8/22/2011 Austin Texas Spends Big To Get Rid Of Bedbugs: Housing Authority Has Spent Over $40k Already

The Housing Authority of the City of Austin has spent nearly $40,000 over the past year fighting bedbugs in 15 of its 19 facilities.

Since September 2010, the authority has been treating the insects, whose bites leave itchy red welts on the skin. Over the past year, 166 of the housing authority’s 1,928 units have been treated for bedbugs, said Sylvia Blanco , vice president of housing and community development for the agency.

“There are peaks and valleys,” Blanco said. “It also depends on the season, but right now we’re having a spike because people are trying to get out of the heat. They’re staying indoors, and sometimes they’re bringing the bugs with them.”

Bedbug infestations in recent years have increased dramatically all over the country. The bugs have wreaked havoc in all kinds of buildings: luxury hotels, department stores and private homes, to name a few. Locally, they’ve hit student apartments around the University of Texas and the Austin State Supported Living Center, which houses people with intellectual disabilities. Austin Travis Integral Care has spent $14,000 over the past year battling the bugs in seven of its 46 properties for people with mental illness.

The Austin housing authority contracts with Oliver Termite and Pest Control for monthly treatments for roaches, ants and other insects at all its housing facilities, Blanco said. The company sprays for bedbugs after receiving a complaint from residents. Each apartment generally gets one treatment, which could include two or three visits from the exterminator, Blanco said.

“Maybe on occasion it could take a second treatment,” she said. “But typically it’s pretty effective in the first treatment.”

If the bugs come back after the warranty period, usually 30 days after the last treatment, residents are required to pay for additional service, Blanco said. That costs residents between $175 and $265 . The pest control company also speaks with residents extensively on ways to avoid a reinfestation, such as inspecting all furniture before bringing it into the apartment.

The housing authority does not deny treatment to anyone and tries to be flexible when charging residents, all of whom are low-income, Blanco said. Many people pay off the bill through a payment plan.

Bedbugs are notoriously hard to get rid of because they are nocturnal and elusive and can go more than a year without eating. They hide in crevices, in furniture, even in books. In apartment complexes, they can easily travel from unit to unit, said Missy Henriksen, spokeswoman for the National Pest Management Association in Virginia.

“They will crawl through the baseboards, cracks in the walls and the electrical outlets,” she said.

Even the most extensive treatments can be ineffective. The Fort Worth Housing Authority spent hundreds of thousands of dollars last year battling bedbugs in one apartment complex — even paying to replace carpets and treat residents’ belongings — but still had to permanently shutter the building when the bugs refused to surrender. More than 200 residents had to move.

Simmie Burke, 68 , said he had bedbugs about a year ago in his third-floor home at Austin’s Lakeside Apartments, a Trinity Street complex owned by the housing authority. The pest control company sprayed, he said, which slowed the insects down. But when the insects returned a few weeks later, Burke decided to battle the bugs on his own, treating the apartment and all of his belongings with pesticide .

“A lot of people have them, but they’re ashamed,” Burke said. “They shouldn’t be. It’s not about hygiene. They’re all over the place.”

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7/25/2011 Bedbugs Hit University Of Kentucky: Student Center Will Be Treated With Heat

The University of Kentucky has found bedbugs in part of the UK Student Center.

Student center director John Herbst said a UK public health graduate student said Monday that he had found “a couple of bedbugs” in a second-floor lounge that contains upholstered chairs and loveseats.

Herbst said he saw one bedbug in the area “and what appeared to be the possibility of eggs.”

The area was closed, as was a nearby lounge. No bedbugs had been spotted in the nearby lounge, and UK officials said it was closed only as a precaution.

The affected area will be treated Friday by the university’s contractor, OPC Pest Control.

Donnie Blake, president of the pest control firm, said a heat treatment will be used on the affected area. The treatment involves machines that heat the area to 135 degrees, which kills the bedbugs and their eggs.

