Last week we shared a generous offer from Orkin in Vancouver. That offer of a bed bug dog inspection was made to people who had had a PCO inspect and find no evidence of bed bugs. (Read more about it here if you missed it.)

This week, Pestmaster Services of Kingston, NY makes a different, but equally generous, offer. Paul Alley emailed me to ask me to post this offer here:

We ask that Pestmaster, or readers who respond, let us know once the offer is no longer valid. Thanks!

Note: The terms and conditions of this deal are between you and Pestmaster Services and you should contact them for information. We have no connection with these companies, haven’t personally used them, and can’t therefore recommend them, but we definitely appreciate them sharing these offers with our readers!

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• University of Central Missouri (and other Missouri colleges) vs. bed bugs

The video below, from the the Today Show, focuses on the tenacity of bed bugs (giving the example of one family who spent $6000 on treatment and then had a dog come in because they still had bed bugs). What went wrong?

It contains some not quite precise information (Bill Whitstine of Florida Canine Academy is credited as Bill Whitestone). The show also cited the University of Florida bed bug k9 research, saying a recent study found “dogs were 98% accurate in finding bed bugs.”

Bed bug dogs can be an effective tool for detecting the presence of bed bugs. But the statement out of context is misleading to consumers new to the idea of bed bug detecting dogs, since it does not clarify that the training a dog receives and the handler it is working with probably make a big difference in terms of the dog’s effectiveness for the job. The site conditions are also relevant to the effectiveness of the dog, or so we have been told.

Nevertheless, we are always glad to see bed bugs in the news, because it helps raise awareness. Consumers need to be aware of how costly and difficult it can be to get rid of bed bugs.

Update (10 minutes later): Doug Summers, who is the bed bug dog handler featured (but not named) in the video, tells us the home had four vikane treatments. The family is probably being reinfested via some source. See Doug’s comments in the forums.Similar Posts:

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Bed bug have been found at Wilkes University, according to student paper, the Wilkes Beacon. They’ve been treated by Terminex, and students living in the affected building and their parents have been notified:

[Jeff] White [research entomologist for bedbugcentral.com] says that one of the most effective treatments against bed bugs is education.

Stanley says that the students and parents impacted by the bed bug outbreak at the residence hall was sent literature on bed bugs and the October edition of their parent newsletter will also include information on the subject.

(That’s Brenda Stanley, Wilkes’s Director of Residence Life.)

This is good, though I would follow the lead of some other colleges such as Stanford and SUNY Potsdam in trying to educate students outside of those living in the affected residence hall about bed bugs.

Bed bugs in one dorm can easily spread to others as students visit one another, stow stuff in gym lockers, sit in classrooms, hang out in cafes and bars, go to jobs, and so on. Students anywhere are at risk at picking bed bugs up, and should learn all they can about how to detect and avoid bed bugs.

And I also hope the information given in the literature is more comprehensive than that provided in the following excerpt from this article:

How does a student know if they have bed bugs?

“If someone has a series of bites on their body, typically on the chest/torso or leg/foot region, they should visit our Health and Wellness Office, located on the first floor of Evans Hall. The bites would have not pattern (random) and may appear to look like mosquito bites. A professional can determine if in fact, they are bedbug bites,” says Stanley.

There are two errors here. First, we are told doctors cannot identify bed bug bites with any certainty. They don’t always look the same. They can also be anywhere on the body. We’re told dermatologists cannot visually identify them. There are to my knowledge no tests to positively identify bed bugs as the cause of suspected bites.

In addition, the answer that people they will know they have bed bugs because they will get bed bug bites is not very helpful. There is a large percentage of the population who do not react in any way to bed bug bites. (Mississippi state medical entomologist Jerome Goddard claims 70% do not react). So waiting until you see bed bug bites or feel itchy can be bad news.

This is why some colleges, like Texas A&M, are taking it upon themselves to search proactively for bed bugs, for example, using bed bug sniffing dogs.

It seems that colleges are doing more than ever to educate about bed bugs, to detect them and get rid of them properly. Overall, this is not a bad article, but as this article and the one yesterday about SUNY Potsdam show, there is still room for improvement.

You can read the article from the Wilkes Beacon here.
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• University of Central Missouri (and other Missouri colleges) vs. bed bugs
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This USA Today article from Wednesday gives a rundown on recent bed bug battles in a number of US colleges and universities, such as Ohio State, and the University of Florida.

This is an issue that administrators are increasingly thinking about in advance of a crisis arising (as evidenced by recent sessions on bed bugs at a conference for college administrators), and this is a good thing.

USA Today gives a lot of attention to Texas A&M, where an administrator says of bed bugs:

“They’re taking off right now,” says Dan Mizer, associate director of residence life at Texas A&M University.

