With back to school shopping getting underway a lot of parents are adding bed bug protective mattress encasement’s to their list.  When looking for a bed bug mattress encasement there are some things to take into mind.  Make sure you get a good quality mattress encasement that will surround the whole bed, one that is made of durable material, and has a zipper with fine teeth that bed bugs can not escape out of.

Regular mattress covers don’t fully encompass the bed, as a rule, which makes them less than effective for bed bug problems. If the abed bugs are not fully sealed in, these parasites will simply move around the mattress cover and come at you from on top of it. This type of mattress cover can keep you reasonably safe from bites at a hotel, assuming you only stay one night.

Another problem is what kind of fabric they’re made of. Bed bugs have strong sharp mandibles or teeth, and they have absolutely no difficulty biting through skin. Because of this, you’re going to need a mattress cover from a very thick fabric. The fabric in these bed bug  mattress encasement’s also needs to be tightly knit. If it isn’t both of these, the bedbugs will just bite through the fabric and bite you anyway.

Proper bed bug mattress encasement’s are specially designed to work around both of these problems. First, they’re designed so that they completely cover the mattress and, usually, the box springs as well. They zipper shut and create a sealed environment. No bed bugs getting, no humans being made into a tasty cocktail.

PHILADELPHIA (CBS) – As your child heads off to college, a national retailer wants to make sure he’s protected from little critters.

Head into any Bed Bath and Beyond store and you’ll see parents and students wandering the aisles grabbing items found on a list of suggested things needed for your college dorm, such as lamps, storage boxes and items needed to protect against bed bugs.

Angel Varricchio, the store’s district customer service trainer says start with a mattress protector, “Typically you think of a mattress protector to protect a new mattress, in this instance we want to protect you from the mattress that you’re sleeping on.”

She say adding layers between that used mattress and you is ideal, “It is going to protect you from bed bugs and other allergens as well. It’s not a new mattress, so just a barrier between you and other people who have used it before.”

So top the protector with a mattress pad and top that off with a mattress enhancer for comfort.

When buying a bed bug mattress encasement during your back to school shopping or anytime for that matter make sure it encases the whole mattress and box spring, is made of durable material, and has a small enough zipper that the bed bugs can not escape out of.  You may also want to take duct tape and tape around the zipper seams for added protection.

Bed Bug Management Practices

Managing a bed bug infestation is a difficult task that requires removal or treatment of all infested material and follow-up monitoring to ensure the infestation has been eliminated and does not return. Management will require employing several nonchemical methods such as vacuuming, washing bedding at a high temperature, using steam or heat treatment, and sealing up hiding places.

Insecticides may be required to eliminate serious infestations; however few active ingredients are federally registered for bed bugs for over-the-counter use. At the professional control level, there are more registered products; however, resistance among bed bug populations is common, and low-level infestations are difficult to detect. There has been some success combining chemical and nonchemical products with increased sanitation and habitat modification.

Monitoring and Detection. You can detect a bed bug infestation by searching for the pests or their fecal spots, egg cases, and shed skins (exuviae). Current research reports more than 85% of bed bugs are found in or near the bed, so inspections for infestations should focus on the mattress, bed frame, and headboard areas. Lift the mattress and inspect all seams and surfaces as well as the box springs. You may need to dismantle the bed. Use a flashlight to aid the inspection process.

Remember, these nocturnal insects are small. Although you can see adults and aggregations of nymphs with the unaided eye, seeing the eggs requires a hand-magnifying lens. It may be easier to detect dark spots of dried bed bug excrement or the insects’ light-colored shed skins. A foul, rotting, bloody-meat smell might be present in heavily infested areas.

In addition to the bed area, the remaining 15% of infestations usually are in upholstered furniture other than beds, in bedroom cabinets, along baseboards, under wallpaper, and in carpets, wall hangings and similar hiding spots. Bed bugs prefer fabric or wood surfaces to metal or plastic. For heavy infestations, adjoining rooms, filing areas, and clutter can be out-of-way shelters. It takes patience and perseverance to find low-level infestations of such a persistent, nagging problem.

