Three apartment units at the Smyth-Fernwald Complex near Clark Kerr Campus could have been infested with bedbugs as early as March, according to Jeff Urdahl, campus director for housing operations, maintenance and environment.

Yadda, yadda… it happens, and is probably happening on every campus now to some degree. But wait, you know there’s more to this story:

Urdahl said a combination of manure pesticides and heat and cold treatments will be used in the infested apartment units.

Hot and cold, I get.

But manure pesticides?!?

Perhaps above I should instead have said @#it happens.

Pest Control Professionals, please tell us more.

• an honest PCO, a clever move
• FAQ: Leaving stuff out to freeze, walk-in freezers, etc: how cold and how long?
• Bed bugs in Ventura County (Thousand Oaks, California)
• The Wall Street Journal on “new” bed bug-fighting tactics

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Students in a suite of Living/Learning’s B-building were displaced last week after it was discovered that one of the inhabitants had been bitten by a bed bug, UVM’s Director of Communications Enrique Corredera said.

On Thursday, April 17, it was confirmed that the bites on the leg of a female resident of one of the “German House” suites were from a bed bug, and all of the students living in the suite were moved to other housing by the next day.

The residents of L/L B-220 are permanently relocated to other areas in L/L for the rest of the semester as the suite goes through a three-week treatment process to eliminate any possibility of a bed bug infestation, Corredera said.

Evacuations must be done extremely carefully. Here, the students laundered all clothing and “bagged all belongings” (though what happens after belongings are bagged is unstated, and is of major interest, since bed bugs can apparently live for a year or even 18 months, unfed).

Evacuation of all residents and treatment of the rooms were carried out after one student received bed bug bites on her leg. It is not clear from the article whether any signs of bed bugs were found in the room (in fact, in the absence of such evidence, the student could have been bitten at a restaurant, in a library, or on a city bus).

• bedbugs at Stanford University dorms (again)
• bed bugs at University of Bridgeport
• Bed bugs at McGill University, Montreal, Quebec
• 80% of Single Room Occupancy units in Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside are infested with bed bugs; also Rensselaer Polytechnic’s dorms

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Jessie Lamotta, now a junior history major at the College, was pestered by bed bugs on Cromwell 3 from move-in day to sometime in October during her freshman year.

“My roommate woke up with little red bumps on her body, and I found little blood stains on my bed sheets,” Lamotta said. “Also, at night when we pulled our sheets back, the bugs would scurry and hide.”

“The doctor (at Health Services) said that my roommate and I had scabies and that we should stay away from other students and not transport any of our belongings to other rooms,” Lamotta said. She and her roommate were given body cream to wash with twice a day.

I seriously hope that the diagnosis of scabies was given much before the students actually reported seeing bed bugs scurrying in the bed, and that students suspected of scabies are given skin scrapings to confirm that condition.

It sounds like the flare-ups were mostly in Cromwell Hall and have been cleared up.

Hopefully the students will be bed bug free from now on.

• Harvard dorm treated for scabies–but what was it really? Also, bed bugs at Columbia?
• Stanford U bed bugs: being fought with enthusiasm and wisdom
• Boston University’s bed bugs: if we don’t talk about them, they’ll go away
• Stanford: stop those bed bugs! Here’s what you need to do.

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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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The health department also received complaints of infestations of two apartments at 553 South Main St., and one apartment each in apartment buildings or multifamily homes at 42 Pine St. (the Wilby Apartments), 107 South Leonard St., 182 West Main St., 148 Grand St. and 995 Bank St.

Also, there is a report of bedbugs in the Salvation Army shelter. A complaint received in April resulted in a notice of infestation in the entire building at 148 Grand St. The owner hired an exterminator to take care of the problem.

In most cases, the Health Department ordered property owners to take care of the problem by hiring a licensed PCO.

Meanwhile, in Boston, Massachusetts Institute of Technology student residents of Ashdown House, which has been under attack by bed bugs since last spring, are beginning to see the light at the end of the tunnel. Danielle Piskorz reported Friday for MIT’s The Tech newspaper:

A bedbug problem that has been plaguing Ashdown since last spring is close to being resolved. An exterminator contracted to MIT has been visiting rooms several times a week over the course of the summer, and sticky-trap style bug monitors newly installed in each room show no sign of new activity.

I hope that this testing has been done since students have been resident in the rooms. We do know that bed bugs living in rooms or apartments that have been vacated will often move to another location (if humans are sleeping elsewhere in the vicinity, say a neighboring room or another floor). We are also told they may go “dormant,” hiding out until people return. Killing bed bugs is hard when no one is in residence, since they need to be attracted out to bite someone in order to cross the poison and/or mechanical killer and die.

How did MIT deal with Ashdown’s bed bugs? Fairly persistently, from the sound of things:

In Ashdown, the residents of the infested suites were required to have their rooms and clothes cleaned entirely to rid the area of bugs. They were also given new mattresses with covers to prevent the bedbugs from finding a new place to live. The contracted exterminator used “a clear, odorless, safe treatment” to kill the bedbugs, according to an e-mail sent to Ashdown residents from Denise Lanfranchi, Ashdown’s house manager.

According to Bajpayee, exterminating procedures ran in cycles, with the first spraying killing the adults and the second killing their offspring. A problem arose when the original floor was sprayed for bedbugs and the surviving insects ran up to the next. The total number of rooms affected was eight or nine, said Bajpayee. Ashdown has a total of 264 rooms.

To reduce the probabilities of bedbug problems in the future, MIT Housing may consider banning students from bringing used furniture into the dorms, Collins said. Until then, students should “be conscious of who and where they are buying [their used furniture] from.”

“Everybody should be careful,” Bajpayee said.