Bedbugs have an appearance similar to that of ticks, Blake said, and generally like to stay in cracks and crevices during the day. They are transmitted when humans with bedbugs on their clothing or bodies or in their belongings leave them behind. They are not considered a sign of poor hygiene or economic status, Blake said. He did say they are becoming more prevalent in this area.

Their bite resembles that of a mosquito, he said.

Before 2003, he said, his company had done one bedbug treatment; this year, Blake said, it will perform 5,000 bedbug treatments and inspections.

One way to avoid bedbugs is to be careful about where you place carried belongings such as suitcases, Blake said; always use the hotel room luggage rack, rather than the bed, and remove clothes from suitcases only as you need them.

He also recommended that people buying used clothing or furniture inspect, and when possible, wash the material to guard against bedbugs.

Herbst said he was sure the infested lounge would be bedbug-free when the contractor completed his heat treatment.

“We have the utmost confidence in these fellows as professionals,” he said.

The student center is lightly populated during the summer. Although classes for the fall semester begin Aug. 24, large numbers of students will begin arriving on campus for registration and other programs beginning in early August.

In late June, officials at the Lexington Public Library discovered two bedbugs at the downtown library. The library brought in a bedbug-sniffing dog, removed affected furniture and put in place a new cleaning regimen.

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7/3/2011 Top 10 BedBug Myths: The insects, making a comeback around the globe, cannot fly and are really not interested in hanging out on your body–but they do occasionally bite during the day

Once a pest of the past, bedbugs now infest every state in the U.S.. Cimex lectularius—small, flattened insects that feed solely on mammalian and avian blood—have been living with humans since ancient times. Abundant in the U.S. prior to World War II , bedbugs all but vanished during the 1940s and ’50s thanks to improvements in hygiene and the use of pesticides. In the past 10 years, however, the pests have staged a comeback worldwide—an outbreak after the 2000 Summer Olympics in Sydney was a harbinger of things to come. This revival may be the worst yet, experts say, due to densely populated urban areas, global travel and increasing pesticide resistance—something to consider as the summer travel season gets underway.

“By every metric that we use, it’s getting worse and worse,” says Coby Schal, an entomologist at North Carolina State University in Raleigh. Health authorities and pest control operators are regularly flooded with calls, and the epidemic may not have yet peaked. And because bedbugs are indoor pests, there are no high or low seasons throughout the year, he adds, only continual bombardment. “It’s just the beginning of the problem in the U.S.,” Schal says.

Spreading rapidly with the bedbugs is a mass of misinformation about their biology and behavior. Straight from the experts, here are the facts behind some of the most notorious myths about the diminutive bloodsuckers.

Myth 1: Bedbugs can fly
Bedbugs lack wings, and therefore cannot fly. That is unless you put a blow dryer behind them, says Stephen Kells, a bedbug researcher at the University of Minnesota. Then they’ll fly about 1.2 meters. On their own, bedbugs crawl about a meter a minute, he says.

Myth 2: Bedbugs reproduce quickly
Compared with other insects, bedbugs are slow to reproduce: Each adult female produces about one egg per day; a common housefly lays 500 eggs over three to four days. Each bedbug egg takes 10 days to hatch and another five to six weeks for the offspring to develop into an adult.

Myth 3: Bedbugs can typically live a year without a meal
Scientists debate this point, but evidence suggests that at normal room temperature, about 23 degrees Celsius, bedbugs can only survive two to three months without a blood meal. But because they are cold-blooded, their metabolism will slow down in chillier climates, and the insects may live up to a year without feeding.

Myth 4: Bedbugs bite only at night
Although bedbugs are generally nocturnal, they’re like humans—if they’re hungry, they’ll get up and get something to eat. “If you go away to visit a friend for a week and you come back and sit down on the couch, even though it’s daytime the bedbugs will come looking for you,” Schal says. Keeping a light on, then, unfortunately does not keep these tiny vampires away.

