If your multi-unit building landlord, co-op association, condo board, YWCA manager, elderly housing provider are not taking action, make them watch this and remind them, your building can get to be this bad.

Stories like this are not that unusual–I have heard a number of them from pest control operators.

• Washington YWCA infested with bed bugs: more elderly, low-income residents being left to itch
• apartmentratings.com on bed bugs; realtor warns clients about bed bugs; tenant.net on bedbugs; more video from Cincinnati
• everyone should watch this bed bug video
• Bowling Green Towers: another infestation in elderly and disabled housing

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Lou says,

I had just finished feeding the colony, but not all got to eat and are now busy moving about looking for me. You can see that are many smaller unfed nymphal instars crawling about plus larger ones (adults, too) that come in the picture once in a while. The cardboard moves because there are so many bugs moving about between the slats.

And here they are, fed, and so moving more slowly:

Thanks Lou!

• close up of bed bugs on mattress
• Lou’s bed bug video
• World exclusive: Bedbuggers experiment with being bitten, on purpose! (Part 4)
• World exclusive: Bedbuggers experiment with being bitten, on purpose!

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“Bed bugs,” said Diann Waters, bed bugs in home. “All over my baby.”

Diann Waters may tell her son, “don’t let the bed bugs bite” before he goes to sleep, but it looks like they did anyways.

“He done scratched them and stuff. They from bed bugs.”

Waters lives in Over-the-Rhine. Recently, she spotted insects on her furniture.

“First thing that came to my mind was that I got to get it out of my house,” said Waters. “I had to throw my furniture away. My daughter seen a bug and I figured that’s what it was, but it had eggs all the way around the lining of my furniture.”

Waters isn’t alone. Neighbors say a woman threw out a mattress and rug because it was infested.

Hopefully now the people of Cincinnati will be getting some real help. The article also hints about some of the alliances forming in the fight against bed bugs:

Carles Tassell is involved with an apartment association that’s joining forces with the city to form a task force to fight the pests.

“Bed bugs don’t care what race you are, how much money you make,” said Charles Tassell, Cincinnati Northern Kentucky Apartment Association. ” They care that you’re human. They are equal opportunity pests.”

I was curious about that group, so I googled them. Turns out, they are a trade association of apartment buiding owners and managers, and developers in the multi-family housing industry.

(Was that a pig with wings that just flew overhead?)

Yes, not only did the Cincinnati public health official declare bed bugs a public health issue, but the multi-family housing landlords’ trade group is signed on to fight bed bugs. While all this seems like a logical, obvious step, on the one hand, you have to recall that elsewhere in the country, Mayors are turning a blind eye to bed bugs and landlords are trying to discuss ways to avoid paying for treatment. Smart landlords will understand that beating bed bugs and halting their spread helps business. And turning a blind eye is disastrous.

Since this group is part of a national one for owners and developers of multi-unit dwellings, perhaps other cities may follow suit.

The news video suggests people tossing out bed bug-infested furniture put a sign on it. While it’s true that this can help, it is not as effective as destroying the item. Taking a box-cutter and slashing sofas and mattresses, is one way to make sure no one uses the item. If you are tossing out a piece of furniture like a dresser or desk, Bedbugger S. suggested removing one part to the garbage pile at a time, until each piece is carted off. (So people will find, for example, a table leg, rather than a useful table.) This will work if you are not trying to get rid of items all in one day.

But remember: though articles and videos like this portray it as the normal response to bed bugs, tossing things out is not usually a great solution: in most cases, it won’t get rid of bed bugs, and it also spreads them to your neighbors, meaning they come back. Instead, a good PCO can treat most furniture along with your home, and they’ll tell you if “tossing out” is needed, and how to do it safely.

The video also mentions that in addition to a furniture pickup hotline for infested refuse, the city is working on a system of “citations” for landlords who won’t treat the problem. Click to watch.

• This is bad: bed bugs crawling everywhere. Video at 11.
• Dayton and Middletown, Ohio: avoiding bed bugs is difficult
• Cincinnati Establishes Bed Bug Furniture Pick-Up Procedures and Hotline
• Cincinnati fights bed bugs, declares some success

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All. Over. A. Bed. With. A. Man. Sleeping. In. It.

Imagine a propaganda film made by a major pest control company, in the hopes that they will make you cry, scream, and run to call them to make an appointment.

This is it. You were warned.

There’s at least 30 seconds there of “For the love of mercy will someone please crack out the contact killer and spray those things?” Like any documentary when you see disaster striking, you worry about the hearts of those filming while Rome burns.