A new university study indicates an airborne aggregation pheromone, a behavior-modifying chemical, might help control infestation levels. With this new research, hopefully traps attractive to bed bugs soon will be commercially available.

Prevention. People usually bring bed bugs into their homes, in luggage or on clothes, after visiting an infested dwelling or hotel. If you travel frequently, watch for signs of bed bugs in your hotel room by checking under sheets and inspecting mattresses, especially if you have been bitten. If you suspect bed bugs, check your luggage before leaving and wash all your clothes as soon as you get home.

You also can bring bed bugs into your home on bedding or furniture. If you purchase second-hand furniture, especially beds or mattresses, thoroughly inspect the item before bringing it into your home. If you remove infested mattresses or furniture from your home, do not leave it on the curb or porch. Take it immediately to the dump.

Managers of hotels, furnished apartments, dormitories, homeless shelters, and other facilities that house transient populations need to train staff to recognize signs of bed bug activity and take action as soon as they find an infestation. One proactive step a manager can take is to regularly replace beds, mattress, and bedding materials. Frequent laundering of bedding and placing items that could be infested in walk-in freezers during tenant change and turnover can help prevent the spread of bed bugs.

It is much easier to control a population when the infestation is small. Keep clutter down, so it is easier to inspect and bed bugs have fewer hiding places. Also, seal up cracks, crevices, and holes in bedding or furniture and other potential hiding sites.

Non-chemical Management. In addition to preventing the introduction of bed bugs, a number of other nonchemical control methods can help manage this pest. These methods are directed at killing or removing bugs or restricting access to beds or bedding materials.

You can remove bed bugs and eggs with the suction wand of a strong vacuum; however, you must target the vacuum on the seams of mattresses and box springs, along perimeters of carpets, under baseboards, and in other areas where bed bugs live. A single vacuuming rarely gets all bugs and eggs and, therefore, should be repeated. Portable steam cleaners can also be used to clean mattresses and furniture.

Commercial heating services are available to treat entire rooms in homes for bed bug infestations. The current label use for commercial heating services is 140°F for two hours or 130°F for three hours, which will kill most bed bugs and eggs. In California, providers of heat services must be licensed and bonded by the Structural Pest Control Board when treating for wood destroying pests. Chilling to a temperature of 32°F or lower and maintaining this temperature for several days also will kill bed bugs.

For suspected infestations in clothing or bedding, a home laundry drier is very good at killing bed bugs; only 10 to 15 minutes exposure is needed.

Mattress encasements specifically designed to keep out bed bugs are commercially available. Encasements are particularly useful for hotels or other facilities with many beds; however, their effectiveness at excluding bed bugs has not been thoroughly researched. In many cases, the best approach may be to throw out the mattress, clean the area thoroughly, and install a new mattress—with or without an encasement.

Other management practices include sealing up hiding places such as cracks and crevices in walls and around windows and doors where bed bugs can hide. As a temporary measure, you can exclude bed bugs from clean beds by coating bed legs with petroleum jelly or placing them inside glass jars or metal cans, which are too slippery for bed bugs to climb.

Insecticides. Insecticides alone won’t control bed bug infestations. Their use must be combined with a program of removing and cleaning infested beds, bedding, and other harborage sites then following up with a regular detection program to ensure treatment was effective.

The most effective bed bug pesticides are available to commercial pesticide applicators only. Professionals also have the equipment and expertise that allow a more effective application of insecticides than residents could do themselves. In addition, professionals have the training to detect and isolate infestations, which often allows for more effective control.

Insecticides may be applied as liquids directly to cracks, crevices, bed frames, baseboards, or similar sites, or they may be applied as dusts in cracks and crevices. Pesticides generally are not applied to mattresses or bedding because of risk to people.

