New England Bed Bug Forum

K-9, canine dogs have an amazing sense of smell, that when trained right are able to sniff out bed bugs, bed bug larvae, and bed bug infestations.

A K-9’s or canines nose not only dominates their face, but their brain, as well. In fact, a K-9 relies on their sense of smell to interpret their world by sniffing, in much the same way as people depend on their sight.

In order to understand how great a K-9’s olfactory ability to sniff out bed bugs we can compare it to a person’s nose.

Inside the nose of both species are bony scroll-shaped plates, called turbinates, over which air passes. A microscopic view of this organ reveals a thick, spongy membrane that contains most of the scent-detecting cells, as well as the nerves that transport information to the brain. In humans, the area containing these odor analyzers is about one square inch, or the size of a postage stamp. If you could unfold this area in a dog, on the other hand, it may be as large as 60 square inches, or just under the size of a piece of typing paper.

Though the size of this surface varies with the size and length of the dog’s nose, even flat-nosed breeds can detect smells far better than people. Specialized .K-9’s or canines trained to sniff out bed bugs can have over 300,000 million scent receptors compared ot a human having only 5 million.

A dog’s brain is also specialized for identifying scents. The percentage of the dog’s brain that is devoted to analyzing smells is actually 40 times larger than that of a human! It’s been estimated that dogs can identify smells somewhere between 1,000 to 10,000 times better than nasally challenged humans can.

For thousands of years K-9’s or canine dogs have been known to have an amazing sense of smell due to the millions of smell receptors located in their noses. K-9 dogs have been used for hunting by early man through out the ages. These canines have been know to be able to help track down prey from miles away, enabling their handlers/masters to find their quarry in order to hunt it. K-9 dogs have and are still used to sniff out or track scents, such as escaped prisoners in order to find them. The dogs are able to lock onto the scent of clothing and sniff out where the escapes or missing persons are located. These dogs are called blood hounds. K-9 dogs are also used for finding dead bodies that are buried. The canines can be trained to lock on to the specific smell of a decomposing corpse and sniff out where it is buried or located. These dogs can easily detect the hidden body from smell, where as, a human can’t smell a thing. Many a K-9 has helped solve an unsolved disappearance or murder just by using it’s nose.

Recently, in the last decade or so, K-9 dogs have been found out to have the ability to sniff out bed bugs, bed bug larvae, and bed bug infestations. The smell receptors on the .K-9 dog’s noses are so much more advanced than human noses that they are able to even pinpoint where the bed bug infestation is located.

K-9’s or canines are the best possible solution for sniffing out bed bug infestations and pinpointing where they are located.

Bed bugs are becoming a national problem that needs community attention to help stopping the spread of these parasitic creatures especially when it comes to our children.

Schools are great breeding grounds and transition areas for children to bring home bed bugs.  This is just another example of a school being infested with bed bugs and how hard it is to track down where these pesky critters are coming from.

In the article, it points out that a bed bug dog was brought in but, no bed bugs were found in the school.  The bed bugs could be getting on the kids clothing from the buses or after-school activities.

As parents, you can take precautions for keeping your children safe from bed bugs.  When they come home  have them change out of their school clothes, empty their book bags, and put them in your dryer on high heat for a cycle.  The heat will kill any bed bugs that have hitchhiked their way into your home.

A bed bug found at a Wilkes-Barre elementary school late last week is getting under the skin of parents and students alike. It’s the second time it’s happened in a span of two weeks.

This time, the bug was found on a child’s jacket inside a classroom at Kistler Elementary School. It was found as classes prepared to dismiss Friday afternoon.

And while school administrators say they’re confident the problem has been eliminated, parents and students remain less than convinced.

Exterminators searched every nook and cranny of Kistler Elementary School over the weekend. They even brought in a trained dog to sniff out and eliminate any possibility of bed bugs here.

None were found.

Parent Bruce Morris noted, “It’s something we have to watch out for. I think most of us, as parents, grew up thinking it was just a nursery rhyme. But here we have a nationwide problem.”

Plenty of people were talking about the critter issue Monday morning– including students who say the thought of the tiny creatures makes their skin crawl.

Najae Briggs, a Kistler student, said, “I’ve heard people have gotten bit before, a lot of people. And people were staying home, yeah.”

Parents say they’re even more concerned by this second finding of a bed bug at Kistler elementary. And they’re upset that school officials didn’t tell them anything about it.

But the superintendent says a letter is going home with kids after school Monday to explain the problem to parents– and the steps the school district has taken to solve it.

Those included the weekend extermination, and having students quarantine their jackets and backpacks in plastic bags Monday, among others solutions.

But since the bed bugs could be coming into the school from just about anywhere, parents say it will take a community-wide effort to end the issue.

Morris continued, “This being the second scare in the school, I think we need to take extra precautions when our children leave our houses in the morning, when we pick them up from school, and a lot of these kids get bussed to other places like the YMCA.”

And while we’re told the exterminator’s sweep of the school came up clean– officials are urging parents to keep an eye out for the little critters– and wash all their kids’ clothes in hot water as an extra precaution.

LINCOLN (KPTM)- University of Nebraska officials have found bed bugs in about 35 campus dorm rooms at UNL.

The university is relying on bug sniffing dog to help find and get rid of a growing problem. Spots the dog is helping sniff out the problem. Monday the university shared some video of Spots at work.

“Spots can basically walk by a piece of furniture and with in two to three feet. If the scent of a bed bug is there he can detect it,” James Pelowski said. Pelowski helps spot in the bed bug detection process.

Spots is a rat terrier that has a 95% accuracy rate detecting bed bugs. “That is the best that any drug dog, bomb dog or bed bug dog comes out of the academy at.”

Pelowski said what makes spots so valuable is that a human is only 50% accurate. “Through a dorm room or any place you have to go item through item through item, it’s almost virtually impossible without a dog.”

Once bed bugs are found cleaning crews install heating units in the room to bring the temperature up to between 130 and 140 degrees. At 140 degrees a room is locked down for about four hours.

After the cleaning crew tears down its equipment, Spots does one final sweep. University officials said they plan on bringing in two more bug sniffing dogs next week. They hope to have every dorm checked by the end of the month.

Chances are, you or someone you know has had a run-in with bed bugs. It might have happened in a scrupulously clean bedroom. Or maybe it was a hotel room, office or college dorm. In the February issue of Scientific American entomologist Kenneth Haynes of the University of Kentucky explains how, after a lengthy absence, bed bugs are staging a comeback. The good news is scientists are intensively studying these insects, and their insights suggest novel ways of detecting the bugs and eradicating infestations. Some of those potential solutions are a long way off, however. In the meantime the best bet is to avoid bringing bed bugs home in the first place.

Do bed bugs only feed on humans?

No. Bed bugs are also pests in poultry operations, and they’re known to drink the blood of bats. Some labs that study bed bugs rear them on guinea pigs and mice. The bugs might feed on cats and dogs. Fur is probably a barrier to them, but they could feed at any place on the body without fur. Bed bugs are not specific to humans, but they are adapted to parasitizing us.

Could you have a bed bug infestation in your home and not know it?

That’s very possible. I have heard of couples reporting that only one partner is getting bitten. The truth is that both are getting bitten, but only one has a reaction to the bites. Thirty percent of people or more don’t react to bed bug bites at all, and the elderly are less reactive than the rest of the population. Among those people who do react to the bites, most of them don’t respond to early bites, but develop a sensitivity to subsequent ones. Those individuals who are not sensitive to bed bug bites may not know they have an infestation. Because bed bugs are nocturnally active, it’s hard to see other signs of their presence—unless you’re accustomed to waking up at 3 A.M. and taking a census. With a huge infestation, bed bugs start to move away from the bed, so you’re more likely to see one in an exposed place during the day. In very severe infestations people can become anemic. That takes a lot of bugs though—maybe 100,000 feeding once a week or more.

Another clue to infestation is odor. Like many species of bugs, bed bugs release odors called alarm pheromones. When a group of bed bugs gets disturbed, you may get a whiff of that odor, which is similar to the odor stink bugs give off. At higher concentrations the odor is unpleasant. Some people say at low concentrations it’s a pleasant smell—like coriander. In fact, older literature refers to the bed bug as the coriander bug. I’ve tried to smell the coriander scent in bed bug alarm pheromones and have not been able to make the connection, however.

What can one do to avoid getting bed bugs?
The first thing is you have to be able to recognize and distinguish a bed bug from any other insect. Everything starts to look like a bed bug if you start to worry about them. An adult bed bug is about the size and shape of an apple seed. If it has not fed recently it will be flattened and brown. If it has fed it will be round in circumference and reddish. Immature bed bugs have a similar appearance to adults, with the smallest being the size of the head of a pin. You can then learn to look for their fecal spots, which can be easier to detect than the bugs themselves. Check your hotel rooms when you travel. And think twice before bringing home used furniture. If you are purchasing used furniture, ask the furniture store how they deal with bed bugs. If they have no plan whatsoever, that’s probably not a good sign. If you purchase used clothing, put it through a clothes dryer on a medium to high setting for a cycle as soon as you bring it home. And before you move into an apartment, ask the landlord whether there has been a bed bug infestation, or whether the building has ever been treated for bed bugs.