Myth 5: Bedbugs live exclusively in mattresses
“‘Bedbug’ is such a misnomer,” Kells says. “They should also be called pet bugs and suitcase bugs and train bugs and movie theater bugs.” Bedbugs spread away from beds into living areas and can be seen on any surface, he says, including chairs, railings and ceilings.

Myth 6: Bedbugs prefer unsanitary, urban conditions
“Bedbugs are terribly nondiscriminatory,” Schal says. Bedbugs can be found anywhere from ritzy high-rises to homeless shelters. The prevalence of the bugs in low-income housing is therefore not a result of the insect’s preference, but of dense populations and the lack of money to pay for proper elimination strategies. “Any location is vulnerable,” Kells says. “But some people are going to have a harder time getting control of them because it is such an expensive treatment.”

Myth 7: Bedbugs travel on our bodies
Bedbugs do not like heat, Kells says. They therefore do not stick in hair or on skin, like lice or ticks, and prefer not to remain in our clothes close to our bodily heat. Bedbugs are more likely to travel on backpacks, luggage, shoes and other items farther removed from our bodies.

Myth 8: Bedbugs transmit disease
Bedbug bites can lead to anxiety, sleeplessness and even secondary infections, but there have been no reported cases of bedbugs transmitting disease to humans. They do, however, harbor human pathogens: At least 27 viruses, bacteria, protozoa and more have been found in bedbugs, although these microbes do not reproduce or multiply within the insects. Canadian researchers announced (pdf) in the June issue of Emerging Infectious Diseases that bedbugs isolated from three individuals in a Vancouver hospital carried methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus, aka MRSA. Still, there have been no reported cases that the bugs actually transmit human disease.

Myth 9: We should bring back DDT
When the controversial pesticide DDT was banned in 1972, most bed bugs were already resistant to it, Schal says, and today’s populations are even more widely resistant thanks to the use of a new class of pesticides. Pyrethroids, the main class of pesticides used against bedbugs today, targets sodium channels in bedbug cells, just like DDT. Consequently, as bedbugs develop resistance to pyrethroids, they also become cross-resistant to DDT.

Myth 10: You can spray bedbugs away
Thanks to pesticide resistance, those cans of spray at your local hardware store simply will not do, Schal says, adding: “Relying strictly on chemicals is generally not a good solution.” The most effective solutions are fumigation and heat treatments, but these can cost a cool $2,000 to $3,000 apiece for a single-family home. Scientists are diligently pursuing other strategies, including freezing and bait similar to that used for cockroaches. In the October 2010 issue of the Journal of Economic Entomology Schal and colleagues at the U.S. Department of Agriculture published a technique that employs inexpensive infrared and vibration sensors to track bedbug movement, which could be applied to the development of automated traps that detect the pests.

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6/20/2011 Bedbug Lawsuits Causes Concerns For Insurers

Jeffrey White, a research entomologist with Bed Bug Central in New Jersey, says the bed bug problem is worldwide, though he has seen a dramatic increase in the Northeast. “We use New York City as the barometer for what’s going to happen across this entire country over the next five to ten years.”

A simple review of the online resource, bedbugregistry.com, which shows real time reports of bed bug infestations, confirms the higher incidence of bed bugs in the upper Northeast.

White says he’s seen a rise in calls for expert advice and retention. The number of calls has increased dramatically in the past six months. “We are averaging at least one call a week.”

White notes the calls are evenly split between defense and plaintiff attorneys. The defendants involved are mainly hotels, group homes, apartments, and property management companies.

In White’s experience most lawsuits involving bed bugs settle prior to trial and he is only asked to review the case files and provide an opinion. He emphasizes taking proactive measures to identify and prevent bed bugs early on. Then, he recommends an aggressive action plan to treat the problem.

