What caught my eye was this snippet:

“Humans can see bedbugs 50 percent of the time,” said Richard Monastero, president of Amtech, a pest management firm in Danbury. “A dog can find them 90 percent of the time.”

That seems like a guesstimate, rather than an actual statistic.

I believe it’s the first time I’ve heard a PCO estimate the human inspector’s effectiveness at 50%, an interesting number.

Granted, it comes from a human who just acquired a bed bug dog, and so he’s biased.

But I’d be interested in hearing how effective other PCOs honestly think they are when it comes to detection. Yes, when bed bugs are “literally crawling up the walls in broad daylight,” I’d call that 100%.

But what about the more average, run-of-the-mill, “where are these bed bugs hiding?” cases. Finding bed bugs is a very difficult task.

So how effective are human inspectors? Or to put it another way, how long does a careful visual inspection really take?

We’ll know more about how effective bed bug dogs can be when research currently being done at the University of Florida is available.

• Potter’s Studies on Suspend, Kicker, Phantom, Bedlam, Sterifab; new information about bed bug behavior
• Frederick News-Post Online: Residents not losing sleep over bed bugs
• Crain’s reports: “Exterminators make killing on bedbugs”
• The Wall Street Journal on “new” bed bug-fighting tactics

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Bed bugs are very difficult to detect and a bed bug sniffing dog does appear to give you a really good shot at detecting bed bugs in the home or in a business.

But I am not sure hotelchatter.com is right in suggesting dogs have a 100% success rate in sniffing out bed bugs.  Is this really possible?!

• More bed bug sniffing dogs to the rescue!
• Bed bug dog Joni: fighting bed bugs in New Zealand and Australia
• Consumers, before you hire one, find out what that bed bug dog can do!
• University of Florida tests bed bug dogs

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The MSNBC advice on avoiding bed bugs while traveling has been around since June 2006. We added our FAQ on how to avoid bed bugs while traveling in October of that year (just two weeks after Bedbugger.com was born). Lots have sprung up in the interim, including the wonderful CBC video which shows one how to inspect a hotel room for bed bugs (clicking here loads a movie).

And then last week an article appeared in Smarter Travel, and today, one in Gadling.

The NY Times Health Blog post on bed bug dogs also sent people to the Gadling page today.

If more people learn how to search a hotel room (or even learn they should), then perhaps more people will discover bed bugs before they are bitten, and more will avoid bringing them home.

LAX Sunset Airplane Landing

Originally uploaded by felibarrientos

• Disney guests paid off to keep quiet about bed bugs
• FAQ: How can I avoid bedbugs while traveling?
• bed bugs in the media: the Today Show, Tuesday morning
• dealing with post-bedbug paranoia: how to travel after bed bugs

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According to the article, it’s hard to keep up with demand for the doggy detectives.

But here’s what caught my eye in the article:

Experts say the surge of international visitors to New York City is partly to blame for the epidemic as travelers unwittingly bring bedbugs in their luggage from Europe and Asia.

“Yes, yes,” you say, “we know.”

So how much would you pay, readers, to stop at the bed bug dog kiosk in JFK or Newark airports, for a sniff down of you, your luggage, and junior’s stuffed teddy bear? You could then avoid bringing bed bugs home. (Be wary of the infested taxis, my friends.)

$10 per person or bag?   Even at such a low price, the profit margin would be big, compared with k9 teams going to homes for inspections.

(On-site decon could even be offered for person, stuffed animal, and luggage. But that, my friends, would be much trickier and expensive.)

If any bed bug dog handlers steal this idea, I want a kick-back.

No, seriously? Just do it, someone. It’s a great idea.

• dealing with post-bedbug paranoia: how to travel after bed bugs
• FAQ: I stayed somewhere that had bed bugs. What do I do to keep from taking them home?
• Hundreds participate in massive pillow fight, New York City, March 22, 2008
• Bed bug dog Joni: fighting bed bugs in New Zealand and Australia

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One of the biggest frustrations with bed bugs is that it is hard to know if you have them. You can be bitten quite badly for a long time before ever finding a bed bug. Bed bugs, bed bug cast skins, fecal spots and fecal specks can all be hard to find.

The best thing to do if you suspect bed bugs is to have a qualified pest control operator (PCO) search your home for them, carefully. You may have a PCO who searches and finds nothing. I assume you have already had a doctor rule out scabies, folliculitis, and other medical causes) and that your PCO has ruled out fleas and other biting pests.

