New England Bed Bug Forum

Bed bugs attack X Factor contestants in California.

The X Factor is a television talent show franchise originating in the United Kingdom, where it was devised as a replacement for Pop Idol. It is a singing competition, now held in various countries, which pits contestants against each other. These contestants are aspiring pop singers drawn from public auditions. The programes are produced by executive producer Simon Cowell and his company SYCOtv. The “X Factor” of the title refers to the undefinable “something” that makes for star quality. The prize is usually a recording contract, in addition to the publicity that appearance in the later stages of the show itself generates, not only for the winner but also for other highly ranked contestant.

It seems that some X-Factor finalist contestants staying at the Grafton Hotel in LA have been bitten by bed bugs. It is not known at this time what the Grafton Hotel is doing about this but, the X-Factor contestants have been moved to a new hotel that is hopefully bed bug free.

Here is the bed bugs attacking X Factor contestant in California hotel story reported by TMZ.

By Anita Bennett, Dailymail

It’s not exactly the type of welcome they expected to receive in America’s entertainment capital.

Several X Factor USA finalists report they were bitten by bed bugs at a posh Los Angele’s hotel earlier this week.

The blood thirsty insects were said to have feasted on at least four contestants as they slept at the Grafton Hotel on Sunset Boulevard.

Nothing to sing about: At least four X Factor USA contestants were said to have been bitten by bed bugs at a Los AngelE’S hotel earlier this week

X Factor sources tell the Mail Online: ‘It was discovered a few days ago, the contestants saw a doctor and have moved hotels.’

A friend of one of the singers also reports: ‘A few of them were covered in bites, itching on their necks and legs.

We didn’t know what it was at first but we soon worked it out, it was pretty shocking.

‘Now we’ve all moved hotels and everyone’s clothes have been cleaned.’

Mail Online spoke with a manager at the $200 a night hotel, but he refused to comment on the situation.

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.

If you are a building manager, property manager, or landlord this is a good reason to stay on top of any bed bug infestations reported to you by your tenants. If you do not take care of the bed bug problem promptly and in an efficient manner it could hit you where it counts, your wallet.

The Baltimore Daily Record reported on October 17th that the Baltimore City Circuit Court ruled in favor of the plaintiff when former tenant Kristen Saunders sued her former building’s owners and operators for negligence, claiming they did not treat for bed bugs promptly.

Kristen Y. Saunders said it took managers of her apartment building 48 days to fumigate her apartment infested with bedbugs, leading to a plaintiff’s verdict in the first case of its type in Baltimore.

A Baltimore City Circuit Court jury awarded Saunders $40,000 in her negligence suit against the building’s owners and operators. The verdict came last week after a three-day trial.

Saunders, who has since moved to Edgewater, lived in the Hunting Hills apartments in the 4700 block of Sayer Avenue from February 2009 through February 2010.

The Daily Record reports that lawyers for the management refuted Saunders’ claim, and said the management responded promptly after being informed of the bed bug problem.

The paper also notes that the plaintiff’s lawyer, Daniel Whitney of Whitney and Bogris LLP (Towson, MD) claimed that this was the first bed bug trial in the city, and that he currently has eighteen bed bug-related cases waiting to go to trial.

Protect yourself from bed bug litigation and possible monetary losses by promptly trying to solve any bed bug infestations reported to you by your tenants. There are plenty of bed bug management companies and pest control agents that specialize in getting rid of bed bugs. Pick up the phone if you have bed bug issues and make the call. It is not only the right thing to do, it may save you money and time loss in a court room.

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.

Bed bugs are becoming such a problem in the US that they are starting to drain profits from viable businesses.

Who knew bed bugs could be this industrious? We all know they go to work at night as stealthy little blood suckers, wreaking havoc not just in our homes but on our businesses. They can cost thousands to tens of thousands of dollars to eradicate depending on whether it’s an infested residence or a commercial building. Even ridding them from a single room can be costly. Add to that the fact that exterminators often have a difficult time fully killing the pests. DDT is banned, traditional baits aren’t effective since they feed on blood, and it often takes several go-rounds before all the bugs and their eggs are rendered dead. The expenses rack up fast.