“Where people are finding themselves in a lot of hot water is when they stick their head in the sand about bed bugs. They don’t have any type of action plan created. They show up and don’t know how to react to the problem. Weeks go by and no action is taken, or they call the cheapest exterminator they can find and they come in and don’t do anything even close to a good treatment for bed bugs.”

Documentation is just as important, White points out.

“That is where a lot of cases have had to settle. People claim they did everything they could have done, but the paperwork does not reflect their claims.”

Pest management records and documentation is equally important. White hasn’t seen many pest control companies named in lawsuits; however, they can get pulled in at any moment.

While most of the lawsuits White has seen involve bodily injury and property claims for medical bills, scarring and furniture replacement, he has noticed a number of plaintiffs also claiming emotional distress.

“We’ve seen a lot of people that are claiming psychological trauma.”

Emotional distress claims range from not being able to sleep at night to having problems at work as a result of the lack of sleep.

During a breakout session of the Orkin-sponsored virtual bed bug summit held in April, Michael Weisburger, president of the PlanetPCO Insurance Group, emphasized that media attention is playing a major role on how bed bug claims are perceived.

“In the event of a highly publicized claim situation, the public will dictate whether or not the damages are “real”. What’s overstated and sensationalized is real! Insurance companies have to contend with all of this hysteria. Insurance companies are having a difficult time getting their arms around how to measure what losses exist and what potential losses exist in claims involving bed bugs.”

While typical property policies don’t cover damage or treatment of bedbugs, general liability policies do come into play. When investigating a bed bug claim and the potential for subrogation, adjusters should check to see if the insured is a named additional insured on the pest management company’s policy.

The NPMA’s Web site has a section devoted entirely to bed bugs. The NPMA recommends visual inspection as the preferred method of determining whether a bed bug infestation exists. The size and color of an apple seed, bed bugs like to travel hiding in suitcases, boxes, and shoes.

“Bed bugs can be very hard to detect until their levels of infestation get to be large,” says Henriksen.

A bed bug hatches from an egg and has five nymphal stages where it will shed an exoskeleton. Each time the new shell will harden and in the final stage it will become a male or female. The bed bug enjoys a blood meal at each stage and will feed multiple times as an adult. The lifespan of a bedbug is typically three months, though they can live up to a year if food is limited. The female will go through multiple reproductions, laying approximately five eggs at a time and between 20 and 100 in her lifetime.

Henriksen recommends watching out for itchy bumps or welts. Bed bugs tend to bite in a pattern or line. When changing sheets it’s a good idea to inspect the bed, mattress, headboard, box spring, and dust ruffle. Pepper-like flakes can be a sign of bed bug excrement or blood debris.

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6/7/2011 How Hotels Can Avoid Bedbugs: Experts Give Top Tips To Avoiding Bedbug Infestation

Bed bugs can be a real “pest” for hoteliers! We ask Bed Bugs experts, Heat and Go, how to stop them becoming an endemic throughout your building.

Operations manager, Cliff Eccles, reveals all.

1. Early Detection System
   Bed bug detection is now made easier with electronic “sniffing devices!” It’s like having a canine detective in your pocket! It is used by professional pest technicians to locate those hard-to-find pockets of bed bugs – they usually hide in confined spaces. After a few hours in these spaces, the CO2 they produce builds up and an electronic bed bug detector can indicate their presence.
2. In-House Staff Training
   To provide early detection your Staff need to know how to identify a bed bug – the signs of activity, where they are most likely to hide, where to detect them and what to do in order to stop them spreading! Through staff training, you can understand the insect and detect them early, prevent them spreading and minimise expense and loss of revenue.
3. Mattress Encasements
   The first thought is often to throw away the mattress which can be expensive and time-consuming to replace. With a heat treatment, the mattress and all other furniture in the room is cleansed against bed bug eggs and adults. To stop the mattress becoming re-infested, specially developed mattress encasements are available, which are bite proof and totally sealed to stop Bed Bugs harbouring on the mattress. An encasement is recommended after every heat treatment to minimise harbourages. A range of suitable sizes are available.
4. Annual Room Inspections
   Part of your due diligence against bed bugs is ensuring visitors don’t get bitten. Therefore, you need to declare at some point that the room has been thoroughly inspected and is bed bug free. Heat and Go’s trained technicians can provide a documented room inspection, so the room can be declared bed bug free.
5. Heat Treatments
   Bed bugs need to be heat treated. We use wireless temperature probes strategically placed to provide consistent feedback to our technicians who will make adjustments as necessary until the correct temperature to kill bed bugs and their eggs has been achieved.

