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Report on the recent New York Entomological Society meeting on bed bugs

nobugsonme — Sun, 24 Jan 2010 05:46:11 +0000

There’s a report by Renee Corea here on the recent New York Entomological Society meeting on bed bugs, which Lou invited all of us to a few weeks ago.

It’s a nice run-down on the event, which featured host Lou Sorkin and some experts on issues around tenants and bed bugs.

Renee provides photos of Lou and attendees, and the not-to-be-missed, simply wonderful bed bug public education poster from WoodGreen Community Services in Toronto (it’s on page five of their tenant manual PDF, if — like me — you simply must have your own copy).

I wish I could have been there (I had to work), and I know it was a fabulous event.Similar Posts:

Invitation to NYENTSOC public meeting about bed bugs 1/20/2010

nobugsonme — Wed, 13 Jan 2010 20:07:41 +0000

Lou Sorkin invites everyone in New York City to a public meeting about bed bugs next Wednesday (1/20):

It’s the January 2010 meeting of The New York Entomological Society, Inc., incorporating the Brooklyn Entomological Society.

Speaker:
Louis N. Sorkin, B.C.E., Entomologist, Arachnologist, American Museum of Natural History
Other invited speakers to be announced

Presentation: “What Do You Really Know About Bed Bugs?”

Location:
Kaufman Theater (please enter via 77th Street Museum Entrance)
American Museum of Natural History
Central Park West at 79^th Street
New York, New York 10024

Date: Wednesday, January 20, 2010
Time: 6:30 PM to 9:00 PM

NYENTSOC meetings are always open to the public with no admission charge.

Lou said they’re holding this in a larger venue than their normal meetings, because he hopes lots of people will come — both pest pros and bedbuggers alike. You, me, and everybody!

Back in 2006, there were three NYENTSOC meetings about bed bugs, which Lou organized at a time when nobody was holding public meetings about bed bugs in NYC. I am so glad this is happening and I hope you’ll be there!

Pest management professionals note: “Please RSVP [contact information on the NYENTSOC event page] if you are considering attendance for DEC credits.”Similar Posts:

The happy couple, again: Lou’s male and female bed bugs revisited

nobugsonme — Wed, 16 Dec 2009 18:09:11 +0000

Lou Sorkin shared a follow-up to Monday’s Photo of newly mated male and female bed bugs. He writes,

Female [has] now deposited dark “typical” fecal matter that many people call undigested blood, but it has been digested and voided. If it were undigested blood, how would the bugs be obtaining any nourishment from their blood meals? Male had crawled over and displaced her, but she was in same position as in first picture before I was able to take this shot. A second egg has been deposited on far right. Note first egg is much more elongated and narrow than second one (“normal” shaped egg).

You can see the original photo here. Thanks, Lou!

Photo of newly mated male and female bed bugs

nobugsonme — Mon, 14 Dec 2009 15:56:29 +0000

Lou Sorkin (of the American Museum of Natural History) has generously shared the following new image with us. He describes it as,

. . . 2 bugs in a small box, 1/4 inch graph paper. Male & female just fed and mated 48 hours prior to picture. Sometimes both are together, sometimes apart. Here (in close-up) the female had already laid an egg which can occur 24 hours after mating. Unfortunately, I hadn’t looked at the box after first 24 hours. Fecal spot is pale because first digested fluid must be the plasma portion of the blood. This bug hadn’t eaten for months. I think if a bug had already consumed blood within a few days of feeding again, the remaining blood in the gut would be primarily red blood cells, so a newly fed bug that had digested blood in the gut would defecate out the dark, digested blood first, hence dark spotting from what appears to be a recently fed bug. Although if a bug feeds and fills to capacity, possibly a large amount of feces quickly ejected could be a dark mixture but I haven’t looked at this yet. I’ve seen posted bed bug movies where the ejected liquid is dark, but I don’t know if the bug that had been feeding had been starved for months and the gut is empty or it had recently fed within a few days time.
Lou

Thanks, Lou!

Note: you can see the original here.Similar Posts:

Bed bugs on Dr. Oz this Friday

nobugsonme — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 00:13:21 +0000

Bed bugs will feature on the Dr. Oz show this Friday.

The promo below suggests a sensational tone. (Those audience reactions — do they seem a bit rehearsed to you?)

On the other hand, we hear Drs. Dini Miller, Richard Cooper, and Lou Sorkin will be featured, and that is a good thing.

(You can check local showtimes on Dr. Oz’s website.)

