First, an entire apartment building is being treated for bed bugs in the Fairhaven area of Saskatoon, Saskatchewan after “a couple isolated incidents” of bed bugs. This appears to be a fairly proactive move, if it is true that the incidents were isolated and few in number.

The StarPhoenix says the building is being “fumigated,” but don’t let the word fool you, since residents are only required to evacuate for 6 hours, we can assume traditional spraying is being done. This article from the StarPhoenix focuses on one couple–Richard Pain and his wife have respiratory problems and must evacuate for a week with nowhere to go.

This highlights a common problem–the hidden costs tenants face while dealing with bed bugs.

And the article also gives a sense (albeit based on anecdotal evidence) of the recent rise of bed bugs in Saskatoon:

Lesley Willfong of Poulin Pest Control in Saskatoon said the number of reported cases of bed bugs is way up from last year.

“It seems like every other call we get is for bed bugs,” said Willfong. “Before last year, it was only a couple times a week.”

The first sign of a bed bug infestation is the appearance of small brown or red spots on bed linens or a noticeable swelling or itching where someone has been bitten.

Willfong said her colleagues in Winnipeg were talking about bed-bug problems a few months before the problem escalated in Saskatoon.

Read the full story: Bed bugs biting at Fairhaven apartment complex from The StarPhoenix.

Another article from the Deseret Morning News in Utah is a basic introduction to bed bugs–but with some iffy advice.

For example, this article suggests you might get rid of bed bugs by vacuuming. While vacuuming certainly has a place in a bed bug control and avoidance program, I don’t think enthusiastic vacuuming is an alternative to professional help, especially if bed bugs are spotted. But these quotations from Diane Keay, environmental health area supervisor in the Salt Lake Valley Health Department, suggest otherwise:

She recommends vacuuming a lot. Although they’re not associated with poor housekeeping, as some people have suggested, “none of us vacuum around the bed every day.” You must, if you want to eradicate them without chemicals. And they’re not just in the bed. They can be in carpets and wall baseboards and other places nearby. Be aware, as well, that they may settle in or around a favorite chair or hitch a ride in the fold of the backpack that’s so often on you.

There are ways to eradicate bed bugs “without chemicals,” but they involve steam, or gas, or heat. Possibly cold, or ozone. But not simply vacuuming.

Later, again,

You don’t usually need to toss things, Keay says. Just trap the bugs and vacuum, vacuum, vacuum or have a professional deal with serious infestations.

I agree “tossing things” is usually not necessary and often just spreads bed bugs to your neighbors. However, the advice to “vacuum, vacuum, vacuum,” grates, as does the newspaper’s graphic of the happy blonde brandishing her canister vac.

Near the end of the article, we’re told that

People don’t feel the introductory bites. The reaction, sometimes quite severe, develops over time. In the meantime, the little creatures reproduce.

This statement that “People don’t feel the introductory bite,” is inaccurate. Bed bugs are designed to bite us without our knowing until after the fact. If we ever have a clue, that is.

Some people never react to the bites. (Up to 50%, Michael Potter says, do not react to bed bug bites.) Others get reactions from the start, but almost nobody feels them as they occur.

Other advice in the article is good–keeping luggage away from hotel beds, using pesticides only as labeled–but overall, the Deseret Morning News needs to do more research on bed bugs.

You can read the Deseret Morning News article Bugged? Bed bugs making a comeback, even in Utah here.

• NPR’s Morning Edition: not blasting any preconceptions about bed bugs
• Bed bugs spread in Ottawa
• FAQ: Bed bugs are crawling on me all the time. I am being bitten all day long, no matter where I go!
• My Bedbugs

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While it’s true that overseas missionary travel and certain kinds of urban lifestyles may be good ways to pick up bed bugs, most Salt Lake City folks are probably getting them in more mundane ways: visits to hotels and motels in the good ol’ U.S.A., purchases of new furniture and mattresses (delivered in same truck used to cart old ones are carried away), and how most Bedbuggers in apartments probably get their bed bugs: from a neighbor.

The article primarily focuses on several tenants in a multi-unit building, and seeks to put the blame on the tenants’s actions. Let’s consider, instead, that this is a problem for all of us. No one in Utah is immune, regardless of who their visiting friends and relatives are.