It sounds like Mizer is being proactive and has an aggressive plan in place to deal with bed bugs:

Texas A&M has spent $37,000 in the past year to fly in bedbug-sniffing dogs. This fall, Mizer plans to call in a Minnesota outfit called Temp-Air, whose eradicator heats the room overnight to 130 degrees, killing the bedbugs but leaving students’ belongings unharmed. His other secret weapon: eternal vigilance. “When we get a report, we get the pest-control staff, and we respond. These bugs can take over quickly.”

The school is being proactive about finding bed bugs, and has plans to deal with them efficiently. Perhaps they’re being advised by the world class bed bug researchers in TAMU’s own Center for Urban and Structural Entomology, like James Austin.

Local news outlets picked up the “bed bugs in college dorms” idea after USA Today’s article was published, and UPI distributed a short version of the story.

WFMY News 2 interviewed North Carolina public health officials as well as Wake Forest University students about whether they’re concerned about bed bugs:

(The video was much more interesting than the accompanying article.)

WLWT in Cincinnati goes further, giving students tips on how to search dorm rooms for bed bugs:

They should be inspecting the mattress, the box spring and areas around the mattress and box springs,” Scherzinger Pest Control technical director Patrick Boland said.

Boland also said that students should check the headboard and the bed frame itself. Students should also check their home before they leave as well.

Experts said that people should look in the folds and seems of their mattresses. Bedbugs can also be spotted by the black fecal material they leave behind.

Not just mattresses, though! The whole room should be inspected for bed bugs of every size and color (from translucent unfed 1 mm nymphs, to rust-colored, bulging just-fed 6 mm adults), fecal stains, cast skins, and bed bug eggs. These photos may help.

And college students need to know that you may never react to bed bug bites, and may still be the nightly meal for bed bugs.

Also see this video from NBC 10 in Providence, R.I. Similar Posts:

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• Colleges react to bed bugs: Loyola (Chicago), Boston University, Brigham Young (Hawaii)

The long-awaited University of Florida study of bed bug dogs that we mentioned last year has now been published:

Ability of Bed Bug-Detecting Canines to Locate Live Bed Bugs and Viable Bed Bug Eggs

MARGIE PFIESTER, PHILIP G. KOEHLER, AND ROBERTO M. PEREIRA
Department of Entomology, Building 970 Natural Area Drive,
University of Florida, Gainesville, FL 32611-0620
J. Econ. Entomol. 101(4): 1389-1396 (2008)

Here’s the abstract in full:

ABSTRACT The bed bug, Cimex lectularius L., like other bed bug species, is difficult to visually locate because it is cryptic. Detector dogs are useful for locating bed bugs because they use olfaction rather than vision. Dogs were trained to detect the bed bug (as few as one adult male or female) and viable bed bug eggs (five, collected 5-6 d after feeding) by using a modified food and verbal reward system. Their efficacy was tested with bed bugs and viable bed bug eggs placed in vented polyvinyl chloride containers. Dogs were able to discriminate bed bugs from Camponotus floridanus Buckley, Blattella germanica (L.), and Reticulitermes flavipes (Kollar), with a 97.5% positive indication rate (correct indication of bed bugs when present) and 0% false positives (incorrect indication of bed bugs when not present). Dogs also were able to discriminate live bed bugs and viable bed bug eggs from dead bed bugs, cast skins, and feces, with a 95% positive indication rate and a 3% false positive rate on bed bug feces. In a controlled experiment in hotel rooms, dogs were 98% accurate in locating live bed bugs. A pseudoscent prepared from pentane extraction of bed bugs was recognized by trained dogs as bed bug scent (100% indication). The pseudoscent could be used to facilitate detector dog training and quality assurance programs. If trained properly, dogs can be used effectively to locate live bed bugs and viable bed bug eggs.

You can easily access it on the Armed Forces Literature Retrieval System, using the title above.

The study used dogs trained by Pepe Peruyero.

The results are impressive: “Dogs trained to locate live bed bugs and viable
bed bug eggs had an overall accuracy of 97%, which is similar to previous studies on insect detector dogs” (1394).

But there was also a 10% no-indication rate on viable bed bug eggs (10% of the time, dogs did not alert to viable eggs being present). The study suggests this can be attributed to a low concentration of the target odor. These false negatives (as well as false positives) can also be attributed to the handler’s “misreading dog behavior” (1394).

Ultimately, the study concludes that

Dogs can be trained to locate cryptic insects that are difficult to uncover visually as long as dogs are trained in a similar manner to the method we used, training is maintained regularly, an experienced handler is used, and nontarget odors are separated from target odors (1395).

This comes as no surprise, but cannot be emphasized enough. We know that bed bug dogs can detect bed bugs. We also know that it doesn’t always work.

Bed bug dogs have to be properly trained, the training needs to be ongoing once they’re with the handler, and the handler has to know what they’re doing and do it well.

Everyone is not cut out to be a dog handler. This is a booming industry and a lot of people are trying to get in on it. People with no experience handling dogs are among them and some of these may not be cut out for it.

The potential is there for people to obtain bed bug dogs from the trainers but to handle them improperly, or not maintain training. So even if your bed bug dog handler got his or her dog from the same source, depending on how the handler is working with the dog now, your results may not be as impressive.

Consumers considering a bed bug dog need to remember that anyone can hang out a shingle and advertise their “bed bug dog;” there’s no government agency certifying their effectiveness. So get references and recommendations and choose wisely.Similar Posts:

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This article from TwinCities.com tells the saga of Evie Kelly, of St. Paul, Minnesota.

She has bed bugs in her apartment in a building for senior citizens:

“It’s hard. I hate it,” a resigned and visibly worn-out Kelly said last week while she sat in her public senior citizen high-rise apartment on Ravoux Street. She is forced to sit and sometimes sleep on a lawn chair in her living room because the little buggers have taken over the bed, couch and recliner.

It would not be so bad, however, if her building management were more proactive about getting her help:

Adding salt to the bites Kelly has endured, her efforts as well as those of relatives and others the past two weeks to get someone to address the bedbug infestation have mostly fallen on deaf ears.

“The (building site manager) came up here, looked around, found nothing and told my aunt that if there were bedbugs here, he would eat his shirt,” said Louise Sebesta.

Actually, he will need to do that. The article’s author, Rubén Rosario, suggested Sebesta, Kelly’s niece, take some samples to be identified by bed bug researcher Stephen Kells, at the University of Minnesota, and she did.

Kells confirmed they were bed bugs. And he said,

“We are seeing more problems with people in assisted-living facilities and low-income areas, and it’s not because they are dirty, and it’s not because they are unclean,” Kells told us. “Bedbugs will feed on me. They will feed on anyone in this lab. The problem is that people who are in assisted living do not have the resources to adequately control them once they do get them. Money is a big reason.”

Kells explained that it could take $500 to upward of $3,000 to effectively treat one apartment and $50,000 to $80,000 to treat a whole building, as has been done in major urban areas.

Even though Kelly and Sebesta had found bed bugs, and a bed bug expert had identified them, it took weeks of phone calls from Sebesta as well as Kelly’s public health nurse, to get the problem addressed. Rosario writes:

Sebesta called public housing officials and a slew of city, state and federal agencies in the past two weeks to relay her aunt’s plight. She had received no return calls when I spoke with her last week.

Jeanette Buckley, Kelly’s county public health nurse, confirmed she has also called similar numbers since May 14 with similar nonresults.

She finally got a return call Tuesday from Cheryl Hawley, who works as a human services coordinator for the St. Paul Public Housing Agency. The federally funded organization owns and operates 16 senior public high-rises in the city.

According to Buckley, Hawley mentioned that the site manager had already gone to Kelly’s place and found nothing. She suggested that the manager might be sent back for another look.

To make the long story short, Kelly’s apartment has now been inspected (again): bed bugs were confirmed and the unit is receiving treatment.

But I can see some problems that this scenario highlights.

First, many people with bed bugs do not react to bed bug bites. Others will react but not see bed bugs. Fewer will react to bed bug bites, see bed bugs, and report them.

Those who do need careful and thorough responses, to be sure. And we can hope St. Paul Public Housing Agency officials will be reviewing their procedures to make sure things run more smoothly for the next Evie Kelly who reports bed bugs.

However, given the difficulties of recognizing the problem and of detecting bed bugs, I hope that city agencies will become more proactive — especially when it comes to housing for senior citizens.

Although bed bug dogs are not foolproof, they could be a very useful tool in helping detect bed bug infestations in apartment buildings before they get out of hand.

And seniors in buildings like Kelly’s need to be educated about the resurgence of bed bugs and the signs of bed bugs.

They need to know that they may not feel any bed bug bites or see any bed bugs (and their building managers need to know this too!)

Finally, they need to be reminded that bed bugs spread easily and don’t have anything to do with cleanliness, and that they should not be afraid to come forward when they suspect a problem.

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This article in the Danbury, Connecticut News-Times trumpets the arrival of Squirt, a new bed bug dog who will be working with local Pest Control firm Amtech. The dog was trained by Pepe Peruyero, and dog and trainer are learning to work together.

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.Similar Posts:

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Lots of press abounding on the busy bed bug dogs at Advanced k9, based in Connecticut.  There have been a number of other articles this week along the same lines.

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?!Similar Posts:

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Not as quickly as bed bugs, but still.

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

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Carl Massicott and Vince Mangano, bed bug dog handlers of Radar and Taz, who are regularly called to sniff in the New York area, were featured in this Daily News article Monday.

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.Similar Posts:

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