While I do not recommend self-treatment for bed bugs, I do recommend trying to locate a sample yourself, especially if a pest control operator has looked but has not yet found evidence, or if the PCO wants to treat without evidence (this may seem great to you at the time, but you really should find out if bed bugs are the cause of your troubles before sinking in your money and time into getting rid of them).

We now have some ideas for bed bug traps to detect a problem. A few caveats:

• These methods are not foolproof. They could take time and having more traps out more frequently increases your odds of catching a culprit.
• This does not significantly reduce your problem, not by a long shot, and is not in itself a treatment option. But detection is the first step in solving your bed bug problem.
• This is not about capturing a live bed bug, but one for identification purposes. Live bed bug sampling can be done with what the British call a pooter, but you have to find a bed bug first. To read about these methods, see this forum thread.

The following are some do-it-yourself methods for getting a bed bug sample.

First, many Pest Control Operators will suggest or use glue traps, designed for mice, to catch bed bugs. Yes, bed bugs will be caught if they walk across them. But getting them to walk across such a trap is tricky. They could walk around it. And you may have no idea what routes they travel.

In a forum thread, PCO/Entomologist Sean, of the Bed Bug Resource, suggested adding an activated hand warmer to the center of the trap:

Take a mouse glue board (sold by pest professionals) and place an activated hot shot (hand warmer) in the centre. There are several brands of hot shots out there and to my knowledge they all should work. These give off both heat and carbon dioxide.

These are NOT 100% effective in every case.

I have never had it not work in a badly infested area, but surely there is the possibility that it may not work in a light infestation.

Keep in mind that bed bugs feed about once per week. Hot shots last about 12 hours. This means that you may have to put one out every night for a week before catching anything. Obviously multiple locations increases your odds.

Putting these traps in the room you think you’re being bitten in, at night, when you’re not (yet) there sleeping, might be good. Doing it when you are away for some reason might be even better (though we don’t recommend you sleep elsewhere in another room or building, as a general rule, since it can spread bed bugs). Remember to put them where pets can’t go, or to keep pets out of the room–they really are very, very sticky.

Hand warmers are sold under many brand names and used by outdoorspeople and people with medical problems (which should give you some idea where to find them). Glue traps are in the pest control section of a home store or available online. These are examples of glue traps and air activated hand warmers:

air-activated hand warmers:

Fourt, in another forum thread, described a rigged-up trap that worked:

I am setting up a crazy little trap up tonight. It’s really not a trap but rather a thing to lure them from returning to their hiding spaces. I have 2 pieces of old wood, not very large, I have drilled several shallow holes on one. Then Im going to cover the holes with the other piece of wood. Placing it close to the head of the bed. My theroy is they will check it out on their way back to where ever they are living. And decide this looks like a nice place to hang out and lay eggs. Then when they least expect it, I will lift off the top peice of wood and get them with my handy dandy garment steamer. My husband thinks I’m crazy, but I tell him to catch a bed bug you need to think like one. I will let you guys know how this works. I know I will not get rid of a infestation this way. But it may work as a monitoring tool.

And here’s the follow-up:

Well, my little wood trap worked. Found an almost mature bug bed in one of the holes. I steamed it with my garment steamer. It died in a instant. I steamed all of the wood incase there were eggs on it. I have set it up again and will wait and see what else happens.

And some tips:

The bed bug trap worked very well to catch them if they were around. If I was to do the trap all over again I would have used a slightly larger drill bit. One last thing regarding the trap. You must use real wood not plywood or MDF. Place the wood near the bed and see what happens. Make sure you have a way to catch them when checking the wood for BB. They can trot at a good clip.

Fourt’s trap reminded me of this trap idea hopelessnomo found. I was impressed by Fourt’s ingenuity, and happy it worked, though I have to stress that I think that luck plays more of a role in this method than Sean’s. There’s nothing to attract the bed bug in this case, except that it’s a form of wooden clutter with holes for hiding out, and it’s in the bed (no doubt to some degree appealing to bed bugs).

The bottom line is that Sean also has experience with his trap working again and again, and if I had to rig up a trap, I would try his glue trap/hand warmer method (and try it a number of times).