Liquid insecticide formulations include:

Products containing the botanical insecticide pyrethrin, which gives quick knockdown but little long-term control;
Various synthetic pyrethroid products (cyhalothrin, bifenthrin, deltamethrin, and permethrin); and
Newer types of products including the pyrrole insecticide chlorfenapyr (Phantom) and the insect growth regulator hydroprene (Gentrol), which cause sterility in adults.

There is growing interest in the last two products, because some bed bug populations have developed resistance to pyrethroid insecticides and no longer can be effectively controlled by them. However, both newer products take up to several days to be effective.

Insecticides applied as dusts cling to the pest’s cuticle, wearing away the insect’s protective wax covering or poisoning the insect when it grooms itself. Several dust products used in bed bug management include boric acid, diatomaceous earth, fumed silica, and formulations of pyrethroids. These materials can provide long-term control as part of an integrated program if they are placed in out of-the-way places—such as under baseboards or in wall voids—that don’t get wet.

Do-It-Yourself Treatments. Although over-the-counter pesticide products that have “bed bug control” written on the label can be found on store shelves, they generally are not recommended. Performance of these products under actual field conditions is not known. If you need to use a pesticide, you are better off hiring a licensed, professional pesticide applicator with experience in treating bed bugs (see Pest Notes: Hiring A Pest Control Company listed in the References).

Residents do have an important role to play when their homes are infested with bed bugs. Once professional treatment has occurred, you should continue to monitor for bed bugs daily. Also, keep down clutter and vacuum previously infested areas regularly.

There’s no doubt about it: bed bugs are back! In fact, the recent Bugs Without Borders survey conducted by the National Pest Management Association and the University of Kentucky found that 95 percent of U.S. based professional pest management companies have encountered a bed bug infestation in the past year. Prior to 2000, only 25 percent of respondents had encountered a bed bug infestation. In addition, the NPMA’s Bed Bugs in America survey found that one out of five Americans has had a bed bug infestation in their home or knows someone who has encountered bed bugs at home or in a hotel.

The bedbugs go wherever people do – and not just to places with lax housekeeping. Niketown in Manhattan, for instance, was closed for four days in September because of a bedbug infestation.

“They’ve been on trains, buses. Just before Christmas, we had a guy who had them in the cab of his pickup truck,” Mulloy said. “We’re getting more and more office buildings.

Though insecticides may be the treatment of choice for killing bed bugs, other options do exist.

“There are several different methods that are effective in killing bed bugs. Heat is one of them. Others include steaming, freezing, vacuuming, and use of properly applied pesticides. You are getting a lot of information on the temperature at which bed bugs can be effectively killed because a lot of research is still being done in that area. The most current data that we have shows that all stages of bed bugs…will be killed at 122 degrees Fahrenheit.”

Factors considered when evaluating treatment methods include the extent of the infestation, the type of location that will be treated, and any budget parameters.

Treatment costs can fluctuate dramatically by protocol and region, says White.

Dr. Stephen Kells, associate professor and Extension and Research Entomologist at the University of Minnesota, who is conducting research on bed bugs, says humans have lived with bed bugs since the days of cave-dwelling.

Through research, he has found that freezing works well for smaller household items, like books. In order for the treatment to work the temperature has to be near or at freezing for approximately 6 to 10 days.

Steaming is another option, though not by utilizing a carpet steam cleaner. Instead, a steam generator must be used and the temperature must be between 160-180 degrees Fahrenheit in order to control bedbugs.

When treating with pesticides, Dr. Kells recommends multiple product types including dust, short action, and residual. “The reason is each has a specific area of use. Residual is used outside of rooms, dust to fill voids in the wall, and short action for beds and mattresses,” the professor says.

Question: If you put on “Off” or some other insect repellant before retiring in a hotel will this prevent them from biting? -Dolores Hill, Bessemer, Ala.

