Sting Operations

Few household pests can have a more immediate painful impact on homeowners than bees and wasps.

Often the mere buzz of a distant bee can send homeowners scurrying for cover. It’s no surprise then that many PCOs say the majority of their bee and wasp control work is generated through “trouble” calls rather than by any aggressive marketing or sales tactics they perform.

And while, as Dr. Gerald S. Wegner wrote in The Mallis Handbook of Pest Control, “as a rule, bees and wasps are beneficial insects unmindful of the activities of man,” when bees or wasps do decide to set up camp in or near a home, you can bet homeowners will be calling.

“People don’t call for preventative bee and wasp service — it’s more emergency calls, when bees and wasps are in their house,” says James P. McHale Jr., of J. P. McHale Pest Management, Inc., Montrose, N.Y. Harold Snyder, of Snyder’s Termite and Pest Control, Inc., Riverside, Calif., says he too handles bee and wasp business on a purely call-in basis.

PUT YOUR NAME IN LIGHTS. Because bees and wasps invade homes on a random and relatively infrequent basis as compared to ants or cockroaches, generating routine and consistent bee and wasp control business through marketing may be tough.

Aggressive marketing does pay off however, says McHale, when the customer picks up the phone to make an emergency bee call. “Most bee and wasp calls are trouble calls, so you want the customer to have your company in mind when they have a problem,” he says.

Beverage manufacturers have been doing that for years, spending millions of dollars to convince the public that when they’re thirsty they should reach for a Coke or a Pepsi. And while most pest control companies don’t have million-dollar advertising budgets, the principal is the same: When customers have a bee or wasp problem, you want them to think of your company immediately.

During bee and wasp season, McHale says, his company advertises its bee and wasp services on local radio spots and in newspaper ads, hoping to generate the name recognition that he says is vital to successfully marketing bee and wasp control.

Steven Fields, a PCO in Cincinnati, Ohio, has taken the principal of name recognition to heart. Fields has attempted to carve out a niche in stinging insect control by naming his company Bee Exterminating. Fields says he advertises the name in Yellow Pages advertisements, as well as in the direct mail pieces he distributes.

Furthermore, Fields has created a website dedicated to marketing his bee and wasp services. The site features information about stinging insects, as well as descriptions of his service offerings. Fields says he also would like to begin selling various pest control products through the Internet. The site, www.pest1.com, has received about 10,000 hits (visits), since it was first launched in February 1996. This year, as the stinging insect season rolled in, Fields says, he has received more than 60 hits a day.

Fields says the Internet site has generated business through call-ins. In fact, Fields has even received an emergency call from as far away as Los Angeles.

Considering that most bee and wasp control work is generated through so-called trouble calls, word-of-mouth advertising and customer referrals can also be a powerful marketing source. When homeowners experience a bee problem, that first phone call may not always be to a PCO but to a friend or relative who has experienced a similar problem.

Fields says a significant portion of his work comes from past customers telling their friends about his service. “And I’ve got more business than I can handle,” says Fields.

A QUICK RESPONSE. Of course generating work through customer referrals requires that PCOs do a good job at each account. When it comes to bee and wasp control, PCOs say that means responding quickly. Dr. Gerald S. Wegner, co-owner and technical director for Varment Guard, Columbus, Ohio says, “the most important thing, especially in the busy season, is rapid response to customers.” Dr. Wegner says Var-ment Guard tends to overload themselves and work later hours when conducting bee control work because of the “emergency” nature of most stinging insect calls. Setting up service quickly is important, he notes, because when experiencing a stinging insect problem, customers don’t want to wait.

Wegner suggests that one way companies can quicken the pace of selling bee and wasp control services is to try and get a thorough understanding of the problem over the phone. Having the customer describe the type of stinging insect invading their home as well as where they’ve seen the pest can help technicians prepare for the account.

However, Wegner cautions that ultimately technicians should be prepared for anything, as one customer’s idea of a bee, may actually be a yellow jacket.

McHale agrees that it is important to respond quickly when handling bee and wasp calls. McHale has service vehicles specially equipped for bee work that contain ladders and bee control tools already stored and ready to be used. Furthermore, McHale keeps a staff of technicians available to work at night so the company can respond immediately to customer calls. McHale says when a technician responds immediately to a customer’s bee problem, they are especially grateful, and are primed for purchase of the company’s other pest services.