Another method of detecting (but not trapping per se) gets around the fact that bed bugs may be less likely to come towards you in bed with the lights on, and involves using red LED light to see bed bugs at night. NotSoSnug, resident “Cimex Hunter,” had great results with this. You can read about his methods here. They are effective, though their effectiveness depends on your ability to stay up (possibly most of the night) as well as your level of infestation. If you are not being bitten by lots of bed bugs, or being bitten elsewhere than the bed, or you simply would like to sleep, this is not such a great method. Since NotSoSnug was not able to sleep during this period, and did appear to have lots of bed bugs, it was very effective for him.

A red LED light was part of NotSoSnug’s toolkit for detecting bed bugs at night in bed.  They can be quite useful. Here’s a thread about this (including advice about obtaining useful red LED lights).

I welcome reports in the comments below from those who use one of these methods and find it successful.

Future prospects for bed bug traps?

My understanding is that a glue trap involving bed bug aggregate pheromones is in the works, but has been for years, and we should not hold our breath.

Simple glue traps are beginning to be marketed as bed bug traps. Don’t get excited at the simple mention of a bed bug trap for sale.

John F. Anderson at the Connecticut Agricultural Experiment Station in New Haven is working with a rigged-together bed bug trap that is not commercially available. You can see glimpses of it near the end of this WTNH News 8 video Paula shared in the forums. We can hope something like it–or the plans for how to make one– is soon available to all of us.

Remember, too, that bed bug dogs are an option as an aid to finding a bed bug or detecting their presence. Dogs and their handlers cannot always help you find an actual sample, so if you do go this route, discuss with your landlord/PCO the necessity of a visible bed bug sample (and whether they will take the word of the bed bug dog handler), and discuss with your bed bug dog handler before hiring him/her the possibility of locating one if needed.

• Good news: bed bug aggregate pheromones
• University of Florida tests bed bug dogs
• NotSoSnug: killing bed bugs one by one
• Consumers, before you hire one, find out what that bed bug dog can do!

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Following are some important tidbits covered at the conference submitted for your information and action agendas.

More work is being done on field strains of bed bugs, as opposed to much early work which utilized sheltered strains, as they were the only ones available in quantity. This should result in better operational information and perhaps a greater understanding of distribution and patterns.

Pyrethrin barriers do not seem to be successfully repellent as an isolation tool. On the other hand it means that bed bugs are less likely to avoid some treated surfaces.

One bed bug may cause a multitude of welts or what seem to be bites.

Bed bug eggs and feces seem to fluoresce although they are often obscured by background material.

Work continues to be done in regard to effective detection. Dogs, although a good detection tool, are not beyond errors, false positives and dogs playing their handlers. Again a generalization of a work in progress which needs supervision, and accreditation.

Current studies indicate that bed bugs feed once a week.

Number one spot in hotels – headboard.

Number one spot in homes – box spring.

It is recommended that all bedrooms be treated as well as all sofas and sleeping areas even if bed bugs have not been noted in these areas.

Bed bugs will deposit eggs all over sleeping areas, oftentimes in areas adjacent to fecal focal points.

According to one study, bed bugs were found in adjacent apartments 28% of the time.

Unfortunately clutter will undermine any treatment, so total cooperation is essential.

One major danger area is in the discarding of infested items such as mattresses.

1. Because they are dispersed by disposal, bag it before you move it.

2. Items are often picked up by others sometimes even in the same building.

3. Encase before you replace to protect incoming mattresses and box springs.

And when using encasements, consider covering corners of metal frames with felt to avoid rips.

More funding, more research, and more product development are all needed. Unfortunately when compared to agricultural needs bed bugs are not a number
one priority. In addition, the over-regulation of entire classes of insecticides is not helping in stemming the tide of bed bug infestation.

• Consumers, before you hire one, find out what that bed bug dog can do!
• University of Florida tests bed bug dogs
• Bed bug dog Joni: fighting bed bugs in New Zealand and Australia
• Abbey the Bed Bug Dog: news report

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A couple selling a New York City apartment had bed bugs six months ago. They have not noticed any problem since. So the question is, do they need to disclose that the property they’re selling had bed bugs recently?

Jay Romano answers that the Property Condition Disclosure Act–requiring a seller to fill out a detailed disclosure statement–doesn’t apply to co-op or condo sales.  (Romano consulted Edward I. Sumber, a White Plains lawyer.)

What does apply to apartment owners, however, is common law, which has been established through judicial rulings over the centuries. “Under the doctrine of caveat emptor — let the buyer beware — the seller has no affirmative obligation to reveal circumstances about the apartment to the buyer,” Mr. Sumber said.

