www-bedbug.com

Michael Potter from the University of Kentucky College of Agriculture extension service was featured in an article in the Duluth News Tribune, giving tips on how to spot a bed bug. His suggestions included:

• Typically, bedbugs like to stay as close as possible to their human hosts. So look for dark fecal spots — digested human blood — or even the bugs themselves on bedsheets, in the seams of a mattress, between the mattress and boxspring, in the crevices of a boxspring, and in the corners of the mattress by the headboard.

• To thoroughly inspect your bedding, Potter recommends dismantling the bed and standing all of the components on edge so that upper and lower surfaces can be examined.

• Check areas near the bed, including upholstered chairs and sofas, including seams, tufts, skirts and crevices.

• Nightstands and dressers should be emptied and examined inside and out, then tipped over to inspect the woodwork beneath. Often, the bugs will be hiding in cracks, corners and recesses, Potter said.

• If you’re staying in a hotel that has a headboard, lift it up and inspect the area between the wall and the headboard. Potter said hotel managers won’t like that, “but if an exterminator were to go in, that would be one of the first places they would look.”

• Potter said heavy infestations may have a musty or “buggy” smell, but the odor often isn’t apparent and shouldn’t be relied on for detection.

• Also be sure to look in the crevices of a couch and on carpet edges. When staying in a hotel, Potter recommends not putting your luggage on the floor, where bedbugs can easily crawl inside.

Colleen Cannon, an entomologist with Plunkett’s Pest Control in Minneapolis, said as bedbugs grow they molt their skin, which is light brown and also can be found in the same crevices of bedding, couches and carpet.

Cannon was featured in several article in the Minneapolis area, which has seen an increase in bed bugs recently.

See “Apartment residents finding bugs in their beds” in the Duluth News Tribune and “Bedbug infestations on the rise” from the St. Paul Pioneer Press.

http://www.pestcontrolmag.com

Let’s get right to it:

“Bed bugs are increasingly becoming a problem within residences of all kinds, including homes, apartments, hotels, cruise ships, dormitories and shelters.”

That’s the Harvard School of Public Health speaking, and it’ll tell you more, much more, at http://www.hsph.harvard.edu/bedbugs/invade.

The National Pest Management Association tells The Associated Press that calls to exterminators to come kill bedbugs have increased fivefold in four years.

For centuries, bedbugs were one of many little afflictions mankind just had to live with, but by late last century they had almost disappeared, probably because of the widespread use of DDT.

Many people thought their existence was between a myth and a joke.

Now the bedbugs are making a comeback, not just here but in Europe and Australia as well.

Bedbugs are small — the biggest ones are a quarter-inch long, rust-brown in color, shaped like a flattened football and are very fast. Beds and bedding are not their sole habitat, but they are nocturnal and, at night, the bed is where their favorite food — us — is most likely to be found.

They tend to arrive as unwelcome companions to welcome guests, which is why they initially turn up in places with high turnover like hotels and dorms.

Then they have an unpleasant tendency to accompany their unwitting hosts home, where they can be a nuisance to get rid of. Several Web sites, including Harvard’s, tell you how.

If it’s any consolation, their presence is not a commentary on the level of housekeeping; the bugs can set up shop anywhere.

Until we regain the upper hand over this pest, that old bedtime benediction is not just to amuse the children anymore: “Sleep tight and don’t let the bedbugs bite.”

Residents of the Tri-Towers Apartment and Senior Complex in Duluth’s Central Hillside have been reporting bed bug infestations, the Duluth News Tribune reports.

While the building had never dealt with an infestation, local, state and national entomologists say bedbug reports are becoming more common.

At Tri-Towers, a Section 8 building run by the Duluth Housing and Redevelopment Authority, the bedbugs got inside when a resident brought in an infested mattress from another building, according to Rick Ball, executive director of the HRA.

The resident discovered that the mattress had bedbugs and threw it into the garbage area outside the building, but did not tell anybody.

Another resident later saw the mattress and brought it back inside the building. When the bugs were later discovered, the resident told management, Ball said.

Ball did not know how many units were infested.

http://www.pctonline.com/news/news.asp?ID=4380

DuluthNewsTribune.com

Friday, August 4, 2006

Bed bugs, the longtime scourge of nursery rhymes, have made a real world comeback, leaving experts scratching their heads to find a solution.

Before World War II, infestations were as common as polio, but improvements in hygiene and the widespread use of DDT (not available at Whole Foods) helped relegate the little brown bloodsuckers to bedtime myth.

Now entomologists and pest control professionals are reporting a dramatic increase in infestations throughout America.

A combination of factors such as less aggressive spraying, environmentally friendly poison, and increased travel may be to blame for the current outbreak.

Emil Steiner

TrackBack URL for this entry:
http://blog.washingtonpost.com/cgi-bin/mt/mtb.cgi/9317

BY STEVE PATTERSON Staff Reporter

It began as a pinch on the wrist in the middle of the night.

It ended, a suburban couple said, like something out of a horror movie.

During a stay at a San Francisco hotel, John and Jennifer Fioti found out the hard way that their room was infested with bedbugs.

“They were all over the bed, they were crawling on our suitcases, on the bed next to us — it was terrible,” said John Fioti.

The Fiotis filed a lawsuit this week against Starwood Hotels and Resorts Worldwide, which operates the Four Points by Sheraton San Francisco Airport, where the couple stayed.

They’re suing for the medical bills each incurred after the August 2005 stay, and also for the emotional distress they say the incident caused.

“Bedbug infestation is a serious problem hotels know about and need to do something about,” said an attorney for the Fiotis, Thomas Cronin. “If they don’t take the problem seriously, they’re putting their guests in harm’s way.”

John Fioti, a Bartlett lawyer, called it “the kind of thing you hear about, that you see on TV, but you never think it’s going to happen to you.”

John Fioti said he joined his wife for a business trip to California and checked into the hotel for their final night there.

Jennifer Fioti, a corporate event planner, awoke to a pinch on the wrist, and they saw what they thought were beetles on the bed — which they brushed off before going back to sleep, John Fioti recalled.

But minutes later, John Fioti felt bites on his neck and pulled another bug away, finding blood on his hand, he said.

Bloodstained sheets

“We pulled the sheets back and found a half-dozen of them,” he said. “Then we found bloodstains on the sheets, which we found out later are an indicator of a bedbug infestation.”

What appeared to be ink blotches on the mattress, he said, turned out to be excrement from the bedbugs.

They fled the room, he said, and hotel employees were slow to refund their money, and put their check-out information in a book separate from others, with other notations about bedbugs.

Hotel officials did not return calls Wednesday.

Bedbugs are about the size of a seed and can attach themselves to clothing. Infestations were reported at several New York hotels earlier this year, and in 2003 a judge awarded a couple $372,000 in damages for the distress bedbugs caused them.

Cronin said hotels are often reluctant to properly fumigate a hotel for bedbugs, due to the cost of shutting it down.

“A guy with a can of Raid isn’t good enough,” he said.

spatterson@suntimes.com

Chicago Sun-Times

http://www.suntimes.com/output/news/cst-nws-bedbugs24.html