Although bed bugs have been around for quite some time, there is a huge resurgence of these pesky creatures and many are wondering why. The answer is very simple but there are a lot of factors that play into it. Since humans are traveling at much higher rates and are living closer together in metropolitan places, bed bugs are able to infest more places through luggage and human hosts and go from one shared living space to another with ease.
Brooke Borel was a young science reporter when her Brooklyn apartment became infested with bedbugs. Three times. The experience showed her how much bedbugs can turn people’s lives upside down, and how hard they are to get rid of.
Talking from her (de-infested) apartment in New York, she explains the origins of the bedbug in bat-infested caves and why they’re on the rise today, pulls the curtain back on bedbug sex, and offers practical advice for those unlucky enough to become infested.
COURTESY UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO PRESS
Cimex lectularius, aka the bedbug, is one of the most repulsive critters on Earth. What attracted a nice girl like you to it?
Well, I had bedbugs in New York three times, starting in 2004. I’m a science reporter, and the second and third time, I became really interested in them and started writing short news articles about them. Reporting those, I realized there was an opportunity for a larger project because of the stories I was hearing from entomologists.
What attracts them to us?
They’re attracted to the CO2 in our breath and the heat of our bodies. Other blood feeders like the mosquito are attracted to some of the other hundreds of chemicals we emit, so it may be that they’re also detecting those. Bedbugs only eat blood, so they need us not to breed but to live.
These things are not just painful—they’re almost impossible to get rid of, aren’t they? Tell us about some of the extraordinary measures that people use.
If you’re following the instructions from a pest control operator, it still is a difficult process to go through. You have to take all of your laundry and bedding to the Laundromat and wash and dry it at high temperatures. You will also probably have to use insecticide sprays, although those are working less and less because the bedbugs have built resistance to many that we’re able to use in our bedrooms.
A recent study has shown that Phoenix has been listed as the “buggiest” as a result of studying data from Thumbtack. Because of how large Phoenix is and how closely Phoenix borders rural desert, there are all kinds of insects, bugs and pests that end up in Phoenician’s homes. If you haven’t killed a scorpion in your home, you haven’t been in Arizona very long. Now bed bugs are becoming more of a problem in the Phoenix area. Let Arizona Heat Pest help you get rid of an infestation.
Metro Phoenix tops the list for urban areas infested with creepy critters, a services-finding website says.
Thumbtack released its findings this week in a Top-10 list and article, declaring that “Phoenix, Arizona was far and away the leading bug zone.”
The site’s representatives “looked at 159 of the largest metro areas across the U.S. and measured the number of requests for pest-removal services, relative to the population in that metro, using these figures to develop the Thumbtack Pest Index… The categories we included in our measure of pest-removal requests were pest-control services, bed bug extermination, outdoor pesticide application, and termite and pest inspection.:
Based on those criteria, metro Phoenix rated a perfect 100 on the index. The next highest was the San Antonio, Texas, area with a pest index of 60.
Thumbtack.com
Why might this area be the buggiest? Maybe it’s the raw variety of bugs here: Phoenix is well-known for its scorpions and Africanized bees, but it can also be a hot spot for mosquitoes that carry the West Nile virus, swarms of nasty flies, and the beloved cockroach.
Lucas Puente, economic analyst with Thumbtack, said he can’t explain it, and was a “little surprised by the story the data told.” Possibly, the lack of a long, freezing winter means a more prolific bug season, he surmised.
At New Times’ request, Thumbtack released an additional chart that shows the breakdown of bugs mentioned in the requests for service. Cockroaches, spiders, ants, and termites generate the most requests. Six percent of people seeking services didn’t know what kind of bug problem they had, which is never a good thing. Scorpions fall in the 12 percent of “other.” But they’re a special problem here, Puente acknowledged.
“Of note, there were far more requests describing problems with scorpions in Phoenix than in any other metropolitan area,” he said.
Johnny Dilone, spokesman for the Maricopa County Environmental Services department, said the county can’t confirm Thumbtack’s designation of metro Phoenix as “buggiest.”
“I think I’d have to agree with all the bugs I see everywhere, but that’s just personal,” he said.
People from other areas often think Phoenix doesn’t have as many skeeters as other, more humid places they’ve lived, but even if they’re right, Dilone said, they soon realize that the Valley has its fair share.