But he added that if a prospective buyer asks a specific question about whether the apartment has had bedbugs, the seller has an obligation to answer honestly.

The lesson is if you are buying a NYC condo or co-op, ask if it has or ever had bed bugs.

And, your broker may also be liable:

In addition, if the real estate broker knows about the bedbug problem, he or she has an obligation to reveal it to a prospective buyer. “The broker is under an affirmative duty to be diligent,” Mr. Sumber said. “But the seller is not required to tell the broker, either.”

House buyers are afforded more protection. Sellers of houses have to answer a 48-question disclosure statement and give it to the buyer.

One of the questions asks whether there has been any pest infestation in the house.

But non-scrupulous house sellers need only take a $500 hit to avoid this kind of disclosure:

The penalty for failing to provide the form is a $500 credit to the buyer.

Sellers, apparently, can simply take the loss and skip disclosure. That’s bad news.

All in all, it appears that people can get around disclosing they have had bed bugs in their home (even, apparently, if the infestation is more recent or active) whether it’s an apartment or house. This is very bad news.

Bedbugger hopes that everyone selling a home will be responsible and make sure they are bed bug-free before selling. We also hope apartment and house buyers will have homes professionally inspected, perhaps with the aid of both a PCO and a bed bug dog, before purchase.

You can read Romano’s full article in the New York Times (1/20/08) here. 

• Bedbugs called “a new kind of roach”; building managment lies
• Bed bugs and marketing (again)
• The bed bug droppings hit the fan
• FAQ: what is Vikane gas fumigation?

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“Our inspectors are saying in recent months, even the last year, we’ve been seeing more complaints of bed bugs in our area,” said Dain Weister of the Orange County Health Department.

Even the most popular hotels are not immune.

WFTV channel 9 reports that one family was paid off to keep their bed bug story to themselves, after encountering the monsters in their Disney Resort.

One family said they were bitten by the bugs at the Disney All-Star Movie Resort. They backed out of an interview after they said Disney offered them $5,000 and a free trip to keep quiet.

The station also contacted Disney:

When asked about offering money to the family who found bed bugs in their room, Disney said they occasionally compensates guests who have a less than magical experience and the park does everything it can to makes guests comfortable [sic].

How is Disney dealing with bed bugs?

Disney said it has trained entomologists or “bug experts” on staff. Other hotels hire bug sniffing dogs. One of the animals is based in Tampa, but makes frequent trips to inspect hotels in the Orlando area.

I would indeed call bed bugs a “less than magical” experience. The spread of bed bugs can not be entirely contained and they will appear in hotels of every kind and quality. The best thing is to be proactive about doing a search for bed bugs in the room before settling in, and to take some basic precautions. (See our travel FAQs for more on how to avoid bed bugs while traveling.)

All hotels, meanwhile, need to educate employees about searching for and identifying bed bugs in the course of their normal work, and hotels need to employ professionals to help them develop a bed bug prevention and treatment protocol, and to identify and treat infestations as quickly as possible.

• Bed bug hotel claim in Isle of Wight; study/travel abroad and bed bugs
• Bed bugs in hotels: how to report (and check up on) bed bug infestations
• another bedbug lawsuit
• Rockford, IL: half of Red Roof Inn shut down due to bed bugs

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In the 3 1/2 years it’s been open, Jurys Boston Hotel has never found bedbugs on its premises, nor have its guests complained about being bitten. Still, the luxury hotel in the Back Bay began dispatching a bedbug-sniffing dog to each of its 225 guest rooms last year. And when the canine detective barked, after detecting the suspicious scent of the itch-inducing insects or their eggs, the hotel fumigated two rooms and burned the mattresses.

“At the first sign or suggestion of a problem, our reaction would be to treat the room with chemicals, no questions asked,” said general manager Stephen Johnston, who calls the dog in every three months.

Every three months hardly means you won’t be bitten by bed bugs in the hotel, but it is definitely a start, and would prompt many of us to choose such a hotel over another that has no strategies to detect or prevent bed bugs.

Jurys isn’t the only hotel to take a proactive approach to bedbugs. The Omni Parker House brings in an insect-sniffing mixed Labrador from Advanced K9 Detectives LLC, the same Milford, Conn., firm that Jurys and about 10 other Boston-area hotels use. The Omni’s general manager, John Murtha, is also considering buying special encasements for mattresses and box springs to prevent bedbugs from building homes on them.