In the pre-World War II era, “everyone” had bed bugs. Not everyone all the time, but everyone encountered them at some time, somewhere. And everyone took great lengths to avoid them. And thought of the possibility of them while riding in trains or buses, or staying in hotels.

Those times are nigh upon us again, I am afraid.

• Bed bugs from Saskatoon to Salt Lake City
• Salt Lake City Firehouse closed due to bed bugs
• Spring break bed bug warnings!
• Bed bug travel pracautions getting around

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For those of you who don’t know, webpages can tell where you’re coming from (though not very specifically). They know the location of your ISP. For most people, this comes up as somewhere near where they live, though it’s not always precise and sometimes it’s just the country. It also tells the webmaster what internet browser you use (Go Firefox!) and whether you like Macs or Windows machines. No, I do not know your name, or where you live, don’t worry!

This may all seem very “meta,” so far, but we know that our readership consists of four kinds of people:

a) People who have, or think they have, or recently had, bed bugs.
b) People whose work makes them concerned about bed bugs (pest control professionals, entomologists, politicians, landlords, hotel managers, social service agencies, government officials, are just some sectors that I have heard from).
c) People who have heard about bed bugs and are concerned, and want to know more.

I think that group (a) is in the majority, and although most people don’t comment, most commenters fit in group a. In any case, the Bedbugger.com readership is a map of bed bug concern, and you’d be pretty safe betting its a map of where bed bugs are popping up–with the caveat, of course, that our site pops up more in US search engines than those abroad, and also that our readers are overwhelmingly English-speakers, though we have dreams of breaking down those linguistic barriers!

This is where the last 89 readers were reading the blog (circa 6:30 this evening):

1. San Diego, California, United States
2. Nottingham, Nottingham, United Kingdom
3. Walden, New York, United States
4. Long Island City, New York, United States
5. New York, New York, United States
6. Plattekill, New York, United States
7. Hull, Quebec, Canada
8. Durant, Iowa, United States
9. Miamiville, Ohio, United States
10. Gibraltar
11. Calgary, Alberta, Canada
12. Boston, Massachusetts, United States
13. Humble, Texas, United States
14. Germantown, Maryland, United States
15. Rowland Heights, California, United States
16. New York, New York, United States
17. New York, New York, United States
18. Hadley, Kentucky, United States
19. Buffalo, New York, United States
20. Hveragerði, Arnessysla, Iceland
21. Pine Falls, Manitoba, Canada
22. Livonia, Michigan, United States
23. Bayside, New York, United States
24. Woodhaven, New York, United States
25. Denver, Colorado, United States
26. New York, New York, United States
27. United States
28. Waterloo, Quebec, Canada
29. Los Angeles, California, United States
30. Burnaby, British Columbia, Canada
31. Santa Maria, California, United States
32. Beamsville, Ontario, Canada
33. Kansas City, Missouri, United States
34. Corona, New York, United States
35. Barker, Texas, United States
36. Readville, Massachusetts, United States
37. Palo Alto, California, United States
38. Salt Lake City, Utah, United States
39. Mill Valley, California, United States
40. Ridgewood, New York, United States
41. Mehama, Oregon, United States
42. San Francisco, California, United States
43. Feeding Hills, Massachusetts, United States
44. Swedesburg, Iowa, United States
45. Dublin, Dublin, Ireland
46. West New York, New Jersey, United States
47. Lancaster, Blackpool, United Kingdom
48. New York, New York, United States
49. Miami, Florida, United States
50. Anaheim, California, United States
51. Harrow, Harrow, United Kingdom
52. Wilsonville, Oregon, United States
53. Sheffield, Sheffield, United Kingdom
54. Forest Hill, Ontario, Canada
55. Wayne, New Jersey, United States
56. Kecskemét, Bacs-Kiskun, Hungary
57. Port Coquitlam, British Columbia, Canada
58. Short Hills, New Jersey, United States
59. Seattle, Washington, United States
60. Jackson, Mississippi, United States
61. Tulsa, Oklahoma, United States
62. Secaucus, New Jersey, United States
63. Long Island City, New York, United States
64. United States
65. Tranbjerg, Arhus, Denmark
66. Naples, Florida, United States
67. San Francisco, California, United States
68. Edmonton, Alberta, Canada
69. Gainesville, Florida, United States
70. Edmond, Oklahoma, United States
71. Hempstead, New York, United States
72. Everett, Massachusetts, United States
73. United States
74. United States
75. São Paulo, Sao Paulo, Brazil
76. Burnaby, British Columbia, Canada
77. Bismarck, North Dakota, United States
78. Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, United States
79. Downers Grove, Illinois, United States
80. United States
81. Bend, Oregon, United States
82. Henderson, Nevada, United States
83. Montréal, Quebec, Canada
84. Sunnyvale, California, United States
85. Arlington, Texas, United States
86. United States
87. New York, New York, United States
88. Fairfax, Virginia, United States
89. Rochester, New York, United States