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5/20/2011 Ohio Bedbug Complaints Double In Public Housing: Lucas County Parqwood Apartments Amongst The Worst

Bed bug complaints in public housing have doubled since last year, according to the Lucas County Health Department.

It’s so bad at one apartment complex that residents have been displaced and now crews are doing routine inspections with a specialized dog! However, it’s a problem that can easily be prevented.

Bed bugs are such a problem at Parqwood Apartments that special dogs were brought in to inspect each unit. Paul Bollinger, regional manager of Lucas Metropolitan Housing Authority, says, “Very similar to a drug dog or a cadaver, very same concept. There taught to sniff certain things, and the bed bug has a unique smell that’s only picked up by a K-9.”

This is the second time in less than a year that dogs have been used to inspect every apartment. “Been dealing with them for the past 24 months. The last 18, we’ve gone exclusively to doing heat treatments as opposed to chemical,” says Bollinger.

Since September, nearly 70 apartments have received heat treatment. During that time, residents were displaced. According to the Lucas County Health Department, complaints have gone up 50 percent since last year!

“It’s an issue of re-entry. We’re comfortable that when a unit is heat treated that it’s pest free, so our problems come back from reentry.”

In many cases, bed bugs are carried into a home after vacation, but authorities from lmha aren’t blaming hotels. “If they’re shopping at second hand stores, garage sales and getting used items from friends and family, if they’re not diligent in inspecting those items, they’re not bringing them back in, then we’re working against each other.” For those of you second-hand shoppers out there, simply putting clothes in the dryer on high heat will kill bed bugs. Experts also suggest getting a steamer, which will allow you to kill them on furniture.

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4/6/2011 Bedbug Task Force Created In Nassau County NY: County Executive Edward Mangano & District Attorney Kathleen Rice Team Up On Creation

(Long Island, N.Y.) This week the newly-created Bed Bug Task Force will hold a workshop meeting in Freeport’s Recreation Center for property managers, housing inspectors, and landlords interested in bed bug management. Nassau County Executive Edward Mangano and Nassau County District Attorney Kathleen Rice have teamed up to create the Bed Bug Task Force. A second meeting is also available for tenants and homeowners.

The task force began after the Nassau County Department of Health Complex in Uniondale for Health and Human Services was infected with the pests last year. Several meetings were arranged between county officials and members of the Civil Service Employee Association Local 830, including the union’s president, to deal with the issue of bed bugs in the workplace. The problem was ongoing, spanning at least a few months, and some sources claimed that the bed bugs were resisting efforts of removal.

The Nassau County Department of Health Complex was not the first significant government building to address the problem. In September of 2009 the New York City Department of Health Offices were infected, and some reports have stated that these types of buildings may be more at risk of infestation. Also, the Bronx Psychiatric Center in Morris Park was documented for a bed bug epidemic. The facility had between three and four hundred beds when union members working in the building reported the issue.

The Civil Services Employee Association Local 401 represented the facility’s nurses, housekeepers, and maintenance workers, totaling over five hundred and fifty employees. These workers spotted the bed bugs at a nursing station and tracked them to bedrooms inside a ward. The employees also filed a Public Employee Safety and Health Bureau compliant, and criticized the treatment procedure. They claimed that the bed bug outbreak was treated from room to room rather than by evacuating individual wards.