My advice to hotels is not to think too long about mattress encasements–just get them. They won’t prevent customers from being bitten but make it hard for bed bugs to hide on the actual mattress, and can mean you don’t have to destroy mattresses or spend considerable time and expense sanitizing them if an infestation does occur.

In addition, I hope all hotels and motels will educate staff about how to prevent spreading and detect bed bug infestations. Stephen Doggett’s article for Executive Housekeeping (an Australian hotel industry journal) is a must-read for industry professionals. Click here to load a PDF.

How many hotels are infested?

Judith Black, technical director at Steritech Group Inc., a pest-control company that serves the hospitality industry, found only 0.6 percent of the almost 76,000 rooms the company inspected between November 2002 and April 2006 needed to be treated for bedbugs, but those infestations were spread across 24.4 percent of the nearly 700 US hotels it studied.

I’d take those numbers with a grain of salt, and consider them in juxtaposition with another statistic the article offered:

Scientists are trying to find ways to fight the bugs, too. The Entomological Society of America’s annual conference, held in San Diego last month, featured three half-day symposiums on the insects, with nearly 30 scientific presentations on topics like “How bedbugs survive long xeric periods between blood meals” and “The effect of sex-ratio on dispersal and aggregation behavior of the common bedbug.”

Three years ago, no one at the conference presented any bedbug research.

So in 2004, bed bugs were not considered important enough to merit one single panel presentation at the ESA annual conference, and this year the topic merited thirty presentations.  To me, this obvious growth in bed bugs signals that perhaps Steritech’s data from 2002-6 is largely outdated.  (Steritech’s data also seems to be based on hotels who hired their services, in which case it is already biased towards hotels which are more proactive against bed bugs.)

Assume many more than 24% of hotels are affected, but try to keep this in perspective: remember that “a hotel with bed bugs” may have them in only a room or two.

In my opinion, with the requisite precautions, it is still safe to travel. Click here to download the CBC video for a good lesson in searching a room for bed bugs, and read our travel FAQs. Seeing the world is too good to miss. Let’s hope all hotels, motels, and hostels soon see having a sound bed bug protocol as being as important as changing the sheets.

Read the rest of the Boston Globe article here.

• Second Greater Boston Bed Bug Conference
• “Disproportionate Horror”: Vancouver Hoteliers Get Schooled
• Bed bug dog Joni: fighting bed bugs in New Zealand and Australia
• Consumers, before you hire one, find out what that bed bug dog can do!

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Nine-pound Nudie’s feet skitter across the concrete floor as she speeds by, keeping her tiny nose to the ground. She scurries around the perimeter of a bed, then hops on top.

“Find your B’s, find your B’s,” handler Jose “Pepe” Peruyero commands. Within seconds, she’s pawing furiously at a spot on the bed as if trying to dig through it.

She’s found her “B’s” — meaning bedbugs. She gets a handful of kibble, a hearty “Good girl!” from Peruyero and a kiss on her scruffy head.

Nudie is a bedbug-detecting Chinese crested terrier mix trained by Peruyero’s J&K Canine Academy in High Springs, part of a 3½-year collaboration with University of Florida entomologists.

They’ve worked together to gauge the accuracy of more than 17 termite-detecting dogs since 1998, but early next month will be the first time they’ve added bedbug-sniffing dogs like Nudie to the mix.

About 20 dogs will be tested for their termite- and bedbug-detecting accuracy during the Southeast Pest Management Conference May 6-9 on the UF campus. UF entomology graduate students run the tests.

Though the bed bug dogs are not a “silver bullet” for finding bed bugs, they can often find them where humans can’t easily do so:

“We’ve been working to try to make sure that there are quality dogs out there to detect termites, and now bedbugs,” said Phil Koehler, an entomology professor with UF’s Institute of Food and Agricultural Sciences. “Both those pests are very difficult to detect in structures.”For instance, he said, researchers have found as many as 15 bedbug nymphs in the slot of a drywall screw.

That’s the sort of stealth that makes bed bugs so hard to find. Humans need all the help we can get, so bring on the trained bed bug dogs, and bring on the tests of their efficacy.

Thanks to lmk for the tip!

• Abbey the Bed Bug Dog: news report
• How accurate are human bed bug inspectors, k9s?
• Consumers, before you hire one, find out what that bed bug dog can do!
• Bed bug dog Joni: fighting bed bugs in New Zealand and Australia

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