Similar Posts:

Room for Debate on bed bugs: a must-read!

nobugsonme — Mon, 24 Aug 2009 16:50:02 +0000

Today’s Room for Debate, entitled Bedbugs (Itch, Itch, Scratch, Scratch)! (hosted by the New York Times) has an excellent virtual roundtable, including posts by fabulous entomologists Lou Sorkin, Michael Potter, and Susan C. Jones.

Although Bonnie Friedman’s contribution waxes nostalgically for DDT (which isn’t going to happen, for all kinds of good reasons), we did also appreciate the presence of a former bed bug sufferer among the respondents.

As Renee said on New York vs. Bed Bugs today, the posts by Sorkin, Potter and Jones in particular would be a great resource for people anywhere trying to educate others about bed bugs.

Bookmark and share them with your skeptical, under-responsive or unresponsive landlord, health department, or legislator!Similar Posts:

Animal Planet’s “Monsters Inside Me” episode on bed bugs

nobugsonme — Thu, 16 Jul 2009 20:48:26 +0000

The Animal Planet show “Monsters Inside Me” recently featured an episode on bed bugs. Though the series title is misleading (since bed bugs do not live inside people), it is a show about human parasites.

I strongly caution you that the images linked below can be quite disturbing to someone who is experiencing, has experienced, or suspects a bed bug infestation.

The first clip provides an introduction and shows entomologist (and friend-to-Bedbugger) Dr. Louis Sorkin (of the American Museum of Natural History) feeding his bed bug colony and Lou and a bed bug sufferer talking about her bed bug infestation. The second goes into more detail on bed bug bites (with images of bed bugs feeding), and the third talks mostly about traumatic insemination (the bed bugs’ mode of reproduction, which is as nasty as it sounds). There are live and computer graphic animations of bed bugs feeding, having sex, and laying eggs.

Update (7/17):

Unfortunately, as Lou pointed out to me in an email, the digital graphic of the bed bug feeding, their narrator’s description of the feeding process, as well as the description of the mating process given by their biologist are all incorrect!

Lou points out that the announcer describes the stylet system as a syringe and straw, which is inaccurate; it is also figured only as a large proboscis.

Their biologist also “incorrectly describes the mating by referring to the male jabbing the female’s back (rather than her venter, and also not into a specific place on the abdominal venter).”

Thanks to Lou for his ceaseless efforts to learn about bed bugs and to spread good, accurate information about bed bugs, and for sharing these clips with us.Similar Posts:

New bed bug photo from Lou Sorkin

nobugsonme — Tue, 28 Apr 2009 15:27:14 +0000

Amazing new image from Lou Sorkin of the American Museum of Natural History:

Lou writes, in the photo description:

After feeding hundreds of bed bugs for around 10 minutes and watching many plump nymphs and adults crawl away from the top of the jar along the cardboard (inverted on my arm), I set the jar on the table and unscrewed the cover to see what happens to the rest of them.

They stay clumped like this for at least 10 minutes, and do not disperse even though I am not on the other side of the screen any longer. Some crawl over one another and appear to look for a better feeding position. Maybe there is a pheromone produced or maybe just a feeding frenzy behavior?

Thanks, once again, to Lou for sharing his knowledge and his amazing photos of bed bugs. And, of course, for his tireless efforts to educate the world about bed bugs, as evidenced in the comments here and here.

You can see Lou’s flickr photostream here.Similar Posts:

Law & Order to feature bed bugs tonight! (updated)

nobugsonme — Tue, 28 Apr 2009 13:58:26 +0000

Bed bug blogger Unlucky in Bugs tells us that Law & Order: Criminal Intent will feature bed bugs tonight (April 26, 2009).

Interestingly, UiB tells us,

The entomologist is played by the husband of a good friend of my sister’s, who is one of the first people I heard of to get bed bugs way back in 2005… so there’s some nice bed bug karma for you. It’s his television debut!

Sounds good! We always like to hear about bed bugs on television.

Friend to Bedbugger Dr. Lou Sorkin is a forensic entomologist who has been consulted about New York City crime scenes.

Because bed bugs contain the blood of their recent hosts, they could potentially produce evidence relevant to a crime.

This episode of Law & Order could be a very interesting show!

Update (4/28): Did anyone else catch this? I was excited to see bed bugs on television, but the bedbugged aspects of the plot left me with some questions. I preface this by saying, I am not an entomologist.

The episode is called “Rock Star.” It’s about the death of two hipster musicians in an East Williamsburg loft (an open-plan one, with nooks rather than apartments, no one seems to have four walls and a closed door).

The detective played by Jeff Goldblum places his portfolio on a bed his partner earlier identified as having bed bugs — she saw one crawling around. (The loft owner’s response “I have a fumigation certificate right here!” Fumigation certificate?!? Huh?)