Following this action, the State Labor Department inspected the building, and bed bugs were found in at least two other wards on different occasions. A second union, the Public Employees Federation, which represents the hospital’s psychologists, psychiatrists, and secretaries, also took action against the bed bug issue. Bed bugs are able to bite anyone, whether it is patients or staff. They often cause anxiety, sleeplessness, and ailments that are especially devastating in a mental health facility.

According to the Nassau County Department of Health website, bed bug infestations declined after World War II but have been on the rise over the last decade. Reasons for the recent increase of these pests can include changes in pest management strategies, increase in travel, and transference of used furniture. The website lists contact numbers for tenants experiencing bed bug issues, leading them to the Nassau County Department of Health’s Office of Community Sanitation. Homeowners with infestation issues are directed to the Nassau County Department of Health Healthy Homes Program, and hotel/motel owners should reach the Nassau County Department of Health Bureau of Environmental Sanitation.

The new task force will include a worker from the New York State Integrated Pest Management Program and New York City Bed Bug Advisory Board. According to the New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene website, bed bugs are classified as small insects that feed on human blood. The can survive for months without feeding, and turn a brighter shade of red as their bodies swell with blood. They are largely nocturnal and affect humans while they are sleeping. The bites are painless but will become large, itchy welts in time, though they are not known to spread any diseases. They are transferred in luggage, furniture, and clothing and can travel between cracks in floors and walls.

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3/29/2011 NYC Spends $500k On Bedbug Website After Residents And Retailers Such As Hollister, Abercrombie & Fitch, & Juicy Couture Face Infestations

3/3/2011 Massive Bedbug Infestations Expected For 2011: Summertime Expected To Be The Worst

Here’s some news to make your skin crawl: Bedbug infestations will explode this year, particularly in the summer, experts say.

The bloodsuckers are already entrenched in the city and, like cockroaches, tend to thrive in July, August and September, said Jeffrey White, a research entomologist for Bedbugcentral.com.

“I firmly believe that this year is going to be worse than last year,” White said at a bedbug seminar Wednesday

“If we combine the seasonal trend, with the bugs getting more and more embedded in our community, that allows the bugs to make that resurgence all the more stronger.”

Nearly 7% of adults in the city – 404,000 people – reported bedbug infestations in 2009, the Health Department said.

While cities are particularly vulnerable to bedbugs, even remote areas like Alaska have reported an 800% increase, White said.

“It’s not just a New York problem,” he said.

Once you’ve got bedbugs, it can cost $1,200 to get rid of them professionally, White said.

“The big problem is not getting bit, it’s bringing them home,” said Adam Greenberg, president of BugZip, a $10-$20 plastic covering that shields luggage in hotel rooms.

Though a bedbug’s bite is thought not to spread disease, the thought of having your blood sucked while asleep can be psychologically devastating, White said.

“I’ve seen people completely emotionally crumble from dealing with it,” White said. “People just need to be educated. It’s not going away anytime soon.”

Preventing bedbug bedlam in your home

• Inspect hotel room mattresses, bedding, furniture and closet hangers for signs of infestation.
• Never put clothes in hotel drawers or on a hotel floor.
• Travel with resealable bags large enough to hold clothes.
• Use dissolvable laundry bags when travelling. The bags can go straight from your suitcase to the washing machine.
• If in doubt, don’t bring belongings in the house.
• Check your laptop. The bedbugs are attracted to the heat and body oils on the computer.
• Periodically inspect cribs, mattresses, box spring, head and foot boards and under the bed for signs of bedbugs. “After they’ve fed at night, they go and hide in the cracks and the crevices of the headboard and wait for you to come back to bed,” said Gemma Holmes, owner of the Nashville-based Holmes Pest Control.
• Check the alarm clock on your nightstand, along with electrical outlets. “It’s a warm spot,” Holmes said.

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2/20/2011 How Not To Let The Bedbugs Bite: New BedBug Book Chock Full Of Information On Prevention & Treatment

Humans have been tormented by insects since we first entered caves, but the bedbug is in a class of its own. They’re tiny, tenacious and love to travel.

New York-based entomologist Ralph Maestre makes a strong argument in The Bed Bug Book(released this week by Skyhorse Publishing) that we shouldn’t let sleeping arthropods lie — even if our own sleeping quarters aren’t infested.

He wrote the book, he says, to “intrigue, horrify, entertain and be useful.”

It is chock-full of information on the bedbug, its history, its life cycle and its current place in our ecosystem. Most importantly, the book is a useful guide for prevention of bedbugs and treatment if they do show up.

The key, Maestre says, is vigilance — and to make simple changes to thwart them. He says one reason our forebears put legs on beds is to keep the bedding off the ground and away from the bugs. We’ve forgotten that, and today we often put bedskirts under our mattresses — providing a perfect ladder for bedbugs to climb up and move in.

What follows is an edited version of the Star’s recent telephone interview with Maestre.

You say there is no other pest like the bedbug?

Because of the fear it induces in the human psyche. Even when an infestation is gone, there’s a lingering psychological recovery period of up to six months. It brings a lot of deep nightmares to the forefront.

Maybe it’s because they’re in our beds while we’re sleeping?

It’s also how we perceive the bedbug. If you have them you feel shame — because at some level you think it means you’re dirty or you’re poor or you’re not a good housekeeper. And if you have an allergic reaction it can feel like you’re being bitten again and again.

These were long periods when they went under the radar and you didn’t hear much about bedbugs. Why?

There’s many reasons for that. Many people thought that DDT wiped them out, and that’s not necessarily the case. Our appreciation of the importance of sanitation and the proper disposal of garbage helped. We changed — our furniture changed, our lifestyle changed, the way we did things changed. Then when they went away, we changed back. Now that this pest has returned we have to start thinking along those lines yet again.

Is pest management busier now than ever?

It’s a growing industry because the population continues to grow. But world travel is also allowing all sorts of new invasive species to enter the country, and bedbugs are just one.

So what are we doing wrong and what are we doing right?

What we’re doing wrong is panicking. There is absolutely no need. What we’re doing right (and it’s started in this past year) is that there are many people in the pest-control industry and government who are performing the research necessary to control these pests and educate the public. It’s vigilance that’s going to be the key to all of this: education, learning what they are, what they look like. Slowly but steadily, government is coming into the picture and realizing what steps are going to be needed to really help society.

You recommend checking for bedbugs everywhere. Do you really check every seam of your coat and every seat before you plant your butt?

I’m not talking about taking 15 minutes, but as you’re putting your coat on take a look-see on the outside, on the inside, stick your hands in the pockets and pull them inside out. And just that little bit, which takes maybe 10 to 15 seconds is probably going to be enough. If you know the location has had a bedbug problem then you want to be more thorough. If you’re staying in a hotel absolutely go through everything. If you go into a movie theatre, go through everything a little more thoroughly than you normally would. If you’re taking the train or the bus, take just a quick look-see.

Travel seems to be a big culprit.

One person may introduce the bedbug into a hotel room and then the next person is in the hotel room the next night. They may pick up one or two of them and then leave. Then a third person checks in. The exposure becomes exponential. That’s why vigilance in that situation is so important. It may take several days before the hotel itself becomes aware that there’s a problem in the room and reacts to it.

So there’s still much to learn about these guys.

They’re doing so at university levels all the time, learning about the behaviour. One example: There are 10 to 12 different pheromones that will attract bedbugs. Most males and nymphs (young ones) will congregate in and around that area, and so do females that aren’t pregnant. But for those females already pregnant, it acts as a repellent. That’s why no one has been able to come up with some sort of trap, like a roach motel, to attract bedbugs. You’ll catch some, but you’re not going to catch all of them.

Continue Reading More: How Not To Let The Bedbugs Bite