But it includes a section on the status of bed bug aggregate pheromone research being undertaken by Dr. Gerhard Gries of Simon Fraser University:

Understanding how insects communicate with each other is the key to developing effective new tools in the fight to eradicate bedbugs.

Simon Fraser University professor Dr. Gerhard Gries, an expert in insect chemical ecology, is investigating how bedbugs use airborne chemical compounds called pheromones to communicate.

Not only have Prof. Gries and his collaborators identified this compound, they now know how to manufacture pheromones in a laboratory.

“A synthetic replica of this message, made of very harmless chemicals, can be put into a trap and placed in a room with a potential infestation, and if any insects appear, you know there are bedbugs in the room.”

The SFU-developed pheromone traps have been patented and will soon undergo testing. If all goes well, they will be in the toolboxes of Vancouver exterminators within two years.

We’ve heard more than one team is working on bed bug pheromone traps.

Whoever wins the race to the working bed bug trap will have a lot of happy customers.

Not to sound ungrateful, but I sure hope it takes less than two years.

• Good news: bed bug aggregate pheromones
• Another bed bug trap in the works
• More bed bug research: Stephen Kells at the University of Minnesota
• Bed bug dog Joni: fighting bed bugs in New Zealand and Australia

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Kells is at least one of the entomologists working on making an effective bed bug trap.

Alas, “we’re quite a distance off” from a monitoring trap, Kells said.

Eventually, it will be a wonderful invention.

It was interesting to hear how Kells got into bed bug research:

Kells first encountered a bedbug in about 2000 while working in the pest-control industry in Canada.

He dipped it into insecticide. The beast lived for four days and laid eggs.

“At that point, I knew we were in trouble,” he said.

Kells decided to study the insects further in an academic setting. He came to the University of Minnesota 3 1/2 years ago and set up a lab devoted to bedbug research.

About 2,000 bedbugs live there, housed in jars, where they crawl around pieces of filter paper that vibrate and twitch with their constant motion.

They eat Red Cross-donated human blood that’s beyond the expiration date, heated to body temperature.

Kells built a special platform he calls a bedbug arena, where he can observe the behavior of individuals when exposed to stimuli like heat. Part of his research is funded by the Propane Education Research Council, which wants to know whether propane-heaters can be used to kill the insects.

Another set of experiments involves attaching bedbug antennae to tiny electrical probes to see what kind of chemical compounds the antennae are tuned to receive. This might help develop the lure — maybe the carbon dioxide that sleeping humans exhale or the fatty acids on our skin — for a bedbug monitoring trap.

I am trying to envision the little tiny electrodes on the little tiny antennae. I also was fascinated by the bed bugs eating expired Red Cross blood, since all the other times we’ve read about researchers feeding their own bed bug colonies (as Lou Sorkin does) or having their grad students do it. I suppose it would be difficult to support 2,000 bed bugs.

The article also talks about the differences between captive bed bug colonies, and “wild” bed bugs, and it cites Harold Harlan, former Army entomologist (and author of the Armed Forces bed bug guide), as the source of Kells’ colony:

Bedbugs are a lot more resistant to poisons than they used to be. It takes 1,200 times the amount of insecticide to kill recently captured bedbugs than it takes to kill individuals from bedbug colonies that have been in captivity for more than 30 years, Kells said.

That captive colony was maintained by Harlan, who collected about 600 individuals from a barracks at Fort Dix, N.J., in the early 1970s. They were a novelty at the time, Harlan said. Over the years, he kept the colony alive in jars, letting it grow into the thousands, by allowing the bugs to feed on his legs.

“I’ve had them escape a few times in my house,” he said.

He had to leave the colony untended for a year when he was deployed in Vietnam and couldn’t find anyone willing to be a food source. When he came home, enough had survived to rebuild the population. Now his pets have become a resource for researchers.

I have a hunch this is where we got the information that bed bugs could survive, unfed, for a year. (We still aren’t sure where the “18 months” rule came from.)

Thanks to all the bed bug researchers, and universities, foundations and private companies that fund their work.

And thanks to the Pioneer Press for an informative article!

• Bed bug aggregate pheromone traps “within two years” says Dr. Gerhard Gries
• Another bed bug trap in the works
• Lou’s bed bug bite photos
• The Wall Street Journal on “new” bed bug-fighting tactics

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But what I found intriguing was the following comment:

Used and freebie couches are breeding grounds for these pests and a center-piece in many college students’ living rooms. Many apartment complexes warned tenants of the commingling of on-campus and off-campus Aggies, with reference to spreading bed bugs. The Luxor Management Group told tenants to avoid visiting residence halls and “if someone who lives in the dorms must come to visit you in your residence, [we] strongly recommend that they do not sit or put their belongings on your beds or even enter your bedrooms and to just stay in your living or dining rooms.”

This management company is warning residents of off-campus apartments that they should avoid visiting students who live in dorms, and treat visitors from dorms with caution, keeping them in the living room and dining room, and their belongings off the beds.

Bed bug awareness is a good thing, but this advice is a bit off.

Yes–I would absolutely advise people to avoid putting guests’ belongings in their beds. The whole party “coat pile on the bed” (or coat pile anywhere) concept is a bad idea, and aversion to it is a litmus test for whether people have experienced bed bugs or not.

And taking in used couches and other items from the street, Craigslist, or other sources, is a bad idea. (Though surely some of the students in private accommodation have done this too?)

On the other hand, you should realize that if your friends have bed bugs and bring them to your home on belongings or on their clothing, they can infest other rooms as easily as the bedroom. Keeping friends to the living and dining room is not going to do it. Sofas and upholstered furniture are common targets, but bed bugs do also move into rooms themselves, and wooden furniture items.

Better advice for Texas A&M students is to talk about bed bugs. Make sure your friends know about them and know that experts claim as many as 50% of people may experience no bite marks and no itching–that means you can have them and not know it.

Make sure they know what unfed first instar nymphs look like (1 mm or 1/32 inch, white or translucent; not 6 mm or 1/6 inch and brown), since–as Lou Sorkin keeps reminding us–this is not what the media usually tells people to look for, but they may be all you see.

Talk to your friends about avoiding curbside furniture, lawn sales, flea markets and the like.

While Luxor Management may have the idea that students in a dorm are more prone to bed bug outbreaks than those in private accommodations, it is true that anyone can get bed bugs anytime.

And you do not have to share your bed with a student who lives in a dorm–or trash-pick furniture–to get them, as most of us will attest.

You can read thebatt.com’s article here.

• Stanford still fighting bed bugs
• Bed bugs at the University of Vermont
• Eastern Nazarene College: students cannot bring in ANY used furniture
• Spring break bed bug warnings!

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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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