• Lexington, KY vs. New York, NY: a tale of two bedbugged cities
• Bed bugs at the University of Vermont
• Bed bugs at McGill University, Montreal, Quebec
• Adult home shut down in Monticello, NY with multiple housing violations; 40 beds contained “bed bugs and bed bug eggs”

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That means no mattresses, no sofas at the school in Quincy, Mass. The policy only applies to upholstered or soft furniture. As such, it does not mean students cannot bring in potentially-infested items, and the school recognizes that:

The insects spread by hitchhiking on things like luggage, clothing, beds and furniture. Locations with frequent turnover - like hotels, apartments, shelters and dorms - are vulnerable.

“It does not insulate us,” [Robert] Benjamin [Director of Residence Life] said about the ban on used furniture.  “We are trying to eliminate at least one variable.”

According to this article, most colleges that ban upholstered furniture do so because of fire hazards. ENC is banning them not because they have had any known bed bug outbreaks, but because a sister school in San Diego has had bed bug troubles. They are trying to learn from the other school’s experiences. (Good to hear!)

The policy is not unproblematic: besides the enormous cost to students this fall, if the policy continues, students would be buying new items every year for four years. This is a serious hardship and will probably mean many simply live in a much sparser way than prior generations of students.

• How to avoid bed bugs, according to Texas A&M’s student paper
• Boston University’s bed bugs: if we don’t talk about them, they’ll go away
• Bed bugs under discussion at university housing officers’ conference
• Stanford bed bugs: university fights back

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The university acknowledged that they’re dealing with an infestation of bed bugs. School officials said 15 units on campus were found to have bed bugs. The school has received more than 100 complaints.

Hmm. 100 complaints for 15 student apartment units seems like a lot. Did each unit have to complain more than six times before anything was done? Or is there another explanation for that?

Entomologist Dr. Mike Merchant said bed bugs are basically fleas for humans and that apartments and hotels are dealing with the problem more frequently.

“The incidents of bed bugs has gone up considerably,” he said.

Merchant said that bed bugs are not native to North Texas, but that they stow away in luggage and clothing during international travel.

Dr. Merchant is obviously trying to make the bed bug information more accessible to people. Now, I know Dr. Merchant would not want this to happen, but I think calling bed bugs “basically fleas for humans” might mislead some people into thinking similar steps are needed for treating both infestations.

A lot of people already make the mistake of trying to treat bed bugs with products made for other insects. Now where did I put my flea collar? (Seriously, do not put a flea collar on your person. I have seen someone recommending that on another website and I do not think it is a good idea.)

I also like it where Texas tries to deny responsibility for the problem: “they’re not native to Texas”. Unless I am mistaken, bed bugs are no less “native” to Texas than anywhere else on earth. Before being eradicated for 50 years, I am sure North Texas had their fair share of bed bugs, which enjoyed a reign of hundreds of years.

• Texas A and M researchers: chickens and bed bugs?
• Eastern Nazarene College: students cannot bring in ANY used furniture
• bed bugs at University of Bridgeport
• Bed bugs also causing havoc in England & Northern Ireland: university residence, hospital staff residence, possibly a school, infested

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Already forced to sleep on the floor, couches, and even pool tables, the residents have also discovered their new pets surfacing in their clothes and notebooks while in class.

If you have bed bugs coming out of your notebooks and clothes while out of the home, you have a serious problem. It is unclear what the students and college are doing besides having exterminators spray. and I wonder if they know about washing and drying clothes on hot, and keeping them sealed in bags, sealed mattresses and box springs in sealed bedbug-proof cases, and so on.

Monique Mercier, Administrative Coordinator of Student Housing, said she has received many calls from worried parents, but that she has provided students with preventative spray bottles.

She contended that controlling the bed bugs is now the responsibility of the first-year residents.

‘I can’t believe they’re still alive,’ she said. ‘The situation is impossible to control. We’ve been doing everything we can, but we’re not experts; we’re following the advice of professionals.’

She added that McGill and Montreal are unequipped to manage such a situation.

“Controlling the bed bugs is now the responsibility of the first year students.” Great policy. But I do understand her frustration. McGill University and the City of Montreal need a plan to deal with bed bugs. And parents should be worried, as should we all. Those students are going to each go to a different family home come the winter break. and the problem will spread. It’s already spreading to other students (if they’re seeing bugs in the classrooms).

My heart goes out to these first year students, who have other things they should be worrying about and working on instead of a blood-sucking parasite. McGill is a private university and should be worried about losing fee-paying students, who may drop out if they are stressed out and not getting enough sleep.

A second article in the York University Excalibur paper added additional details:

During the final fumigation two weeks ago, residents had to vacate their house for eight hours. McGill Residences provided them with accommodations at Royal Victoria College for the duration of the evacuation.

Hmm, I hope the folks at Royal Victoria College monitor those rooms, since it would be really easy for the bugs to have been moved there.

And I know I sound like a broken record here, but: did they really fumigate (ie tent the building and gas it with Vikane, which works but is costly and a big production)? Or did they use bug bombs (which don’t work for bed bugs, period)? Or did they do some other kind of spraying which the author is erroneously calling “fumigation”?

I should stop typing those last three questions, and simply add them to this blog’s template. ‘Cause, dude, it’s like I have to ask that every day!*

*Sorry for the lapse into surfer talk, but reading about colleges reminds Nobugsonme of being a student. She was young, foolish, and had lots of studying to do. Thank goodness she did not have bed bugs then.

• Bed bugs at McGill University, Montreal, Quebec
• Stanford U bed bugs: being fought with enthusiasm and wisdom
• Bed bugs under discussion at university housing officers’ conference
• bed bugs at University of Bridgeport

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