Read more at: http://bit.ly/1GHkMaG
A recent survey that is the result of collaboration from the University of California, Colorado State University, New Mexico State University, University of Arizona and the University of Hawaii, has been released about how bed bugs behave in multi-unit or shared housing situations. There are several factors that contribute to the proliferation of infestations in these kinds of areas and it is important to understand what those factors are to prevent further infestation of others.
Bed bug management is especially challenging in public and subsidized housing environments, apartments, and other low-income, multi-unit housing (MUH) situations. In these environments, high rates of resident turnover, lack of economic and educational resources, ease of bed bug dispersal between units, and communication barriers such as literacy and language limitations may all contribute to chronic infestations. Researchers and policymakers recognize the need to address this challenging situation and to design valuable and timely extension and applied research programs in order to assist pest management professionals (PMPs) engaged in this work. Data on bed bug incidence and management approaches in the western United States are lacking as compared to those on the Eastern Seaboard and in the Midwest. To this end, several western urban entomologists and extension specialists have recently formed a work group with funding provided by the USDA’s Western Integrated Pest Management Center (WIPMC). The first task of the WIPMC Bed Bug Work Group was to assess the current prevailing bed bug management practices in use, the most challenging aspects associated with bed bug management in MUHs, and the self-reported needs of the industry that may improve bed bug management outcomes in these environments. An online survey was developed and distributed nationally (pctonline.com), regionally (via Work Group members’ websites and personal networks), and in California (Target Specialty Products client lists) to capture these desired data. A total of 114 individual PMPs completed this survey, with over 76% of these responses coming from the targeted western region (AK, AZ, CA, CO, HI, ID, MT, NV, NM, OR, UT, WA, WY), mostly from California (60% of total responses). Data presented are from all 114 respondents. Most (64%) PMPs represented small businesses (less than 20 total employees), but some (15%) hailed from large pest control companies (100 or more total employees). Though considered a very experienced group of pest management professionals (average experience in pest control industry was 22.7 years), most had only started managing bed bugs during the past 10 years (mean duration of bed bug experience = 9.6 years), thus reflecting the recent resurgence of bed bugs as key urban pests in the United States. The number of PMPs responding to the survey was low compared to the total number of licensed individuals within the region. Therefore, we caution PCT’s readers to consider that our results and findings may differ from other and future surveys on PMP attitudes, behaviors, and practices involving bed bug detection and management. A summary of responses to the survey is as follows:
PMPs’ Attitudes, Beliefs, Observations.
Most respondents (73%) believed that bed bug infestations had increased in 2014 as compared to 2013 while some (22%) believed that the levels of infestation had not changed during this period. This trend was stable when considering responses from different regions and states, suggesting that bed bug incidence may be increasing throughout the nation. Virtually half (49%) of all respondents considered summer to be the season with the most calls for bed bug services, while another large proportion (44%) reported no differences between seasons. It is unclear whether summer incidence may be driven by increased human travel, increased ambient temperature, or some combination of these and perhaps unknown factors. Though resistance to insecticides within bed bug populations has been a concern for some time now, the majority (57%) of respondents in this survey did not believe they had encountered resistance in the field. This was true even when considering data only from the Midwest and the Eastern Seaboard, where resistance in field populations has been reported as widespread. Furthermore, though insecticide resistance may be more easily recognized by those with the most years working in the field, the level of experience of respondents had no effect on this reported belief. MUHs, the focus of this survey, were considered by most respondents to harbor the worst (highest density) bed bug infestations, to be the most difficult locations in which to manage bed bugs, and to be the locations most often treated by their companies (96%, 65%, 74%, respectively) (Figure 1, above). Hotels/motels and shelters were also believed to harbor high-density infestations.
There is a lot of mystery surrounding bed bugs in the public eye. Not everyone reacts to bites the same way, it is difficult to get rid of them and there is a lot of misinformation out there. It is important to understand what bed bugs look like, how to prevent infestations, how to recognize infestations and to know when to call a professional service.
Bedbugs are flat, round and reddish brown, around a quarter-inch (7 millimeters) in length. The ones that typically plague humans are the common bedbug Cimex lectularius and the tropical bedbug Cimex hemipterus.
A few decades ago, bedbugs were somewhat of a novelty in developed countries. But since the early 2000s, infestations have become more common in places like the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom and Europe, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). A 2013 study in the journal Nature Scientific Reports suggested that bedbugs have evolved ways to resist insecticides.