CROSS-SELLING. One way to combat the “emergency,” here-today-gone-tomorrow business cycle of bee and wasp services is to use the service as a jumping off point for the company’s other service offerings. Keith Bradley, vice president of Perfect Exterminating, Jackson, N.J., says when providing bee and wasp control services, he also offers customers a free inspection, with the aim of offering them his company’s quarterly general pest preventative service. Bradley also incorporates bee and wasp control into the company’s routine quarterly service, providing a nice tie-in for customers and making selling the service easier.

McHale says the opportunity to sell customers add-on services makes bee and wasp accounts very valuable calls. “It’s an excellent opportunity to go out and look at a house and cross-sell any of your company’s additional services,” he says. It’s not the actual up-front service that generates revenue, McHale said, but the long-term revenue potential that is important. “You’re not looking to make a lot of money on bee and wasp calls, but to solve the customer’s problems and establish a relationship with them,” he says.

Though bee and wasp control can be an effective way to get a company’s “foot in the door,” Bradley said, bee and wasp control is limited by certain challenges, mainly the market’s saturation with do-it-yourself products. “It’s one of the toughest markets to hit, because of all the over-the-counter products available for control.”

For example, in one situation, Bradley quoted a price for bee and wasp service to a customer, only to have the customer call back and threaten Bradley with a lawsuit for unfair pricing, and to say that her husband would take care of the problem. “This is the kind of stuff we go through,” Bradley said, in regard to bee and wasp control.

POSITIVE PREDICTIONS. Despite obstacles like a preponderance of do-it-yourself products, many PCOs say this year will be a busy one for bees and wasps. “I’ve never seen this many yellow jacket queens before,” says Fields, “the winter didn’t kill anything off.”

Bradley also expects a big year for stinging insect control. “I think this year will be interesting for stinging insects because of the warm winter,” he says. Bradley says he sees yellow jackets and paper wasps most often infesting his customers’ structures.

Wegner and Fields, both in Ohio, say carpenter bees have been particularly problematic this spring, and they predict yellow jackets will be heavy through October.

According to Snyder, in California, where his company is based, spring and early summer is the most important time regarding stinging insects because they begin swarming and building nests. Furthermore, Syder says, in California, yellow jackets can be a year-round problem and have been especially troublesome this year as a result of the unusual weather brought by El Niño.

The increase in pest pressure resulting from this year’s unseasonable weather should make for a busy and profitable year for companies conducting bee and wasp control. Some PCOs say, however, that to truly benefit from the pest boom, companies will have to be proactive with their marketing programs, making sure their company is in the minds of consumers when they hear a bee buzzing around their front door.

Sidebar: Controlling Bees And Wasps To Help Save Lives

Russell Lamp of Integrated Pest Control in Toledo, Ohio has found a unique niche in bee and wasp control services, while also helping to prevent deaths from allergic reactions to stings. His company removes stinging insects and their nests from accounts, keeps the insects alive, and categorizes them by species. Then Lamp sells the categorized bees and wasps to companies that use the insect venom to make vaccine for people allergic to stinging insects.

Lamp says it is not the removal that is the tough part of the job, but categorizing the insect by species. For instance, Lamp says his company separates yellow jackets into nine separate species. “Most PCOs probably think there is only one species of yellow jacket,” Lamp says. It’s important that the insects be properly categorized, says Lamp, because people can actually be allergic to one species of yellow jacket, while having no reaction to another species.

In some cases, Lamp says, his company will even remove nests from accounts for free, because they can sell the nest and insects to the vaccine manufacturers. If the nest is easily accessible and the customer is not demanding immediate service, then the company will remove the nest for free.

In his work in categorizing stinging insect species, Lamb has also seen more members of a new stinging insect species, polistes dominulus, spreading through Ohio. Lamp says the wasp is also commonly referred to as a medwasp and is often confused with the yellow jacket because it has yellow and black stripes on its abdomen.

Lamp says in addition to Ohio, these wasps can be found in most of the Northeast. In his chapter in The Mallis Handbook of Pest Control (Chapter 13 Bees & Wasps), Dr. Gerald S. Wegner writes that the polistes dominulus has, since first showing up in the eastern U. S. in 1981, increased its range from Massachusetts, New Jersey and New York westward into Pennsylvania and Ohio.

The wasp can cause headaches and callbacks for PCOs, Lamp says, because they can be found in places often ignored by PCOs conducting traditional stinging insect control efforts. These areas include downspouts, gutter drains and even storm sewers. Furthermore, Lamp says, the wasp can nest vertically as well as horizontally, and can reuse old nests, allowing it to become large and populous.