Posted on 09/22/2010 11:37:30 AM PDT by JoeProBono
ROSEMONT, Ill.- The first-ever North American Bed Bug Summit, which opened Tuesday near Chicago, attracted a sellout crowd to hear experts on the tiny biters, organizers said.
That appears to be one more sign that bed bugs, once almost routed in the United States by pesticides, are back in a big way, the Arlington Heights (Ill.) Daily Herald reported.
"Ten years ago we got about one call about bed bugs a year, and now we get at least one call a day," Melaney Arnold, a spokeswoman for the Illinois Department of Public Health, told the newspaper.
Organizers of the two-day event at the Hyatt hotel in Rosemont put together a panel of 14 entomologists and other bed bug experts, WGN-TV, Chicago, reported.
Curt Colwell, an entomologist with the state of Illinois, said until recently the only bed bugs he had seen were dead. He said one problem in dealing with their comeback is a lack of hard information, including what percentage of the bed bug population has become pesticide-resistant.
This is the silliest darn issue I have ever heard of.
It’s not silly if you get them near you
I stayed at a hotel in Philly last month and FREAKED when I saw a tiny bug climbing the wall...
And it was a major chain
Thank an illegal immigrant!
I have a friend who does pest control. He showed me a web-site where he buys chemicals. 95% of the products have a notice that they are not permitted in NY. With their dense population, and huge number of immigrants and tourists, it just seems suicidal. Could you imagine the rats and their fleas...hello black death.
Pardon my ignorance but how do you know if you bed has bed-bugs? Can you see them?
No, this is a very serious issue. Bedbugs go after you while you are asleep, and leave multiple painful bites. They are extremely difficult to get rid of, so it costs a fortune to eliminate them from your home. But it’s either spend $2500 or more to get rid of them (perhaps multiple times), or forget about ever being able to sleep thru the night in your own home again...
Check your room carefully if you stay in a hotel/motel, and look for signs of bedbugs. It’s easy to bring them home with you on your clothes or in your luggage.
Yep, you can see them easily - they are tan, and about the size of a sesame seed. Some will be somewhat swollen with your blood, and others will be flat.
They will generally find a hiding place somewhere near their food source (any warm-blooded animal, like you), and then come out to feed when you are asleep (since they are slow). Look for them between the matress and boxsprings.
Look for small red/black smudges on sheets, where they have fed and then been smashed when you roll over. They also poop out a black tar-like substance which you can look for. Charming, aren’t they?
Bedbugs are easy to kill individually (steam, heat, vacuum them up) but they can go for over a year without feeding, and they lay eggs all over. So unless you can track down and destroy EVERY bedbug and egg at one time, they’ll be back...
We had a few batbugs get in our house, from bats that were roosting under our shutters. (They are essentially the same as bedbugs). It cost us $1000 for bat removal, and $2500 to have the house gassed for the bugs, which is the only sure way to get rid of them.
If anyone has bedbugs, call around until you find a company that will use the ventine (sp?) gas, and have them gas the whole house! We immediately used this “nuclear option”... lol All other options were just as expensive to treat just a portion of the house, and those companies wouldn’t even guarantee results. Most exterminators won’t even try to get rid of them - they are that difficult to eliminate.
Is that guy Obammylammydingdong’s new Bed Bug Czar?
EXACTLY! Check out www.3billionandcounting.com for the facts about not only bed bugs, but also the devastation created by the banning of DDT, and the resulting deaths of more than 3 BILLION people due to malaria. Rachel Carson’s book ‘Silent Spring’ which got DDT banned, is the biggest mass murderer that ever lived.
Dittos.
My kids brought home head lice after staying the night at a neighbor's house. We shaved the boy's heads, but Mommy chose to dye our daughter's hair, and it worked.
This bed bug thing has got me creeped out. I heard last night that they can live in the walls of a house for up to a year without a meal. So, if you're thinking about moving (as we're doing) that's just one more thing to be on the look out for. Does the place have bed bugs?
Crikey....
I can’t think of a more appropriate place!
I have been teaching for 28 years ago, and never had a case of them.
Maybe they can get the Asian Carp to eat the bed bugs.
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