The creatures don’t have wings and they can’t fly or jump. But their narrow body shape and ability to live for months without food make them ready stowaways and squatters. Bedbugs can easily hide in the seams and folds of luggage, bags and clothes. They also take shelter behind wallpaper and inside bedding, box springs and furniture. The ones that feed on people can crawl more than 100 feet (30 meters) in a night, but typically creep to within 8 feet (2.4 m) of the spot its human hosts sleep, according to the CDC.
Bedbugs reproduce by a gruesome strategy appropriately named “traumatic insemination,” in which the male stabs the female’s abdomen and injects sperm into the wound. During their life cycle, females can lay more than 200 eggs, which hatch and go through five immature “nymph” stages before reaching their adult form, molting after each phase. [Infographic: Bedbugs: The Life of a Mini-Monster]
Many people do not understand the psychological toll that bed bugs can take on those living with infestations. Bed bugs attack you when you are at your most vulnerable, asleep in your bed. As common as the bed bug problem is, many people do not hear about the honest truth of what it is really like to live with these pests.
Right now, everything I own is in garbage bags piled up in the middle of my kitchen and bathroom and filling my shower. It’s been that way for a week and a half and will continue to be so for at least another week on top of that. If you live in a major city, you might know what’s coming. If not, welcome to the hell that is bed bugs.
This isn’t the first time I’ve had bed bugs. Nor the second. It’s the third, and this time it’s taken two visits from the exterminators to (hopefully) rid our apartment of the tiny beasts. Luckily we were able to catch the bugs early before they got a real hold on the apartment. Unluckily, that’s mostly because rather than mosquito-esque little bumps, my bites turn into hardened ping-pong ball sized welts that itch for over a week. So when we have bed bugs, I know pretty quickly. And each time everything goes into bags. I stop sleeping. I avoid furniture on the street. I refuse to enter libraries.
I used to joke that I had bed bug PTSD. There’s a certain kind of anxiety that the seemingly invisible biters incite. But in fact, it might not be a joke. Research is starting to show that bed bug infections can leave people with anxiety, depression, and paranoia. And that’s normal. In fact, it would be weird for you not to be freaked out, says Stéphane Perron, a doctor and researcher at the University of Montreal. “If you have bed bugs, and if you don’t care, that’s not a normal reaction. You should be worried. I would consider it a normal reaction to a stressor.”
As we have talked about in previous posts, bed bugs are extremely hard to get rid of. There are many different tactics that companies use to eliminate bed bugs but heat is proven to be one of the most effective and is where we get the name Arizona Heat Pest.
Do not let these parasites ruin your life. Do not let them invade your home. If they are already there, you need to take all of the steps that you can to dislodge them from this position and kill them all. Killing them with heat is simple and effective, making it one of the best tactics that you can choose.
The entire process will be broken down below, including what you need to do, how much it costs, and when you should use heat instead of a different method to eradicate them from your home. If they are making it so that your home is not the clean, relaxing place that it should be for you and your family, keep reading to learn how to get rid of them forever.
Killing them with heat simply entails getting the interior of your home up to a level of heat that they cannot survive. If you have ever been in a sauna, you know just how intense it can be. You know how it reaches every corner of the building, allowing no escape unless you exit the building altogether.
Since you cannot see all of the bugs or all of their eggs, you need this sort of a treatment since heat can hunt them down for you. There will be no need to locate their nests when your entire home has been heated up until it is a death trap for these bugs.
In the business of bed bug removal, there isn’t really ever a dull day. There are constantly new places where they are popping up and new people that need to be helped but sometimes we get there after the problem has been going on for a while and there are some horrifying things that bed bugs are capable of doing if we let them run amuck. Check out an interview with a bed bug exterminator from Brooklyn and a few of his horror stories from working the job for many years.
In the past few years, have you gotten more calls about bed bugs or fewer calls? More. But the one thing I do see is that people are starting to raise their level of acceptance with these bugs. I’m finding them all over.
What does that mean, “raise their level of acceptance?” Well, when these were first starting, it was like alarms were going off. People were, “AAGH, I’ve got bed bugs!” Now it’s like, “Eh, I’ve got a couple of bed bugs.” It seems like they’re becoming a little more nonchalant, like an occasional roach or something.
So what’s the difference, in terms of threat level, between the occasional roach and a couple of bed bugs? Well, the occasional roach would be in your kitchen by a water source, eating your food and things like that. The few bed bugs would be eating YOU. They’re parasites. They feed off human blood.
