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On the fence - do I have them?
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buggingoutnj
newbite
Joined: Aug '09
Posts: 3
Posted 2 months ago
Mon Aug 24 2009 21:48:52
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Hi - What a fantastic resource this site is for the newly bugged-out. Despite having read all the FAQs and several forum threads, however, I am still undecided about whether I have bed bugs or not. Here's my story; any input would be greatly appreciated.
Spent the entire summer away from home in California, in 2 private homes with no history of BB problems. No bites, no problems for me. Arrived home in Fort Lee, NJ early in the a.m. Thursday 8/12. Slept in bed in bedroom, with windows wide open since no A/C. On Saturday afternoon/evening 8/14, felt first itchy bite (on belly button!). Since then, have gotten perhaps 40 bites, mostly on belly/torso, groin. A few on arms (concentrated near inside crook of elbow) and legs (near knees). They are often in twos or loose clusters, but no neat lines or anything like that (I know the bite patterns are not in themselves diagnostic). My husband is not experiencing any reaction to bites (although I do realize this doesn't mean he's not getting bitten).
My father stayed at our apt. on Tuesday and Wed. nights, 8/17-8/18. On Tuesday morning we installed A/C and thereafter the windows stayed pretty much closed, certainly during the night. The first night my dad slept in the bed in the bedroom, and my husband and I slept on the couch in the living room. The second night dad slept on the couch and we slept in the bedroom. It was on Tuesday I started really worrying that it may be BBs we have, and I spent most of the day Wed. searching our apt. for evidence.
I have found zero BBs, castings, eggs, nymphs, bloodstains, or fecal spots anywhere on the mattress in the bedroom, the sheets, the pressboard bed platform, or the crannies where the pressboard joins together. I took the framed pictures off the wall in the bedroom, and in a few cases took the photos out of the frames to check in between paper layers...nothing there. No evidence on the couch in the living room either. There are some tiny dark specks on the cloth blind covering the window behind the head of the bed, but they are sparse and don't seem to be "sticky" at all. There are some sticky black spots on the back of one of the drawers of one of my Craig's List purchases (which is in the hall outside the bedroom). They do not seem to dissolve with water and must be pried off with a fingernail. A few of them smear a bit with rubbing and the resulting smear is gray (not rusty). The cabinet in question doesn't have any castings or other evidence, even in screw holes, etc. I did find a single cast skin of an insect in a crevice in the bottom of the nightstand by the bed. Unfortunately I don't have a photo (I gave it to the Board of Health in our town for help ID'ing it), but it looked somewhat like a carpet beetle casting as seen in photo on this site. It also could have been a small BB casting, but to me the shape of the abdomen was not wide or flat enough (although I suppose the shape of the husk could be an artifact of how it was wedged in its crack).
In the several days since then, I have found several tiny (1mm), translucent/white insects in diverse locations in the apt. A single one in a wooden cabinet in the hallway outside the bedroom. A single one in a book I took off a bookshelf in the living room. Several (8-10) on the surface of a blanket (picnic blanket with tightly woven, plasticized underside) in a wicker chest in the bedroom which I use for linens. Although they are small enough that it's difficult to see structures with the naked eye (all I have at the moment), I feel they look much more like psocids, with a head at least 1/3 the size of the body, than they do BB nymphs. Also, the BB nymph photos show dark (presumably digestive) structures inside the abdomen, whereas the psocid abdomen is uniformly light colored. I would post photos except they are poor, and I am relatively convinced they look like psocids.
(I should also mention that we definitely had/have a flour weevil infestation too; these beetles were crawling all over the apartment but have become much more scarce since I discovered the bag of birdseed they were feeding off and threw it out. I've read up on these weevils and I don't think there's any chance they are responsible for my itching.)
I have woken up in the middle of the night several times on several different nights and, picking up the flashlight by the bed, have shined it all over the white sheets and our naked bodies in hopes (?) of seeing something. I have tried to concentrate these sweeps between 2 and 5 am. Have not seen a thing.
The first few nights I spent in the apt., the windows were open, it was very hot, and I basically slept w/ no clothes and no bedcovers. The first bites I got were all on the belly and torso. Then once we installed the A/C and closed the windows, it has been cool enough to cover up with a sheet. I am not getting any new bites on the belly, and the latest ones have been on the neck. Last night I slept well, hardly woke up at all in the middle of the night, and have had no new bites appear today (and the older bites have hardly itched at all - a first, as every day prior to now I've had at least a few actively itching bites).