Take a look at the US lodging industry, the single largest industry to be affected by the pesky critters. Over the past few years, it’s been battling lawsuits, negative publicity, and decreased consumer confidence. Some of the more famous lawsuits include the one against Leona Helmsley’s Helmsley Enterprises, which paid a $150,000 settlement in 2004 to two customers who claimed that bed bugs at the Park Lane hotel attacked them, then infested their home. Three years later a larger bed bug case involved opera singer Alison Trainer, who filed a $6 million lawsuit against one of the leading global hospitality companies Hilton Hotels (now known as Hilton Worldwide). According to the Associated Press, she claimed to have had 150 bed bug bites after staying at Phoenix’s Hilton Suites, an experience that she said left her losing weight and afraid to sleep in a bed.

In 2010 perhaps the most publicized bed bug victims were not hotels but corporate clothing retailers. Chain stores Abercrombie & Fitch, Hollister, and Victoria’s Secret all had to temporarily close stores in New York City due to reported infestations. While Victoria’s Secret said it had taken “proactive” measures after a bed bug sighting in its Lexington Avenue store, reports came out alleging that Abercrombie & Fitch either initially ignored or was slow to respond to outbreaks in its own stores, namely its South Street Seaport location and at a huge Hollister store in SoHo. Talk about unmentionables.

In 2011 NBC Chicago said mattress manufacturers in Illinois took a hit after consumers began complaining of itchy skin. At least five stores in the Chicago area were said to have sold new or refurbished mattresses containing bed bugs, according to city officials. The stores included Best Mattress Company, Mike’s Furniture, TC Furniture, and Guadalajara Furniture. Other recent bed bug lawsuits have been filed against cruise lines, dry cleaners, furniture rental companies, and schools.

Mattress covers or encasements, the #1 bed bug protection product among consumers, has become so ubiquitous that virtually every major retailing chain, including Wal-Mart, Target, Bed Bath & Beyond, and e-commerce behemoth Amazon.com, each carry different brands.

Expertise in bed bugs as they relate to property law is also a growing practice area for some law firms, according to this Wall Street Journal blog.

With the EPA designating bed bugs a public health concern, the pest control industry is enjoying especially high demand for its products and services in both the residential and commercial sectors. Terminix, the country’s largest provider of pest control services, reports it’s seen an increase in the prevalence of bed bugs in most states over the last year and it expects that trend to continue. Compiling data from 350 Terminix branches across the US, the company reports that the top three bed bug-infested cities for 2011 are New York, Cincinnati, and Detroit.

Developing products and methods for killing these pests is becoming even more urgent as conventional bed bugs evolve into so-called “super bugs.” Medical News Today reports that Canadian researchers found bed bugs from three hospital patients in a downtrodden Vancouver, British Columbia neighborhood to be carrying two types of drug-resistant bacteria, one of which is the stubborn MRSA staph. The study, released by the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, is small and preliminary but intriguing. Who knows, perhaps the biotech industry will come up with the next big bed bug deterrent.

If you have an infestation in your home or business the first thing to do is to find out where this bloodsucking parasite is residing, so that you may eradicate it.

Bed bugs are causing a hysteria all across the United States.  Now residents are worried that a recent infestation reported at a college campus in Ohio will have the bed bugs swimming across the river and invading their homes.  People are putting up sand bags, razor wire, and have machine gun emplacements stationed all along the river front to stay of this bed bug invasion.  There is talk about bringing in the National Guard to help in the fight against this bed bug invasion, that may come from across the river at any time.  Just kidding, but with the hysteria that is going on about bed bugs it could happen.

A recent announcement that bed bugs have been located on the campus of Maysville Community and Technical Center have some residents worried the bugs may also spread across the river to Brown County. However, Rusty Vermillion, Brown County Health Department Director, said the tiny bloodsucking bugs have been a problem in Brown County for several months already, and urged residents to understand the facts about bedbug infestations before making rash decisions to throw out couches and beds.