Here is a story about taxpayer money being wasted because pest control operatives and doctors misdiagnosed a rampant bed bug infestation in a Tennessee emergency management center, closing the building, and leaving the emergency responders sleeping on cots for a week.

LEBANON, Tenn. – Pest control crews have been working to clear a bed bug infestation from the Wilson County Emergency Management Agency’s Station.

About a week ago, officials at WEMA realized bed bugs were biting employees as they slept. For five nights, employees had to sleep on cots in the training center across the street.

At first pest control companies thought Station One’s bunk was infested with fleas, and at one point, doctors treated employees for shingles before realizing bed bugs were the problem.

For one thing, flea bites look nothing like bed bug bites and for another if my doctor told me I had shingles, when in fact it was bed bug bites, I would be shopping around for a new doctor.

On Monday, a company pumped hot air into the station to kill the bed bugs.

This rampant bed bug infestation caused sleep deprivation for the emergency responders, one thing that is highly needed in this job.

“They have to be ready to go at any time. What little sleep they do get, they can’t be deprived of it, so we need to get these bugs out of here and make sure they rest calmly when they come in from a job,” said an official.

Employees were told they would be able to return to Station One today.

The town of Lebanon, Tennessee could have saved a lot of time, aggravation, and money had they called in a canine bed bug inspection team. Not only would they have been able to quickly and efficiently been able to verify the bed bug problem, they would have been able to pinpoint it. The pinpointing of the bed bug infestation in the station house would have allowed them to target bed bug infested areas instead of super-heating the whole building, which can be very costly.

Here is a recent bed bug infestation that helps point out the effects of bed bugs on senior citizen’s. Bed bug infestations can spread quite rapidly in any apartment complex and in senior housing it can be a silent epidemic. A couple of reasons bed bugs can get a strong foothold in senior housing and be quite a tough pest to eradicate is because seniors living in these units many times have closer bonds with each other than regular tenants do. Some senior housing complexes can be a social breeding ground where everyone knows everyone Else’s business. Gossip and rumors rule the day. This environment can make seniors more leery to report any kind of bed bug problem for fear of being a social outcast or labeled as “having bed bugs”.

Another issue that may complicate bed bug infestations is that some seniors may be suffering from mental health issues, such as, dementia, which is a serious loss of cognitive ability. A senior with dementia may have a huge bed bug infestation and not realize it. They may not have the coping skills needed to understand how to deal with what is going on around them.

It is important that we take care of our senior citizen’s – social workers, housing employees, family members, and friends should always be on the look out for any issues, including signs of bed bug infestations that our senior’s may be suffering from in order to ensure the highest quality of life they deserve.

RENO, NV – Residents of a senior apartment building in Reno say it’s been infested with bed bugs for weeks.

“The two apartments diagonally across from me have it,” Ted Burns said.

Ted Burns lives at the Orvis Ring Senior Apartments and showed KOLO the signs instructing people not to sit on the furniture. He and his fellow tenants said it’s because of parasitic bed bugs.

“I’ve seen people that’s been bitten by bed bugs and they’re bloody they just suck the blood out of you,” Orvis Ring resident Pat Mavity said.

Orvis Ring residents said they’ve been dealing with the infestation for a month or longer.

“They’ve been postponing this investigation, finding them, no movement,” Orvis Ring resident Don Moten said.

Office workers at Orvis Ring said they wouldn’t speak, referring KOLO to Rural Communities Housing Development in Ukiah, which declined to comment.

“Notify the landlord and notify them writing via a letter establish the paper trail in case the landlord isn’t going to cooperate,” a Washoe County Vector Control representative said.

While managed by an out-of-state company, Community Services Agency is the owner of Ovris Ring.
The executive director said the bed bug problem will be dealt with this weekend.
He said the bed bugs were addressed as soon as Community Services Agency became aware of issue. Residents say they’ve been vocal about it for a while.

“They were gonna go with a different company and they say as of today nothing has been decided,” Burns said.

Residents acknowledge though before the bed bugs were so wide-spread, there was an attempt to fumigate an apartment that didn’t work.
Now, Community Services Agency says pest control will go unit by unit to get rid of the insects.

Bed bugs are a complex pest to rid from a home, business, hotel, or motel room.

Good pest control operatives, bed bug management companies, bed bud inspection teams, and bed bug exterminator’s, for the most part, have a view in common.  They all want to be able to not only control your bed bug problem but, to exterminate it in it’s entirety.

Let’s face it. If you like your job, have integrity in what you do, and most of all care about your clients you have a point of view on the way things should be run, how you should perform, and the results you should be able to accomplish. This is true in any business, including bed bug extermination. Bed bugs are a very complex and emotional issue, whoever you deal with to help you rid yourself of these nasty creatures should realize this whole-hardheartedly.

A bed bug exterminator’s first step is to listen to what is happening in your home or business so that they can asses the situation.  They need to ascertain what the situation is before making a decision on how to proceed.  In some instances they may know right off the bat what is needed to be done to exterminate your bed bug infestation.  In most instances, good bed bug exterminator’s will advise an inspection to figure out where the bed bug problem lies and to what extent the infestation is.  A human inspection for bed bugs is not good enough.  Humans can only detect and pinpoint bed bugs with about 26% accuracy.  If you call a bed bug exterminator and they say they will send over a person to inspect, especially for free, hang up.  This is a sales tactic, not so honest exterminator’s use.  In most cases the human inspector will find bed bug issues everywhere in order to pad the extermination bill.  A bed bug dog is the way to go if your exterminator’s point of view is to kill off your problem in it’s entirety.  A bed bug dog is about 96% accurate in ascertaining if you have issues relating to these parasites in you dwelling or business.  A couple of the best things when taking  your pest control operative’s advice is that having this dog inspection will not only help in verifying this bed bug problem, the dog will most likely be able to pinpoint where the issues are.

As a businessman and a person I like to be able to sleep at night with a clear conscience.  With that being said how could I or any reputable bed bug exterminator,  in their view, advise to either come in with a bunch of chemicals or have a human inspect for bed bugs.  The accuracy is almost half as less as flipping a coin if you have a bed bug problem or not.

Any conscience-wise bed bug exterminator’s point of view is to know, first off, if there is a bed bug infestation in the first place and where it is.

When someone gives you their point of view, it usually comes from experience,  Your bed bug exterminator’s point of view is very important, because you will be able to tell, by this, how your bed bug problem will be solved.

Why are bed bugs so hard to get rid of?

Bed bugs are extremely difficult to get rid of once they’ve established themselves in a home base, apartment, home, business, or any dwelling for that matter. What makes it so hard to get rid of bed bugs?

Well, There are a couple of reasons why it is so hard to get rid of bed bugs once they have made a foot-hold. Up to 88 percent bed bugs are resistant to pesticides and insecticides that you would normally be able to treat other insect infestations with. Secondly bed bugs are not like cockroaches, for example, which have pads on their feet. You can spray a pesticide or insecticide down and and when the cockroaches walk over it the chemical sticks to these padded feet and they’re deader than a door nail. Bed bugs have claws on their feet with a much smaller surface area that the chemicals do not adhere to, thus it doesn’t kill them as effectively.

Bed Bug nymphs are only a millimeter wide. They can crawl in the middle of your mattress and just  come out for a while and feed. Bed bugs are small, flat, insects that are very adept at squeezing themselves into tiny spaces. They can hide in places a person would never think of looking for them, like behind loose wallpaper or under electrical switch plates. To successfully get rid of a bed bug infestation, you’ve got to find and kill every viable bed bug, which is not an easy task.

These parasitic insects multiply by leaps and bounds, 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 dramatically. Depending on conditions, bed bugs can produce 3 or 4 generations in one year. Additionally, bed bugs reproduce most quickly in temperatures between 70 degrees to 82 degrees, right in the range where most people keep their dwelling temperature at. Bed Bugs have been known to live for 18 months without a blood meal in a controlled environment. Bed bugs can go a very long time without feeding, should no host, meaning you, be present to provide them with needed blood meals. Scientists have documented adult bed bugs living 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. So what happens is that these little bloodsuckers just hang out, your pesticide or insecticide degrades and by the time the bed bugs come out to feed the insecticide or pesticide is useless.

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.

Those are the main reasons why bed bugs are hard to get rid of.

One way to get rid of bed bugs is to use heat to kill them. This effective measure to kill insect infestations has been around for a very long time. Farmers in ancient times would burn down crops infested with bugs so that they would not spread to other uninfected crops. We are not saying you have to burn down your house in order to get rid of a bed bug problem. Many bed bug management companies that offer bed bug inspection and chemical extermination also offer heat treatment in getting rid of bed bugs. Some pest control agents even have new mobile heat treatment units that you can load your belonging into that cook bed bugs and other insects, thus getting rid of them.

Administrators performed thermal extermination in Johnson-McFarlane Residence Hall dorm rooms after students discovered a bed bug infestation in early-Sept.

“It works by using heat at a level of over 120 degrees for several hours to destroy bed bugs and their eggs,” said Justin Price, executive director of Housing and Residential Education

Heat is one of the most effective and eco-friendly ways in killing bed bugs, other insects, and eliminating an infestation

The bed bug infestation was isolated to Johnson-McFarlane Hall.

“DU has a relatively limited situation with only four rooms in one residence hall affected with a bed bug problem,” said Justin Price, executive director of Housing and Residential Education. “We are aggressively working to ensure that it remains that way.”

To make sure that the bed bugs don’t return, DU has chemically treated four rooms and will perform thermal extermination in 12 rooms in the residence hall. They are also going to inspect residence halls regularly using a bed bug detection dog.

This isn’t the first instance in which DU has fought a battle against bed bugs.

In Nov. 2010, six cases of bed bugs were reported — two in Nelson Hall and four in Centennial Halls. DU threw out infested mattresses, laundered students’ clothing and sprayed all six units to get rid of the bugs.

The parasitic insects can survive up to one year without feeding. They find dorm beds an ideal place to live.

While the situation has been stabilized, the bed bug infestation has made it uncomfortable for students

“I woke up the first morning with about 60 bites,” said freshman Andrew Neely.

When Neely woke up on the second night with more bites, he had a hunch something was wrong.

“I spent about a minute on the internet, and it became obvious it was bed bugs,” he said.

Administrators performed thermal extermination on Neely’s room after he brought the problem to their attention.

Neely, who got at least 100 bites total, felt everyone was surprised when it wasn’t resolved after the first spraying.

“This isn’t something people are used to dealing with,” he said. “I hope it’s finally done.”

No one is exactly sure where the bed bugs came from.

Price theorizes that the problem can be tracked to old furniture.

“As students move about from place to place, buy second-hand furniture or any number of factors, there is the potential that they also can acquire bed bugs,” said Price.

This proved to be the case when the bugs appeared on the other side of Neely’s room after surviving two chemical treatments.

Neely and his roommate decided to take precautionary measures.

“We did a lot of laundry,” he said. “Basically the whole time this was going on, we were washing our clothes and drying them.”

There is no way to stop bed bugs from being brought into a
hotel. New guests are arriving every day from all over the world,
and bringing their potentially infested luggage with them. Your
hotel can be bed bug free one day and infested in multiple rooms
the next. So prevention, in the Hotel and lodging industry, is having
an early detection program in place. Bed bugs must be detected very
quickly after they are brought in, hopefully, before they bite someone
and the hotel starts getting complaints about bed bug bites.

To facilitate this early bed bug detection, all hotel employees
should receive some bed bug identification training. This includes
the reception staff, maids, facilities personnel, hotel managers,
event planners, maintenance staff, catering staff, bell hops, cooks,
janitors, and absolutely everyone else. Why everyone? Because
your employees are located all over the hotel, and if everybody is
looking for bed bugs there is greater chance that you will discover
them quickly. Also keep in mind that guests are not the only people
capable of bringing bed bugs into your facility. Staff may also have
a bed bug problem in their homes that they bring into the workplace.

Where do you get bed bug identification training? You may already have
a contract pest management company or bed bug inspection agency
that offers a bed bug prevention program, so they can train your employees.
If your current company is inexperienced in bed bug management, hire an
experienced company immediately. Ask your new bed bug experts to provide your
employees with bed bug identification training. The training may cost you, but the
expense will be immediately recovered when your employees find a bed bug
before your guests do. Have your pest management company give advanced
bed bug inspection trainings to selected members of your hospitality or facilities
staff. The pest management company can help your selected bed bug staff to
draft a monthly inspection plan for the facility, so that your employees
actively scout guest rooms for bed bugs on a regular basis.

Housekeeping personnel who know what bed bugs and their fecal stains look
like can then alert your bed bug inspectors immediately if they think they
see bed bug evidence in a hotel room. This early detection will help to
identify infestations before they get started. The trained bed bug staff members
can also serve as handy inspectors if a guest complains about bites or bed bugs in their room.