How concerned should people be? If you just have a few, is it worth paying an exterminator hundreds of dollars? Why can’t you kill them yourself? When people try to self-exterminate, they’re not taught how to find cracks and crevices. It’s very small details you’ve gotta pay attention to when you spray. You tend to make them spread.
How is that? Because once a pesticide is close to a bug, they will cross it, and they’ll scatter away from it. If they leave you and they can’t go back there, they end up going for your outlets or a hole in your ceiling where a light fixture is or something, and they’ll spread to other apartments. Or if you had them in the master bedroom, they’ll end up spreading to one of the smaller bedrooms.
What’s the worst job you’ve gone on? Ok, for me, I’ve come across a lot of different ones, but probably the one that was most shocking to me was when I was going to a single-room-occupancy to do a general treatment, for roaches and things like that. When I walked in, the gentleman was sitting on his couch, and his wall looked like it was covered in spots. And I’m staring at it, because it looked unusual to me, and I’m wondering why these spots looked like they were moving.
And when I got a little bit closer, there were hundreds and hundreds of bedbugs covering his wall behind his couch. I looked at the guy; he was chewed up, there wasn’t a spot on his face that didn’t have a bite on it. I said, “Sir. Look behind you.” He said, “They’re cockroaches.” I said, “They’re not cockroaches, they’re bedbugs, and they’re eating you.”
Do you have a bed bug problem but it just won’t go away? Have you tried home remedies or maybe even other extermination companies but still have bugs? Are you left wondering, why is it so hard to get rid of bed bugs? Well, here is what makes it hard to remove them. Bed bugs are the perfect storm of characteristics that make them difficult to remove from somewhere once they have infested it.
First of all, bed bugs are small, flat, and adept at squeezing themselves into tiny spaces. They can hide in places we’d never think of looking for them, like behind loose wallpaper or under electrical switch plates.
To successfully eliminate an infestation, you’ve got to find and kill every viable bed bug, which is not an easy task.
Second, bed bugs multiply quickly. A single female can lay 500 eggs during her life, and within a few months her offspring can reproduce as well. A few individuals introduced to a new environment can increase exponentially. Depending on conditions, bed bugs can produce 3 or 4 generations in one year. Additionally, bed bugs reproduce most quickly in temperatures between 70*deg; and 82*deg; F, right in the range where most people keep their thermostats.
Bed bugs can go a remarkably long time without feeding, should no host be present to provide them with needed blood meals. Scientists have documented adult bed bugsliving up to 550 days without eating, and nymphs may last for months. So simply leaving an infested dwelling unoccupied for a few months in hopes of starving them out will do nothing to discourage the little freeloaders.
Just to make their extermination more difficult, bed bugs can sense chemical odors, and may avoid areas where cleaning agents or even pesticides have been applied.
Bed bugs can be a real hassle to deal with and get rid of. One of the last things you need when finding out about a Bed Bug infestation is to have to dig through the pile of pest companies to help solve the problem. There is a process you can follow that will help you find the best company for your situation.
Making sure to vet any company for saftey in chemical product usage and alternative measures will surly gain you a better result! We hope you find AZ Heat Pest Services alternative measures to be the best in Arizona.
According to Andy Architect of the National Pest Management Association, there are more that 19,000 pest management firms operating in the United States. Unfortunately, these companies are not all created equally. Here are some steps from entomologist, Jeff White, to narrow your options and find the best:
Use web and telephone directories to locate several pest management firms in your area. Some may designate themselves as bed bug specialists, but this designation should only be an indicator and not a deciding factor.
Only utilize companies that have been registered to apply pesticides by the pesticide regulatory agency in your state. Lacking this license should serve as an immediate red flag. To find your state’s agency visit: http://npic.orst.edu/state1.htm.
Search for companies that use integrated pest management (IPM) services. IPM is a form of pest management designed to minimize the use of pesticides. Companies that utilize an IPM approach are more likely to provide ongoing monitoring and a multidisciplinary approach to bed bug management (more on this later).
INTERVIEWING COMPANIES: QUESTIONS YOU SHOULD KNOW TO ASK
Once you hire a pest management firm they may be entering your home and spraying pesticides or performing services that can cost hundreds of dollars. Interviewing the selected companies is not only your right, it is strongly advised.