I would be skeptical that BBs are the culprit for my itching, except for one potentially damning fact. My dad called me on Saturday (8/22) from his home in California to say that he started to show bites - several, on his arms and upper torso. This is 4 days after he slept on our bed and 3 days after he slept on our couch. (Luckily, I told him before he left to be sure to launder all items he brought with him to our apt. before bringing them home with him, which he did.)
There are several ways we could have been exposed to BBs. First (and definitely worst judgment!), I got some furniture off Craig's List from NYC in about April this year (before I heard anything about the BB outbreak). Not upholstered items, but wooden bookshelves and a chest of drawers (which I now know could easily harbor the bugs). Second, we had a houseguest from the Caribbean over the summer (who slept on the couch). Plus, my husband traveled to the Caribbean (Dominican Republic) over the summer. (He did not stay in hotels at all.) Third, our next door neighbor in the apt. bldg. travels semi-frequently to Asia, and stays in hotels.
Here's my question/problem: if our apt. has BBs, how likely is it not to find any hard evidence (bloodstains, fecal spots, live bugs, dead bugs, etc.) in the immediate bed area? Does the one casting I found in the nightstand (questionable carpet beetle or BB) and the sticky black spots on the back of the drawer of the wood cabinet in the hall near the bedroom count? I already reported my suspicions to the landlord but they have not been aggressive about getting the contracted exterminator for the building to come in to check (and I'm not even sure this exterminator "does" BBs or would be a reliable diagnostic source). The $300 + tax fee I was quoted for bringing a canine detection team in made me think twice. If we do have BBs, I'd rather save that money for abatement rather than diagnosis, if I can do the diagnosis myself. I have read on this site about glue traps, but a) they don't seem a foolproof way to catch BBs unless you already know their habits, which I don't, and b) we have a cat who seems to find her way into the bedroom inevitably, and I'm afraid of "trapping" her.
Is there anywhere else, besides mattress, bed, curtains, picture frames, drawers, nightstand, etc. that I should be looking for these suckers? There are many large cracks between the baseboards and the floor, where it's pretty much impossible to look. Could they all be hiding there, eschewing the more standard hiding places in the bed for the privacy of the walls? Is it too soon for me to go out and buy encasements, bag my clothes, and turn my life upside down to get rid of BBs?
I know it's kind of silly to ask people reading my story IF I have BBs or not. Clearly, the logical next step is to get a professional's assessment. However, being unemployed and pregnant, I would much rather save the $$ for treatment rather than diagnosis if I can find a way to be sure I actually have BBs.
Thanks for reading.
Bugging Out in NJ -
DrFrank
junior member
Joined: Jul '09
Posts: 122
Posted 2 months ago
Tue Aug 25 2009 2:23:03
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Read my first post in this thread: http://bedbugger.com/forum/topic/have-i-spread-be-bugs
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buggingoutnj
newbite
Joined: Aug '09
Posts: 3
Posted 2 months ago
Tue Aug 25 2009 7:48:45
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Thanks, Dr. Frank, for your reply focusing on finding live BBs to prove an infestation. I have a couple questions about your recommendations.
First, why is it essential to sterilize the bed structure before trying to trap BBs? Is it because if the BBs are hiding exclusively in the bed/mattress/boxspring, they will never happen into the traps which are being placed near the bed? (In my case, I am nearly certain they are not hiding in the mattress, since there are no signs of them there despite having searched seams for bugs, castings, feces, and eggs. We don't have a boxspring. The bed is a platform with storage underneath, so the process of sterilizing everything stored under there - much in cardboard boxes - is going to be huge.)
Second, I have read elsewhere on this forum of the importance of NOT cleaning/sterilizing before the PCO comes in, in case I either erase evidence or, worse, inadvertently spread the bugs around. How should I balance this directive with the effort to trap the bugs DIY-style?
Do you think it makes any sense to try to trap the BBs INSIDE the bed (i.e. in the storage area underneath) in this case?
Thanks again.
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DrFrank
junior member
Joined: Jul '09
Posts: 122
Posted 2 months ago
Tue Aug 25 2009 11:54:58
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buggingoutnj - 3 hours ago »
First, why is it essential to sterilize the bed structure before trying to trap BBs? Is it because if the BBs are hiding exclusively in the bed/mattress/boxspring, they will never happen into the traps which are being placed near the bed?Right. Imagine this scenario: You don't sterilize the entire bed, you place the monitors, and you wake up with bites, but no bugs in the monitors. Do you have bed bugs, or not? You can't know for sure, because maybe there were bugs still living in the bed, on "your"side of the "monitor fence". If you thoroughly sterilize the bed first (and keep it bed-bug-free), and you're still noticing new bites after ten days, odds are you don't have bed bugs.