Later, Goldblum’s character casually bends over to collect about 5-6 bed bugs off the floor (they look like pre-adult stages) which are ostensibly just hanging out near his feet in broad daylight. And he does so without the occupant he’s chatting with noticing that he’s collecting them — and produces them later dead in a tissue.

That was easy!

From these squished samples, a forensic entomologist (who rightly declares NYC to be in the middle of a bed bug epidemic) extracts blood that’s up to two months old, and suggests that the current occupant and past occupant had the same female lover.

The problem with all this, is we’re talking about the floor of a converted sausage factory with something like 27 young tenants all sharing the larger space, with doorless rooms rather than separate units (Goldblum’s character uses the phrase “rabbit warren”).

How could you be sure that blood from two months ago, extracted from a bed bug, represented someone bitten in the same room in a high-turnover open-plan loft, where the occupants come and go and hang out on the same sofas?

And then, how would you determine they were having a relationship, as the detectives do? You can’t of course. (To be fair, it isn’t a lynchpin for the plot.) Sue could have simply been bitten when she came to give Teeter back his copy of On the Road. (Yes, I am embellishing; no actual books were spotted in the loft.)

Moreover, those did look like some awfully young bed bugs… if they were living in a loft full of hipsters, feeding regularly for two months, would they not have reached adulthood?

I hope some of our entomologist friends will weigh in on the science behind “Rock Star.”

If you missed this show on USA, you can TIVO it when it repeats at 9 am Sunday (EST). Or look for it in the schedule of repeats on the Criminal Intent site.

Update #2 (4/28/2009):

I suspected this artists’ loft was modeled on the McKibben Lofts, and it appears Curbed blogger Lockhart thought so too.

McKibben Lofts have allegedly been no stranger to the bed bug.Similar Posts:

Tuesday’s New York City Council hearing on three bed bug bills

nobugsonme — Wed, 25 Feb 2009 09:03:01 +0000

The press is starting to appear about the hearing yesterday.

Frank Lombardi in the Daily News said,

Prodded by rising complaints and pressure from some elected officials, activists and the media, the Bloomberg administration gave limited support Tuesday to launching a war on bedbugs.

Testifying at a City Council hearing, representatives of the health, housing and sanitation departments announced their support for Council legislation to establish a task force to study the city’s widening bedbug problem and recommend remedies.

Although it is true that some of the experts and departmental officials who testified rejected some or other of the bills or provisions (more on that in a later post), I am not sure how limited the support was. Among those who testified, support for the Bed Bug Task Force was unanimous, and I suspect this had a profound effect on the City Council Members.

Done properly, and quickly, and peopled with the right individuals, a bed bug task force can really make things happen.

City Room blog (NYTimes.com) quoted Gale Brewer, the City Council Member who has so long been trying to pass legislation on this issue that her City Hall peers call her “The Bed Bug Lady:”

Ms. Brewer is optimistic about the formation of a task force, though there is considerable debate over the specifics, such as the mattress legislation.

“I was glad that all the questions are all out there,” she said in an interview during the hearings. It is a multifaceted problem involving the city’s health department, public housing agencies, the Police Department (since prisons are infested), the Sanitation Department (since it involves disposal of furniture), and Department of Consumer Affairs. “You have to do it as a collaborative effort,” she said.

AMNY covered the event too, and gave a taste of what people with bed bugs go through:

Those who have lived with the pests say it often takes multiple exterminations – and sometimes thousands of dollars – to get rid of them.

“I threw away everything,” said Sirajul Laskar, 42, of Jackson Heights, who added that 22 of the 52 apartments in his building have had bed bugs. “They sprayed three times and still bedbugs.”

Overall, I had a positive impression of the event. The City Council members took the testimony very seriously, and do seem to grasp the importance of the bed bug problem — especially the wonderful Council Member Robert Jackson, who himself lived with bed bugs as a child, and who mentioned having seen bed bugs recently, in New York city, in public places.

It’s nice to have someone on the City Council with this sort of first hand experience and awareness of the problem, though of course we don’t wish bed bugs on anyone.

I also want to say how grateful I am to everyone who testified, especially Renee Corea who represented New York vs. Bed Bugs, and a second of my fellow New York vs. Bed Bugs co-founders who represented herself in testimony, entomologists Lou Sorkin and Jody Gangloff-Kauffmann (both also Advisors to New York vs. Bed Bugs), Rick Cooper and Gil Bloom, and the many citizens who had battled bed bugs themselves and testified about their experiences. The witnesses did a wonderful job of conveying the problems of bed bugs, which are complex indeed.

I am also grateful to everyone who showed up to support the speakers and the cause.

I will be posting more of my impressions and notes later today…

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