Dr. Kells is great, right? (There are a number of useful Kells documents floating around here.)

Pleasehelp, I think the membrane feeding thing is something they do in labs — I’ve also seen mention of the use of chicken blood — but I doubt it would make a successful trap. (This is just my reflexive pessimism, but then again we’ve been almost instructed to be pessimistic on the outlook of traps in general. Which is not cool! Someone, give us hope.)

PS: Thanks, NSS, you are kind. But can you whistle?

Sounds a lot like human behavior, if you ask me–there are the do-what’s-expected, go with the flow, crowd types.

And then there are the trailblazers and wanderers. They’re the ones that colonize new lands, and cause all the trouble.

“If you get rid of 95 percent of them around the bed, but 5 percent have gone elsewhere, you have to look for them,” says Kells

I forgot to say that my favorite letter was Gerald Haigh’s, the “See you in half an hour lads” letter. And the Bateman letter places bedbugs in the UK in the 70s, doesn’t it? So, if there were bedbugs in the 70s, and the 80s, and the 90s, and we know all about this decade…

…when weren’t there bedbugs?

As for bedbugs in the United States during the period in question, guess what?

I think Dr. Hu, Alabama Cooperative Extension/Auburn University entomologist, interviewed in 2005 had it right here:

While it “probably is true that bedbugs reached certain population levels” before people began noticing them, Hu speculates that the pests were causing plenty of people misery for years, maybe even decades, before media began reporting about them.”

I think bedbugs came and went in cycles. The current spread is no doubt significant compared to the past, but it’s really a gross overstatement to say bedbugs were eradicated.

More bedbug history trivia?

One day long ago, in 1984 to be exact, Reagan adviser and soon to be attorney general Edwin Meese decided to do away with the government printing of lots of useless brochures, like one titled Controlling Bedbugs.

Ah, not so fast, Mr. Meese.

In 1986, in a New York Times science column, Dr. Stanley G. Green, a Pennsylvania State University Extension Service entomologist, answered the question “do bed bugs really exist?” apparently in the affirmative because he ended by suggesting people get rid of them by using:

malathion or pyrethrin insecticide in upholstered furniture, cracks and crevices in floors, walls, baseboards, in the seams of mattresses and bed coils, and behind wall pictures and loose wallpaper

Malathion. Ding. Ding. We are told malathion really did the dirty work that DDT gets all the credit for in “eradicating” bedbugs. I’m not sure when malathion went away but I understand it breaks down into nasty stuff. So, we mourn thee not, malathion. But still. Something to think about in terms of the “comeback” — no I can’t stop using scare quotes now.

Then, bedbugs again in the Times, this time in a report of the grim housing conditions for the homeless in 1989.

Also in 1989 in the Times, a concern about bedbugs in a story about storage bins. The perennial NYC problem after all. Storage, I mean.

Then bedbugs in a once-grand Chicago retirement hotel, in the Chicago Sun Times, January 1990.

Bedbug lawsuits, of course, are nothing new. Here’s someone allegedly bitten at a motel in Annapolis, MD in May 1989.

And we know what Lou has told us about receiving bedbug specimens for identification in the years: 1986, 1988, 1989, 1990, and 1992.

Google is the coolest, but imagine what we could do with serious research skills and tools. Or if we could poll all the extension agents in the country for their historical identification data…

And let’s not forget the poor chickens. I’m sure there are records somewhere of how long bedbugs have been pestering them.

I read all the links and encourage others to as well. I

I also enjoyed the comments to the Fiona King article–they make it clear that although the sun never set on the British Empire, her sons were battling bed bugs everywhere they went. –I keep telling people, they bite in broad daylight!

Also the comment from P.L.G. Bateman:

In 1974, Peter Cornwell, then director of research at Rentokil, suggested that carriage of bed bugs in the crevices of musical instruments, notably the guitar, is not unknown.

I am now envisioning 1970s hippy guitar players carrying their bed bugs from dive to club to crash pad. The past always looks more golden than it was.

My big question is how the combined statistics for bed bug treatments in England/Wales go from 7771 in 1985-86 changed in following years? 6179 the following year is a decrease, though not an incredible one. What came before 85-86? And after? Was it a peak year? If so, when did the numbers peak again?

I wonder if bed bug “epidemics” come in waves, with a gradual increase, and then a decrease as investigations are carried out and treatments applied. This decrease in the UK seemed to be helped by the presence of governmental authorities who care about the bigger picture–not just the complainant, but the scope and scale of the problem.

I have in mind the statement from King:

In one housing estate in the West Midlands, officers called in to deal with a cluster of three infestations found another 18 cases in the 96 houses they checked.

Where authorities are aggressively seeking out bed bug cases, as in this instance, had the environmental health officers not checked all 96 units (since it’s a housing estate, I’d assume many are at least partially-attached homes), they would not have found those 18 cases. The initial three would be treated, the other 18 left to spread.

How many private landlords would check all 96 units, when three infestations were reported?

The advantage Britain had was not just Environmetal Health Officers asking — who else has them? And how many cases this year? It was also the fact that the government took responsibility for treating infestations in many situations. But private PCOs did a lot of work too, and the details were not necessarily collected or included in those statistics. Again, King:

Hard facts about infestations are hard to come by. Information is usually based on the number of treatments carried out. In Britain, many companies dealing in pest control are unwilling to release statistics about which areas they have treated.

The data King cites comes from local authorities who are charged with treatment. She is clear that private PCOs were less likely to report cases, and so the statistics are skewed.

But probably not as skewed as NYC’s flawed “data” gathered only from private tenants who call 311 instead of calling their landlord (as most do) or a private PCO (as many do); nevermind stats from those who own their own co-ops, condos or houses. (Inset rest of rant here, you’ve read it from me too many times to count.)

Anyway, apologies for such a long comment. But your post raises so many wonderful issues, and provides links to so much unexplored data, that it was impossible to not get carried away.