(In my case, I am nearly certain they are not hiding in the mattress, since there are no signs of them there despite having searched seams for bugs, castings, feces, and eggs.
Visual inspections are pretty unreliable: http://www-rci.rutgers.edu/~insects/BedbugIPMJMEntomol.pdf
We don't have a boxspring. The bed is a platform with storage underneath, so the process of sterilizing everything stored under there - much in cardboard boxes - is going to be huge.
You don't need to sterilize all that stuff; you can just remove it and get it on the other side of the "fence" until you've satisfied yourself either way as to whether or not you've got an infestation.
Second, I have read elsewhere on this forum of the importance of NOT cleaning/sterilizing before the PCO comes in, in case I either erase evidence or, worse, inadvertently spread the bugs around. How should I balance this directive with the effort to trap the bugs DIY-style?
There are two parts to that question:
- Will sterilizing the bed make detection more dificult? The goal with the monitors is to trap actual bugs, and as you can see from that link I included up above, they're very effective at that. In fact, they're arguably the most effective means of detecting an infestation. (I'm personally suspicious of the reliability of canine detection; nothing beats the empirical strength of a live bug crawling around in the bottom of a trap, I think.) So, no, I think sterilizing the bed doesn't make detection more difficult, and in fact makes it easier (for the reason I described about getting the bugs on the other side of the "fence", above).
- Will sterilizing the bed spread the bed bugs around? Let's say you find bed bugs in the monitors. Where are you going to treat for them? Just in your bedroom? Bed bugs go wandering on their own. Treating just the bed room is, imho, just asking for a reinfestation of the bedroom from the eggs that wanderers laid in the rest of the house. If I were in that position, I'd want my whole house treated, preferably with thermal or vikane. In other words, bed bugs spread themselves around; whether you help them or not doesn't really matter, much. Having said that, sterilizing your bed shouldn't actually spread any bugs around. Just disassemble it, wipe it down with copious amounts of alcohol, oil, or oil soap, and caulk up any crevices (especially during reassembly).
Do you think it makes any sense to try to trap the BBs INSIDE the bed (i.e. in the storage area underneath) in this case?
I don't really understand how your bed is built, so I can't really answer that question. If you can think of a way to completely and reliably isolate one part of the bed from another, as encasements do, more power to you.
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DrFrank
junior member
Joined: Jul '09
Posts: 122
Posted 2 months ago
Tue Aug 25 2009 12:01:44
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I think the spam filter just ate my reply. Nobugsonme will probably rescue it later today.
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buggingoutnj
newbite
Joined: Aug '09
Posts: 3
Posted 2 months ago
Tue Aug 25 2009 19:44:31
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Update: my bites stopped itching for the most part yesterday, and have hardly itched at all today. They all seem to be "healing" at once: the redness is fading, and there seems to be a tiny scab in the middle of each bite. I have read that BB feeding tends to follow a temporal pattern, and BB victims may not be bitten every night. However, is it common for all BB bites to die down at the same time, even if they appeared over the course of a week or so?
(My dad's bites are also clearing up, but since he hasn't been exposed to our apartment since Wed. night - almost a week ago - I wouldn't expect this has too much bearing on the case.)
Thanks! -
Blue_Ox
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Joined: May '07
Posts: 136
Posted 2 months ago
Tue Aug 25 2009 22:48:56
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Have you thought about the Climbup interceptors? You can find out more about them somewhere on this site. I think the jury is still out about whether they will definitely find an infestation.
There are usually ads on the site to the right of the forum posts and you can click on to purchase. They are fairly inexpensive, certainly cheaper than a dog visit.
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Sorry, DrFrank -- now de-spammed.
Everyone else, please read this.
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Yes, it is possible to have bed bugs in your bed which stay there and feed on you. But some bed bugs also strike out for new harborages, so may leave the bed. Others may come towards the bed from other locations (esp. if dressers or bookcases or other areas are infested).
I think you should try the Climbups and then go from there. If you do need to bring someone in to inspect, IMO it is best if they see the place AS IS.
You have some good options in NJ when it comes to PCOs if it comes to that.
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DrFrank
junior member
Joined: Jul '09
Posts: 122
Posted 2 months ago
Thu Aug 27 2009 0:23:20
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buggingoutnj brought to my attention that the rutgers site seems to be down, at the moment. Looks like they host a copy of the article at the climb-up site.
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