You might expect that most of these people came from the bed bug hot spots. We get lots of readers from Chicago, Boston, NYC, San Francisco, Vancouver, Toronto. So it’s surprising that 89 people came from such a wide variety of places:

68 from at least 33 states (only 12 of these from NYC, San Francisco or Boston);
11 from 5 provinces in Canada;
4 from 4 cities in the UK (none of them London);
1 person each from: Hungary, Ireland, Denmark, Brazil, Iceland, and Gilbraltar.

In New York state, 10 of the 17 visitors were from NYC. And of the 10 in NYC, 60% were in Queens, where, unlike Staten Island, Brooklyn, the Bronx and Manhattan, each neighborhood has its own name used for the purposes of the postal service: Ridgewood, Corona, Long Island City, Woodhaven, Bayside, New York, are all in Queens, and part of NYC. Remember the Queens Gazette speculating that Queens was the “ground zero for NYC’s bed bugs? Well, I am still not sure it’s true, but it seems plausible: we certainly have a lot of Bedbuggers in Queens.

I peeked at the traffic report for the site because I have a geeky side and I find it interesting to know where you’re coming from. However, looking at it can tell us something about the bed bug problem. This is not a scientific study, but just a snapshot of our site’s traffic does tell you who’s worried about bed bugs (and, we can assume, many are worried because they have bed bugs).

Most of those cities were not capitals or the biggest cities in their regions or countries. A small percentage are from those places you think are hot spots. It should serve as a warning sign that bed bugs, like Bedbuggers, are everywhere, and way more spread out than you thought.

• California fights bed bugs: good news from the golden state
• Portsmouth NH’s Health Officer proactive about bed bugs
• Comedian moves into NJ Ikea store
• Tracing the path of the epidemic

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“What are we going to do? Strip everyone down and make them take a shower before we let them in the shelter?” asks Diane Keay of the Salt Lake County Health Department. “I don’t think we’re going to go there. So I don’t know how to prevent re-infestation.”

What might help? Well, look at the video: they’re using wooden bunk beds, and the video shows uncovered mattresses. Metal beds encased in strong bedbug-proof casings would be a start. But let’s be honest, there’s no way to keep bed bugs out of shelters without sealing up the posessions of overnight guests, requiring showers, and washing and drying their clothes on hot. Those requirements are likely to drive lots of homeless people away.

Note to people who don’t get the “media hype”:

• the firefighters closed down their station for months
• they had what was described as “dozens” of bed bugs in the station, and
• one firefighter woke up with “over forty bites” and was “freaking out about it”; his captain sent him for medical treatment.

Hmm, if men and women who are among our bravest (and often strongest) civilians can be terrorized by these little insects, perhaps they are distressing.

Note to people who ignore the poor who live in substandard housing or homeless shelters: you can’t allow some members of our society to live with bed bugs, unless you want to live with bed bugs. We really are living in a matrix; we are all connected. This is our problem, whether it’s entered our baseboards and mattresses, or not.

This article, from the Salt Lake City Tribune, ups the ante, blaming not only the homeless shelter but also immigrants (in general) for the rise of bed bugs. Yes, we’ve heard that before. But immigrants were flocking to our shores from countries with bed bugs during the three decades when bed bugs were all but completely eradicated in North America. Why did immigrants suddenly begin bringing in bed bugs around 1999? There’s more to the story than that– changes in pesticide use are also a factor, I am sure. But it is still mysterious, and I am still perplexed.

• Bed bugs in homeless shelters, casinos, hotels, apartments: Waynesboro, Atlantic City, Greenpoint, Toronto
• Salt Lake City Tribune on bed bugs: they don’t quite get it yet
• More on bed bugs at the Montana Rescue Mission in Billings
• Bed bugs from Saskatoon to Salt Lake City

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