Answer: Although we have not specifically tested mosquito repellants on bed bugs, we have tested repellant insecticides. Bed bugs do not seem to respond in the slightest to repellent insecticides. In fact, they will sit on top of them until they die. These results have been confirmed by the older bed bug literature (Usinger 1966) who stated that many repellant materials were applied to bed frames in an attempt to keep bed bugs from crawling up, but none had any effect. Because we have not tested repellants on skin, we can’t say for sure whether bed bugs would be willing to stick their mouth parts though repellant treated skin or not. But we have found bed bugs to be very determined little creatures and I think it would be hard to stop a hungry bed bug. In addition, the repellants that you buy for mosquitoes last only a couple of hours before the effects begin to wear off. If you apply a repellant before getting into bed, a lot of the material could rub off on the sheets etc. Also, bed bugs are most active between 3 and 5 am, which is several hours after the time you would have put the on the repellant to go to bed. Bottom line, a repellant may prevent you from getting a bite or two but I do not believe that they will significantly hinder a hungry bed bug.

So you think you may have bed bugs in your apartment, house, or business.  First thing you do is go on Google to try and find an affordable bed bug inspection company.  You make the calls to figure out how much this bed bug inspection, evaluation is going to cost.  It seems most people are asking between $300.00 and $400.00 for their inspection service.  Then, you get a hold of a couple of places that offer free bed bug inspections or evaluations.   You think to yourself, wow this is great I can find out if I have bed bugs for free.

An important thing to remember is, nothing in life is free.

I recently talked with a person who told me a horror story about getting a free bed bug inspection or evaluation.  It seems they shopped around for prices of bed bug inspections and found a pretty big name in pest control offering a free inspection/evaluation.  Going the cheap route for this person did not end up cheaper.  In my opinion they got hoodwinked.  The inspector came in with a flashlight and magnifying glass.  He found,  what he said was bed bugs to be in the entire apartment.  The owner of the apartment had to have it exterminated at a cost of close to $2,500.00  That’s  right, this free bed bug inspection ended up costing almost $2,500.00.

Do I believe that the whole apartment had to be exterminated? No, of course not.  After further digging the person told me they were not even getting bed bug bites.  Someone they knew had mentioned they had a bed bug problem in their apartment and she wanted to protect herself just in case.

So, the moral of this bed bug story is if you think you are getting an inspection or evaluation for free, you will probably pay for it in the long run.  What seems to cost a little bit of money for a reputable bed bug inspection by a bed bug dog, probably will save you money in the long run.

Be on the lookout for bed bugs

Travel and college kids may bring them home

By Shane Symolon

AGAWAM, Mass. (WWLP) – Bed Bug experts warn we’re entering “high risk season” for finding the blood sucking insects.

Experts say an increase in travel and college kids returning home create a lot of the ways bugs can slip into luggage and end up in your house.

They say to be on the lookout for tiny red flecks they leave behind, or little black dots.

They say, more and more, highly trained dogs are being called in to sniff out bed bugs.

Krisanne Keene told 22News, “Depending on if you’re experienced at this or not, you have a 15 to 30 percent finding rate of these bugs, dogs are somewhere between 90 and 96 percent accurate.”

K-9′s are sensitive enough to find one bed bug or even one egg in a room.

A new eco-friendly way to kill bed bugs is to use heat.  A mobile bed bug killing heat unit has many advantages in preparing that your kids don’t bring home bed bugs from college.

New mobile heat truck is the new weapon against bed bugs and other pest.