Oh yeah, and if any of you are in a current infestation, but your partner / roommate / relative thinks it is no big deal, or is telling you you’re hysterical, or thinks they are not being bitten because they do not itch, even though you notice a lot of extra “pimples” on said person lately, and despite this, they will simply not listen to you telling them this is serious?

Make them watch it. Seriously, do. But make sure you close your eyes.

• ad on Craigslist: new bed bug documentary
• In Vancouver? Interested in a bed bug documentary?
• Another bed bug documentary — this one being made in NY
• FAQ: Why am I being bitten and my housemate / partner / friend isn’t?

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• 2 workers claim they were punished for asking about bed bugs at work
• Still more from Nashua, New Hampshire: fewer bed bugs at 23-25 Temple St.
• One pill makes you larger, and one pill makes you small, but bed bugs just make you itch
• University of Florida researcher to study effectiveness of bed bug dogs

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Baring his arm for the obligatory shots of bed bugs feeding on an entomologist’s arm: UC-Riverside entomologist Dr. Alec Gerry.

• Bed bugs invade Chicago’s Presidential Towers, and another Vancouver Island detox
• Bed bugs lurk in hotel rooms, says ABC news
• Bowling Green Towers: residents organize to demand proper bed bug treatment in low-income building
• Homeless people wandering streets, refusing to stay in infested homeless shelter

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• Lou Sorkin’s bed bug colony (video)
• recent bites from bed bugs (photo)
• New bed bug video from Lou Sorkin’s colony
• bed bug colony

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• another bedbug lawsuit
• Penelope Trunk: bed bugs as a lesson in “taming materialism”
• Fun ideas?
• Bed Bugs in NYC School System

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The bed bug story had the obligatory “Entomologist feeding his bed bug” colony video segment, that we’ve all come to expect. This time it was the University of Maryland’s Michael Raupp with his shirtsleeves rolled up. The story also featured featured Alison Trainer, the New York opera singer who was exposed to bed bugs in Phoenix. Are you listening, America? She left New York, and got them in Phoenix. New York is not the only place you need to worry about bed bugs!

The segment on ABC reminds us that Spring Break is now: many students will leave bedbuggy colleges, spend time traveling to cheap hotels and hostels, or family and friends’ homes, and then return to school. Younger students and families often travel at this time. Couple this with a rise in temperatures that can increase all manner of creepy crawlies around the home, and you have the recipe for an itchy April and May. And it only gets worse in the summer.

• Bed bugs under discussion at university housing officers’ conference
• Bitten by bed bugs: NYC Opera Soprano suing Hilton Suites in Phoenix
• Bed bugs spread in Ottawa
• Travel reporter gets bed bugs after hundreds of hotel stays

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Also, CBC Marketplace had a longer spot on Bed bugs. It’s about 15 minutes long and very, very good–absolutely the best news segment I’ve seen on bed bugs, and first aired on 2/7/2007. The CBC has it all:

• An interview with Caitlin, of the BedBugBlog and the founder of the Yahoo Bedbugger Group (Yay, we love Caitlin!);
• Ben (who isn’t affected) and Melody (who got 12-20 bites a night), Vancouver tenants whose landlord refused to pay for treatment, despite their being no evidence they introduced the bed bugs, and despite Vancouver’s clear laws that the landlordpays for bed bug extermination;
• Footage of Ben and Melody’s mattress cover and what it’s covering, the cushion where a sofa used to sit, footage of Melody getting ready for bed (including a hoodie, and mittens); footage of the reporter donning a respirator mask to walk along with the PCO on extermination visit #3, and finally, what happens next for the couple;
• CBC reporter and entomology grad student ransacking three Vancouver hotel rooms to find no bed bugs–but wonderful details of how to look for those wanting more information on that;
• An interview with the Chicago lawyer to have won the only bed bug hotel lawsuit which has gone to trial so far: the Canadian plaintiffs won $200,000 each from Motel6 in Chicago; it’s worth noting that other cases since then have only settled out of court (though it’s likely many plaintiffs were given nice payoffs to keep their traps shut about their horrible hotel experiences);
• An entomology grad student from Simon Frasier U: yet more footage of researchers and even the CBC reporter herself “feeding” the research colony. If that sounds gross, I promise the rest of the film is so worth it, you won’t mind.

Thanks to BedbugCity who emailed me the tip. Please–if you haven’t done so, register your infestation at these two bed bug registries: BedbugCity and the BedBugRegistry.com. They’re completely separate, and anonymous, and registering infested addresses with them gives others the chance to be warned, before they’re the next suckas who move into your bed bug infested building, or stay in your bed bug infested hotel room.

• Bedbugger readers: multiplying faster than bedbugs?
• Caitlin of the bed bug blog was reinfested.
• Norwegian Caribbean Lines Dawn: bed bugs
• Prince Edward Island infestations

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