otherwise remain protected.

Zoëcon

By Mel Whitson, Director of Sales and Marketing, Pest Control

Summer temperatures and humidity bring an expected increase in tick and flea activity. PMPs should implement a proactive strategy to prevent infestations and protect clients and their pets from potential disease transmission.

Ticks are hitchhikers that can infest outdoor areas. They quest, or cling to vegetation, waiting to latch onto passing animals and people. Ticks are especially active in wooded areas, tall grass, leaf litter and spots near water. Their prolonged feeding behaviors make them excellent vectors for diseases such as Lyme disease.

Aside from using insecticidal solutions, educate clients about maintenance practices to help reduce tick populations: Remove leaf litter, mow the lawn frequently and clear tall grass and brush.

Fleas also present potential health risks, transmitting murine typhus to humans and causing hair loss and skin damage to pets. Target areas where pets spend the most time, such as on bedding, toys, furniture and carpet. Fleas spread quickly, making it very important to vacuum all target areas before treatment and every day for one week or every two days for two weeks after treatment.

Syngenta

By Lisa Eppler, Technical Services Manager

Fleas and ticks can test the patience of even the most experienced technician. When pets, wildlife and outdoor harborages are involved, it sometimes feels like these pests have more backup than we do. The good news? Successful treatment usually starts well before any application is needed.

Start with an inspection. A thorough inspection and client interview are essential. Ask where pets spend their time and look for likely flea and tick harborages indoors and outdoors. Often, fleas and ticks are exactly where you would expect them to be — right where pets like to nap!
Prepare the environment. Preparation makes a big difference. Indoors, recommend that clients vacuum, clean pet resting areas and wash pet bedding. Outdoors, recommend they reduce clutter like debris piles, firewood stacks and pet bowls. Mowing grass and improving airflow also can help treatments reach their target areas.
Target the right spots. Focus on shaded areas, pet resting sites and transition zones between landscaped and natural areas where fleas and ticks thrive.
Use the right tools. A combination of an adulticide and an IGR can be effective, for example. Always follow product label instructions.
Communicate. Set clear expectations with clients, because flea and tick control works best when everyone is on the same team.

AMGUARD

By Jason Schmidt, Director, Technology and Innovation

Tick activity often is assumed rather than measured. That is understandable because customers usually call after a bite, pet exposure or concern about tick-borne disease risk. At the same time, ticks are easy to underestimate because large portions of a property may appear visually inactive.

During tick surveillance work years ago, one technique we used was placing a small piece of dry ice in the middle of a white drag cloth and simply waiting. As carbon dioxide dispersed from the dry ice, questing ticks would begin emerging from previously “lifeless” surrounding leaf litter and vegetation and move toward the sheet. Areas separated by only a few feet could produce dramatically different activity.

That experience reinforced how uneven tick pressure really is. Ticks often are concentrated in shaded, humid microhabitats and along host travel corridors, while nearby open areas contribute comparatively little activity.

On many properties, the difference between low and high tick pressure, and between average and highly effective control, may be only a few shaded feet.

Arkion Life Sciences

By Andrew Shipp, Gulf Coast Regional Sales Manager

Residential IPM programs succeed through strategy, not reliance on any single tool. When treating lawns for ticks, integrating an all-natural, essential oil-based pesticide into rotation with synthetic options is a smart move.

Alternating applications prevents resistance by disrupting tick adaptation, keeping populations off-balance and your treatments effective longer. These botanicals also excel as a proactive deterrent, establishing an aromatic barrier that makes lawns less hospitable to wandering ticks before they take hold.

Gentle on beneficials, pets and the environment, they break down over time while complementing cultural practices like mowing and perimeter management. Clients appreciate the balanced approach that protects both efficacy and reputation.

Incorporate naturals wisely: Rotate for resistance management and deploy as deterrents for superior, sustainable tick control.

So, the next time you’re plotting tick defense, remember: The sharpest tool in the IPM shed isn’t always the loudest. Sometimes it’s the one that smells like cinnamon and common sense.

PestWest

By Dr. Stuart “Doc” Mitchell, BCE, MPH, Technical Director

I am a cat flea, Ctenocephalides felis, and this is how I feed on thee:

I do not fly. In carpets, bedding and shaded resting places I wait, until I sense warmth, movement, vibration and the carbon dioxide of a passing cat or dog nearby.

Then I leap, my enlarged hind legs and resilin-rich structures spring me upward into fur, where my genal and pronotal ctenidia — comb-like spines upon my head and thorax — help me move through hair and hold to my host with care.

Now I seek the skin. My antennae and sensory bristles help me thread the coat until my piercing-sucking mouthparts meet the surface below. My laciniae pierce the skin, and channels formed by my mouthparts draw the blood that soon will flow.

Within minutes, I am feeding. The blood within my midgut sustains my life and, if I am female, helps turn each meal into eggs in time. Your companion animal is not simply my host; it is the living engine that drives my next generation anew.

To provide rescue, breaking the flea’s full cycle through and through, it takes the PMP, the veterinarian and the pet owner, too.