Bed Bug News Archive

Toronto makes it to the top ten cities with maximum bed bug infestation issues. Winnipeg, Vancouver, Ottawa, St. Johns and Edmonton are the other cities in the list. With the rise in summer travels, bed bugs are carried from one place to another and can be a difficult menace to control, particularly in areas with high population densities. Bed bugs are not just limited to beds but are found in transits, subways and on books. And because they can hitchhike very efficiently and also reproduce easily, they can be extremely difficult to get rid of. While Scarborough and Calgary are at the bottom of the list, the former is not new to bed bug related protests. Tenants at Oakridge area were reportedly sleeping on couches in an attempt to avoid bedbugs.

Even in large international motel chains where you would think you are safe from such things as bed bugs, you can be terribly wrong. A Vernon BC couple found this out the hard way when they booked a motel room for the night in North Vancouver at a Comfort Inn & Suites. When they woke up in the morning, they had several bites all over their body so decided to inspect the room for bed bugs. Upon uncovering the bedsheets to look at the mattress, they found dozens of bed bugs running around. This is the sign of a serious infestation as it is usually difficult to even find just one bed bug if you are not a bed bug control expert and don’t know where to look. The couple has since been on a mission to warn a many people as possible on social media due to their horrifying experience, which included a lack of any sort of resolution from the motel manager.

Earlier this month a homeowner in Augusta Maine called his municipal code enforcement office asking for help with a bed bug infestation in his home. After being denied the government assistance became very angry and decided to take revenge on the office. Shortly after, he showed up at the local government office with a cup full of about 100 bed bugs and dumped it on the front desk. Witnesses say that there were around 100 bed bugs in the cup, which dispersed quickly into hiding, and some even crawled on one of the employees. The office was immediately closed and a bed bug exterminator called in right away to remove all of the bed bugs.

Think that you are doing a good job at staying away from bed bugs? According to Mike Posey, a highly experienced bed bug control professional from Lancaster, “when you’re in public you’re within feet of a bed bug at all times”. Posey has been in the bed bug extermination business for many years and says that the problem keeps getting worse every year. In the last year alone he claims that he has seen about a 700 percent increase in business just in his town alone. One of the biggest issues with bed bug infestations at the moment is that a lot of people try to exterminate them on their own, something that Posey says most often does more harm than good, spreading the infestation further into the home.

More and more pest control professionals are starting to use non-chemical treatments for exterminating bed bugs as they realise how quickly bed bugs can become resistant to commonly used pesticides. Currently, research is being done on two very common chemicals used for bed bug pesticides called chlorfenapyr and bifenthrin, both of which are becoming more unreliable in bed bug treatments. As a result of these findings, most bed bug control professionals are realising that in order to effectively treat a bed bug infestation they will need to use a variety of tactics, and begin moving away from purely chemical related treatments.

New research shows that some of the leading bed bug traps are not 100% effective against all bed bugs. After testing four leading bed bug traps that have been designed in the US, the study concluded that these traps work for common bed bug species found in the US but were not as effective against bed bug species found in tropical areas. Taking a closer look by using an electron microscope, researchers discovered that the tropical bed bug species have a greater quantity of hairs on their tibial pad, which gave them a much greater ability to crawl out of the smooth surface found on these common bed bug traps.

If you’re going to be travelling to Chicago from Toronto anytime soon and plan on taking the public train system, beware of bed bugs. A Chicago resident and public transit commuter reported seeing a homeless woman carrying a garbage bag that was full of bed bugs onto the train this February. He said that there were so many bed bugs that he was even able to see them crawling all over her during the ride. When the issue was reported to the conductor of the train, they immediately evacuated the infested cart and did a quick 10-minute cleaning, moving all passengers to other carts. The only problem with this resolution was that the same woman also boarded another cart, carrying the infested bag with her. If you ever notice a bed bug on a train cart the best thing to do is get off at the next station, board another cart and report the problem immediately.