All of a sudden, everybody has them! I had never heard of them-but now, all of the local extirminators are booked up-spraying for bedbugs! Why have they re-emerged? It reminds me of the Rolling Stones “Shattered”…“rats on the east side, bedbugs uptown”. How easy is it to get these things in your house? 
Where are you located at? Is this something local or a nationwide crisis? I haven’t heard about this. Great, now I am going to be up all night imagining bedbugs crawlign all around me.
All you have to do is sleep in a bed with bedbugs and you wind up carrying them to the next bed.
Hotels seem to be involved with the most recent problems. For reasons that are obvious if you think about it.
Supposedly they frequent hotels, and are transmitted by getting into traveler’s clothing, luggage, etc.
I stay in a heck of a lot of hotels and I thoroughly check every bed I sleep in. I’ve NEVER found a bedbug, or been bitten to my knowledge, and they’re not microscopic by any means; look hard and you should be able to find them. I’m sure I’ve stayed in a room with a bedbug or two but you’d think a guy who spends a night or two in 80 hotels a year would notice.
Having said that, if in fact the resurgence is as bad as people say and it’s not just hysteria, I cannot help but notice that it has exactly coincided with this new policy hotels have of not changing your sheets every nighit.
Lots of places have em. New York City, Baltimore, San Jose, Saskatchewan.
The news is lousy with stories of their comeback.
I don’t really care much about bedbugs that much anymore since I discovered the wonders of dust mites.
Just this morning I passed a hardware store on 6th Avenue that had a hand-written sign reading “WE HAVE BEDBUG SPRAY.”
Except the letters were so oddly spaced it looked like “WE HAVE BEDBUGS PRAY.”
I’ve had bed bug bites. Very itchy and annoying.
I never could see the critters, or understand why they were snacking on me but not my hubby. We were in Bali at the time.
I thought they were mosquito bites, another traveller identified them and told me to tell the people at the guesthouse.
I did, and they dragged all the mattresses out into the hot tropical sun for the afternoon. Apparently this is the accepted cure throughout the tropics.
Anyway, it worked, I didn’t get another bite.
I can’t see North Amerikans be comfortable with any cure that doesn’t involve chemical warfare, though.
Warning: half-remembered science anecdote.
I heard or read a while back that the bedbug resurgence was partially because of the success of Combat-style roach bait in killing roaches. The roaches, the theory went, ate the bedbugs (or larve). When Combat and other anti-roach products of similar stripe became popular in the 90s, the roach population crashed, the bedbugs had fewer predators, and their population exploded. So what’s the Dope? Is this true, plausible, or just the result of all of that crack I smoked this morning?
From what I’ve seen, the reemergence is due to a reduction in the use of pesticides. They were pretty much under control until recently.
Hotels are the big issue. A consultant here got some very bad bites after staying at a Hilton Garden Inn not far from here, so it isn’t just the run-down hotel stereotype (this hotel had been in operation no more than a year or two).
Dust mites are creepy, but they don’t bite you.
The way I heard it (…), it’s due to DDT and other high-powered pesticides being discontinued (remember when they used to fumigate entire buildings with poison gas?). Instead, more local, targeted forms of insecticides are used to off critters like roaches, that are so specific they don’t kill off bedbugs as a corollary effect (i.e., food-based bait traps that ants and roaches eat but bedbugs don’t). Since nobody has given much thought to bedbugs in a generation or two, they’ve quietly been able to recover their numbers.
Yeah, I’d actually read bed bugs were a bigger problem at high end hotels where international travelers would inadverdently carry them in with their luggage. The motels on the interstate don’t have bedbugs 'cause they only have travelers from the US.
here in waltham, MA, the problem is so bad that the city has instructed anyone putting out a mattress/furniture out for the trash pickup, must display a sign prohibiting anyone from taking it. Rental properties are infested-the local exterminator told us he’s busy for the next 3 months… It seems to be an epidemic-and I’ve heard that a LOT of tony NYC hotels have the problem, too.
The scarey thing-the bugs can live for over a year between meals!
Years ago, the stae of MA had very strict laws about used furniture-it had to be fumigated to kill off any bugs residing in it-I wonder if the recent problems are due to those laws not being enforced? :eek:
I’ve read that in the daytime, they hang out in the corners of rooms, and come onto your bed only in the middle of the night. Is that not right?
How did these critters evolve? Human beds are a relatively recent invention in the evolutionary timescale.
There are other related bugs, other related hosts:
Couple wages battle against bat bugs
Insects invade family’s home, hunting for blood
Um, they eat your blood, not your mattress or bedframe.
http://www.uky.edu/Ag/Entomology/entfacts/struct/ef636.htm
“Another likely sign of bed bugs is rusty or reddish spots of blood on bed sheets, mattresses, or walls. Heavy infestations may have a musty or “buggy” smell, but the odor is seldom apparent and should not be relied upon for detection.”
I am creeped out and must go home and check immediately.
A short history of bedbugs. Adam had em!
A lot of them are newcomers to these shores brought in/as carry ons with immigrants and visitors from afar.
The old fashioned treatment was saturating the seams of matresses etc. with kerosene.
A short history of bedbugs. Adam had em!
A lot of them are newcomers to these shores brought in/as carry ons with immigrants and visitors from afar.
The old fashioned treatment was saturating the seams of matresses etc. with kerosene.
You really have a few bites so you can appreciate the discussion.
They are easier to acquire that to get shut of! :rolleyes: