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This is Roger Tinker, owner and general manager of All Star Pest Control in Columbus, GA. I will be discussing why Infestations of bed bugs are going to increase as the winter approaches. These pesty creatures only way to get into your home is to be brought in by you or someone else. Your ability to keep a clean house or if you have the dirties house will make no difference at all. However, bed bugs are probably discovered much quicker in the house where good housekeeping methods are practiced. Treatment for bed bugs will be more effective in accounts that have practiced good housekeeping methods. Bed bug infestations are closely related to how many different places that people visit and more importantly where you visited. Hotels have a lot of different people from many places, so there is a very good chance if you have bed bugs and recently stayed in a hotel, you probably brought them home from the hotel. The same can be said if you visited someone in a large nursing home. If you visit someone who had their home treated for bed bugs and the treatment did not include steam or high heat, you probably will take bed bugs home with you.
Let me explain why. It takes steam or high heat to eliminate bed bugs. I will make people that sell chemical mad but here’s the truth based on years of experience. Chemical will kill many bed bugs as long as you get the chemical to the bed bug. Here in lays part of the problem. How are you going to treat furniture with deep cushions with chemical that is going to get to the bed bugs? I assume you still want to use and sit on your furniture. The labels may say it’s okay, but do you want to sit in the chemically treated furniture. But that’s not the real problem. The eggs from the bed bugs are hard to find and they are sticky as well. These eggs can hatch up to a year later even after a treatment. The eggs are destroyed instantly when exposed to 150 degrees of direct heat. Only a total steam treatment or total heat treatment will eliminate the bed bugs in a house or other structure. I personally use the steam because we can control where the steam goes much more precisely. Sometimes things get melted that were not supposed to when using a total heat treatment in my opinion. We do use vacuum cleaners with Hepa filters that are especially designed for bed bug work to suck up and help eliminate as many eggs as possible. Control is achieved by using a combination of treatments and not just one thing.
I know that a lot of people travel in the summer time and that certainly helps spread the bed bug population. We will be travelling for Thanksgiving and the Christmas Holidays and going to many places as we do so. When the temperature is colder bed bugs will move closer to the warmth of people and hitch a ride without you knowing it and certainly without your permission.
I also want to point out the reason for the rise in bed bugs since 2001. For many years bed bug populations did not exist because the pest control industry used products called organophosphates.
Bed bugs were not able to build a resistance to these chemicals. Organophosphates were banned for use in residential homes the United States. Efforts to get emergency use restored have failed. Chemical Manufacturers have tried and even claimed that “their product” will eliminate the bed bugs, but the populations of bed bugs continue to rise.
It is not easy to do a bed bug job right. An average 3 bedroom 2 bathroom home usually takes a crew of 4 people working all day long to do a bed bug job properly.
I have tried to paint a picture of why bed bugs will get worse. This is not to scare you but rather to inform you and advise you to treat for bed bugs right the first time so that you don’t keep treating over and over. Bed bugs do get worse if you do not use the right methods of treatment.
Please feel free to contact me if I can answer any questions or help you in any way.