“It’s a major problem here already,” Vermillion said. “Back during the spring we were getting three to five calls about bed bugs a day. It’s a major problem not just in Ohio but all over the United States now.”

“Cleveland, Dayton and Cincinnati are all in the top 20 most infected cities list,” Vermillion said.

Unfortunately, Vermillion said bed bug infestations have a tendency to cause people to panic.

“The main problem we get is people calling after they’ve already thrown out their mattresses and their couches,” Vermillion said. ” Bed bugs are not known to be carriers of any diseases, unlike cockroaches. We have information here at the health department to help people stay calm and to not panic when they find bed bugs in their home. Don’t throw anything away until you see where the infestation is.”

According to information from the Brown County Health Department, bed bugs are known hitchhikers who will attach themselves onto purses or clothing and travel to a new location. Adult bedbugs are a reddish brown, flattened, oval wingless insect. Bedbug bites resemble mosquito or other bug bites and are often misdiagnosed by the public until the infestation spreads to other areas of the house.

“It’s not a hygiene issue,” Vermillion said. “They just spread very quickly and are resistant to most pesticides.”

Check for bedbug infestations by looking for blood stains, droppings and eggs on mattress seams and tufts, pillow cases and upholstered furniture as well as in crevices and cracks in furniture and the baseboard of walls.

The moral of this bed bug invasion story is to take a deep breadth, calm down, and don’t throw out any belongings until you have them inspected by a licensed bed bug inspection company.  If any of your items, such as mattresses are found to be infested by bed bugs there are procedures, such as, heat and chemicals that will kill the bed bugs.

September will mark the first National Bed Bug Awareness Month in which U.S. Rep. Robert Dold, (R-Ill.) and 10 of the foremost bed bug experts from across the country team up to create videos, articles and interviews geared toward helping the public fight back against bed bugs.

This educational campaign serves as a comprehensive response to the continued spread bed bugs throughout the country. National Bed Bug Awareness Month will kick off Sept. 1 with the launch of an interactive, online tutorial series and culminate with the North American Bed Bug Summit being held in Chicago from the Sept. 25-27 at the Hyatt Regency O’Hare.

National Bed Bug Awareness Month is an important step in educating the public about bed bugs as the pest takes root in untouched regions of the country.

“Last year bed bugs received a tremendous push in awareness due to constant media exposure. However, this year awareness is stagnating, not because bed bugs have gone away, but because they are not receiving enough coverage,” said Cooper. “In the war against bed bugs education is still critical. This campaign is aimed at creating awareness in a more engaging and interactive way.”

Research entomologist and doctoral candidate Richard Cooper of Rutgers University has been championing public education as crucial element in the war against bed bugs since 2003. Cooper acknowledges that while there is increased awareness, actual education is lacking.

“The initial lack of public education and awareness enabled bed bugs to spread and become a major problem in the United States,” said Cooper. “Although awareness that bed bugs exist has vastly improved, education has not. There are still myths and misconceptions that allow bed bugs to continue to spread. Without the proper education, prevention is not accomplished and the spread is not stemmed.”

“During the past three years bed bugs have proven to be an extraordinarily complex pest to deal with on a large scale,” said Dold. “In order to develop both practical and effective bed bug treatment methods, leaders in government, the private sector and even local communities will need to collaborate closely to find long-term solutions. The work being done at this summit is a step in that direction.”

The North American Bed Bug Summit represents the culmination of National Bed Bug Awareness Month. The summit, officially titled Bed Bug University: North American Summit, will bring together 26 of the leading entomologists and bed bug experts from around the world together with a cross-section of affected industries.

By gathering stakeholders such as government agencies, colleges and universities, health care, hospitality and multifamily housing under one roof, entomologists and experts will able to provide an educational blue-print for dealing with bed bugs across a variety of sectors.

The Summit will also demonstrate over 70 of the latest bed bug technologies including all-natural bed bugs sprays such as Stop Bugging Me!, entomologist approved mattress encasement’s such as Protect-a-Bed™ and BugZip Luggage Protectors.