Ask companies about their membership in recognized national, state, and local pest control associations. Membership to these associations requires periodic evaluation of their pest management protocols as well as ethical business practices. Some key associations to look for include:
The National Pest Management Association (NPMA), state pest management associations, QualityPro, the Better Business Bureau (BBB), and bedbugFREE. Companies may also be members of equivalent associations.
Membership with the bedbugFREE national network is a particularly important affiliation to consider when bed bug treatments are desired. This membership indicates that companies are not only members of NPMA and/or QualityPro, but have also had their bed bug treatment protocols evaluated to ensure they share multidisciplinary treatment methods and philosophies similar to Bed Bug Central’s protocol.
Bed bugs are tiny bugs that like to hide to as best they can during the day. They come out at night to feed on their favorite food, blood. Being that these bugs are very sneaky it makes it very difficult even to the trained eye to correctly identify a Bed Bug infestation. This is why it is very important to not jump to conclusions as soon as you receive a bite during the night. Also, more importantly, why it is very important to remember that just because you don’t see any bedbugs upon investigation, does not necessarily mean you DO NOT have bed bugs.
This is exactly why you should have a professional Bed Bug inspection done by the best in Arizona. AZ Heat Pest Services is here to help you get control of your home again.
The only way to know for sure if you have bed bugs is to produce an actual sample of the bug itself (methods for doing this are discussed below). Do not automatically assume that any bite-like mark is a bed bug bite. Also it is important to realize that medical professionals cannot give a positive diagnosis simply by examining bite symptoms, they can only suggest some possible explanations for what may have caused the bites/symptoms to occur.
If you are experiencing bites but have not seen any bugs, you should consider the circumstances in which the bites are occurring. For example, there is a very good chance that you have bed bugs if you waking up each morning with bite symptoms on your body that were not present when you went to sleep. A situation like this would be a good reason to investigate the possibility that bed bugs are present. in the car, at work, etc. are much less likely to be caused by bed bugs. It is also important to realize that just because you have looked for bed bugs and could not find them, does not mean that they are not there. These insects lead a very cryptic and secretive lifestyle and will often go undetected. It is best to have a highly trained professional conduct the inspection for you.
Occasionally you may see evidence of a bed bug infestation without actually seeing any bed bugs. Bed bugs leave fecal stains in the areas they inhabit. These stains are actually partially digested blood but remember that it will not be red unless you crush a bed bug that has just recently fed. As the blood is digested it turns black and therefore the bed bug droppings usually consist of several black spots in one area. The fecal spots will not flake off if rubbed and will smear if wiped with a wet rag.
Remember the key to knowing if you have an active bed bug infestation is to produce a live sample of a bed bug and there are several ways that you can easily do this including:
Visual inspection of sleeping and resting areas such as beds and upholstered furniture.Carefully examine the areas beneath fitted sheets, along the edges of mattress piping, if no bugs or evidence of bugs are found, remove the mattress and continue with inspection of the box spring paying close attention to the four corners under the plastic corner guards and the on the underside of the box spring where the dust cover is stapled into the frame. Keep in mind that bed bugs can easily be missed during a visual inspection so using one or more of the other methods below is recommended if no bugs are found during a visual inspection.
Most respondents (73%) believed that bed bug infestations had increased in 2014 as compared to 2013 while some (22%) believed that the levels of infestation had not changed during this period. This trend was stable when considering responses from different regions and states, suggesting that bed bug incidence may be increasing throughout the nation. Virtually half (49%) of all respondents considered summer to be the season with the most calls for bed bug services, while another large proportion (44%) reported no differences between seasons. It is unclear whether summer incidence may be driven by increased human travel, increased ambient temperature, or some combination of these and perhaps unknown factors. Though resistance to insecticides within bed bug populations has been a concern for some time now, the majority (57%) of respondents in this survey did not believe they had encountered resistance in the field. This was true even when considering data only from the Midwest and the Eastern Seaboard, where resistance in field populations has been reported as widespread. Furthermore, though insecticide resistance may be more easily recognized by those with the most years working in the field, the level of experience of respondents had no effect on this reported belief. MUHs, the focus of this survey, were considered by most respondents to harbor the worst (highest density) bed bug infestations, to be the most difficult locations in which to manage bed bugs, and to be the locations most often treated by their companies (96%, 65%, 74%, respectively) (Figure 1, above). Hotels/motels and shelters were also believed to harbor high-density infestations.
