Bedbugs are back and in Southwest Virginia

By DAN KEGLEY/Staff

“Good night. Sleep tight and don’t let the bedbugs bite.”
Many of us go or have gone to bed at some point in life with that wish, often uttered by a grandmother, rhyming fresh in our minds. For her, bidding one “tight” sleep recalled crude beds of yesteryear where crisscrossed ropes suspended whatever passed for a mattress. If the ropes became slack in the night, their unevenness could impede peaceful slumber.
If only bedbugs had gone the way of rope beds and stayed there, but quite the opposite is the case. The critters, once in fact nearly relegated to history in the United States, are bouncing back like new box springs 50 years after DDT, banned here since the 1970s, was found to control them -- at least before they developed resistance to it, some sources say.
Travelers have known for some time that bedbugs could be encountered in motels in eastern parts of Virginia, but the insects are no longer only a concern someplace else.
They are here, said pest controller Arthur Johnson, who runs a pest control service based in Wytheville serving the region from Smyth to Montgomery County. He had just come in from treating a motel bedbug case late Monday afternoon.
Johnson said he has seen “quite a number” of bedbug infestations in his area, all of them in motels. He has been called on no residential cases.
In the past year, Johnson estimated, he’s handled 20 to 25 commercial calls.
According to him, the problem about bedbugs is people, not places.
“It’s not whether a motel is dirty or clean,” Johnson said. “It’s just people bringing them in.”
The Mayo Clinic said it this way: “The risk of encountering bedbugs increases if you spend time in places with high turnovers of night-time guests — such as hotels, hospitals or homeless shelters.”
On Monday, Kaitlin Cavanaugh, spokeswoman for the Fairfax-based National Pest Management Association, said while state-specific data on bedbug prevalence are not available, in the South Atlantic “pest control companies reported encountering bedbugs most frequently in single family homes, followed by apartments and condominiums, with hotels and motels being the third most frequent place that they encounter bed bugs.”
Especially telling is this statistic, also from Cavanaugh: “89.6 percent of South Atlantic pest control companies surveyed reported that the incidence of bed bugs are increasing in the region, while 10.3 percent reported that they have stayed the same. Zero percent reported seeing a decrease in bedbugs.”
That survey, recently conducted by NPMA and the University of Kentucky, found that 95 percent of pest control companies responding reported encountering a bedbug infestation in the previous year, up from 25 percent of respondents to the survey in 2000, a July 26 NPMA release said.
“The results of the 2010 Comprehensive Global Bed Bug Study suggest that we are on the threshold of a bed bug pandemic, not just in the United States, but around the world,” Missy Henriksen, vice president of public affairs for NPMA, said in the release.
The pending pandemic was deemed serious enough that last year, legislation was introduced in Congress that would have provided federal grants “to assist states in inspecting hotel rooms for bed bugs,” said H.B. 6068.
The bill said a state would be eligible for a grant if it had a program for inspecting 20 percent of the rooms in the state’s lodging facilities for “cimex lectularius, commonly know as the bed bug. The Federal share of funding for such a program shall not exceed 80 percent.”
The grants, the legislation said, could be used to “conduct inspections of lodging facilities for cimex lectularius, including transportation, lodging, and meal expenses for inspectors; train inspection personnel; and educate the proprietors and staff of lodging establishments about methods to prevent and eradicate cimex lectularius.”
The bill died in committee, according to an online Library of Congress bill search service.
For those who have treated fleas brought into their homes by pets, Johnson’s regimen for conquering bedbugs will sound familiar. He deploys a chemical in a fogger in three visits spaced 10 days apart to coincide with stages in the critters’ lifecycle. The first treatment is for the adults, the second for juveniles hatches from eggs after treatment number one, and the third is to get stragglers missed the first two times.
“I’ve had pretty good success with that,” he said. “It’s a tough situation. Here’s the thing: They feed, then go dormant for 90 days. That makes them hard to get rid of.”
One case, however, had Johnson returning multiple times until he finally won the battle.
Motels generally see bedbug infestations affecting only one room, Johnson said, but a key in eradicating bedbugs in one room is to also treat the rooms immediately to the sides, and above and below if the motel is multistory, since the insects can travel through walls.
Subjecting bedbugs to temperature extremes will kill them. “A company in Charlotte has a tractor-trailer and they can get the heat up in the trailer,” Johnson said. “They take it to motels, and put the furnishings in the trailer. You can also freeze them.”
Since battling bed bugs is so difficult, the best defense is preventing their arrival, Johnson said. So said Henriksen at NPMA: “Because bedbugs don’t discriminate between rich and poor, don’t have a preference for climate or environment, public awareness, education and vigilance are key in detecting and preventing bed bug infestations.”
NPMA said bed bugs “are the size and color of an apple seed, like to travel and will hide in suitcases, boxes and shoes to be near a food supply. They are elusive, nocturnal creatures, and beside the mattress and headboard, they can be found behind baseboards, electrical switch plates, picture frames, wallpaper, upholstery and in furniture crevices. They come out at night for a blood meal.”
Cavanagh offered these tips from NPMA:
• Pull back the hotel bed sheets and inspect the mattress seams, particularly the corners, for telltale brownish or reddish spots.
• Thoroughly inspect the entire room before unpacking. Do not put your luggage on the bed.
• If you change rooms, but choose to stay in the same establishment, be sure your new room is not adjacent to the possibly infested room.
• Use a large plastic bag to store your luggage.
• When you return home, inspect and vacuum your suitcases thoroughly before bringing them into the house.
• Wash all your clothes – whether worn or not - in hot water.
• If you suspect a bed bug infestation, contact a licensed pest professional.
Virginia Tech Entomologist Dini M. Miller, Ph.D., recommends laundering all clothes taken on a trip upon returning home and checking suitcases for signs of bedbugs. To be safe, bags can also be left in a closed car on a sunny day to kill any hitchhikers.
According to Johnson, bedbugs are more nuisance, with their bites that itch the day after they’ve fed, than health threat. They do not carry and spread diseases like ticks and mosquitoes do.
NPMA concurs, but cites a psychological toll the vampirish bugs can exact on victims: “Although bed bugs are not known to transmit disease to humans, their bites do leave itchy welts on human skin and can cause an allergic reaction in some people. Additionally, the emotional and mental toll of experiencing a bed bug infestation can be severe and should not be taken lightly. Survey respondents report that 99 percent of clients who have had bed bugs were “upset and concerned” and 77 percent said such customers were “very upset and concerned.”

On the web, articles by Virginia Tech Entomologist Dini M. Miller,
Ph.D., explain bedbug biology and how to identify and prevent infestations:
www.vdacs.virginia.gov/pesticides/pdffiles/bb-biology1.pdf;
www.vdacs.virginia.gov/pesticides/pdffiles/bb-identify1.pdf
www.vdacs.virginia.gov/pesticides/pdffiles/bb-prevention1.pdf

See also www.ca.uky.edu/entomology/entfacts/ef636.asp for information from University of Kentucky College of Agriculture Extension Entomologist Michael F. Potter.