Stratford, CT.   Northeast Heat Treatment LLC (www.northeastheatreatment.com and www.ecopestimination.com) announces this week the launch of a new business serving Connecticut and Massachusetts and upper Middle Atlantic areas businesses, apartment buildings and homes.
As background, the growing incidence of bed bug problems reported through the country which by some measures has reached epidemic proportions in the metro New York City area has highly migrated into other areas north and south of New York.
Many pest control operatives, entomologist and scientists all agree that high heat treatment is a highly effective strategy to kill bed bugs and any other insects without use of chemicals, the eco green approach.  Northeast Heat Treatments mobile box truck was specially designed to not only create high temperatures lethal to bed bugs and other insects but to also have temperature monitoring systems in place to measure the effectiveness of the treatment and protect assets.  There is no need to throw out sofas, beds, furniture, books anymore.   Once the assets are placed in the truck, the entire eradication process take no more than 2 hours bring effective solutions, saving money and giving customers a piece of mind.  Landlords who are faced with uncooperative tenants in dealing with bed bug infestations in their buildings can realize speed and effectiveness with the heat truck.
Co Founders of Northeast Heat Treatment LLC, Mike Morin and Don Frey say that his mobile heat treatment is a relief too many customers who fear elimination of bed bugs is not possible.  They also say their company has been getting calls from people who are seeking heat treatment on damp and watered damaged items.

Bed bugs are very sensitive to heat and are rapidly killed when exposed to temperatures over 113 degrees Fahrenheit. If your are using heat to kill the bed bugs, it needs to happen as fast as possible or the gradual temperature increase will cause the bugs to scatter and possibly lead to further infestation, such as to the room next door or the floor above, etc.  This is why it is optimal to kill any bed bug infestation in your furniture and or belongings in a secured area, such as a mobile heat treatment unit.  These bug killing heat treatment units are designed for your furniture and belongings to be brought into, enclosed, and heated until the bugs are killed.  After this is done your things may be brought back into your home bed bug free.

Heat is a pretty good tool to use against bed bugs. It’s nice and safe, and natural.  It is a very good method of exterminating bed bugs and other insects that is Eco-Friendly.  It reduces the amount of chemicals needed to treat a bed bug infestation.  In this day and age any strategy that is effective in killing bed bugs and cuts down on the amount of chemicals being put into our environment is a good thing.  Mobile heat treatment units for combating bed bugs is the new green method of pest extermination.  These innovative mobile heat treatment units for killing bed bugs work by circulating heated air that is computer monitored to reach a high enough core temperature for the correct amount of time in order to thoroughly kill all bed bugs in your furniture and belongings.

If your hotel is lucky enough to have avoided an infestation of bed bugs, there are a number of proactive approaches that can be implemented to lessen their impact on your operations when they arrive. Michael Merchant, PhD an urban entomologist for the Texas AgriLife Extension in Dallas explained recently ways to reduce your risk.

#1 First and foremost, work with a pest control company or bed bug inspection company that has experience combating Bed bugs. Rely on the pest control experts experience and knowledge to guide you through all of the steps needed to prevent or eradicate an infestation. Bed bugs are complicated pests and are resistant to many traditional chemicals and treatment protocols. An over-the-counter chemical remedy applied by an untrained hotel staff member could be a recipe for disaster. It may spread the bed bug infestation you have in your facility from one room to many other rooms.

#2 Employ good passive monitoring, systems, like the BDS Catchmaster or Climb-Up Insect Interceptor, in your guest rooms. Glue or dead fall traps allow hotel owners to identify potential problems quickly and without great expense. If bed bugs are spotted in a trap, a well-trained bed bug inspection agent can quickly identify if the infestation is limited to one room or if it has spread to adjacent rooms. Canine units trained to detect bugs are a very good strategy to be brought in to help identify the extent of the infestation.

#3 A must, develop a bed bug action plan to educate all hotel staff members what to look for in the guest rooms and how to react quickly and effectively if a guest makes a complaint in person or online. Simple visual inspections by trained housekeepers looking at sheets, mattresses and other hiding areas is an inexpensive first line of defense.

#4 Going a step further, denying entry to some of the places bed bugs like to stay is an effective prevention method. Use of mattress, pillow and box-spring encasement’s effectively eliminates the most common breeding grounds. A typical encasement set for a king bed can be purchased for around $50 to $75. It is extremely important that the mattress encasement be placed on both the mattress and the box springs. Encasement’s can also help eliminate allergens and dust mites that improve indoor air quality in your hotel.