Category Archives: Bed Bugs Nevada

When bed bugs recently invaded apartments at Arthur D. Sartini Plaza, some residents of the Las Vegas public housing project for the elderly remained quiet out of embarrassment, the manager said.

That helped the tiny bloodsuckers chomp their way across a wider swath of the four-story complex and made for a bigger cleanup when word of the infestation finally got out, he said.

August Anderson, 76, says that he reported the bugs when they appeared in his one-bedroom apartment and began chewing on him but acknowledges that he didnt make much of a fuss.

Not much gets him down, he said. Im an old, feisty kind of guy

Anderson pays $178 per month for his third-floor apartment, and at that price he saw the bugs as more of an inconvenience.

I love my apartment and I like living here, he said of his home of 12 years.

Management had an exterminator spray Andersons unit and eight others in the 220-unit complex last week. But Anderson said Tuesday he was still finding bites; his apartment was scheduled for a follow-up on Friday.

He said he has no complaints with how management responded after becoming aware of the problem.

Resident Carol Rehm agreed. She said she has lived in the building for about four years and never encountered a bed bug until January. When she did, she said, she reported the problem and management sent someone to her apartment to spray within a couple days.

Jerry Nowlan, who manages the complex for the Southern Nevada Regional Housing Authority, said the complex has had recurring bouts with bed bugs, despite the best efforts of exterminators to get rid of them.

Ive never seen it this bad anywhere. Ever, said Nowlan, who has managed rental properties for 20 years.

Nowlan said some residents contribute to the outbreaks by failing to report infestations because they are embarrassed, feeling like they somehow contributed to the appearance of the pests. That, in turn, puts their neighbors at risk.

One apartment could affect the whole floor, he said.

Hes had representatives from Terminix, the company that handles pest control for the Housing Authority, try to educate residents on what it takes to fight bed bugs.

Resident Sandra Pecorino, who has lived in the building for years, doesnt buy the reluctant resident explanation and questions whether an all-out effort to exterminate the pests has been made.

Nobody wants to live with bugs, she said.

That may be true, says George Botta, who exterminates bed bugs for Las Vegas Pest Control, but correcting public misconceptions is an important part of his job.

He said people shouldnt be embarrassed if they experience an outbreak, as poor sanitation doesnt attract bed bugs. Excessive clutter, however, makes it difficult to find and kill them, he added.

And the pests dont disproportionately affect low-income housing, Botta said.

Theyre in every ZIP code in Vegas, he said. Theyre here to stay.

Contact Blake Apgar at bapgar@reviewjournal.com or 702-387-5298. Follow @blakeapgar on Twitter.

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Embarrassed seniors complicate bed bug fight at Las Vegas housing complex - Las Vegas Review-Journal

A magnifying glass helps you detect the presence of bedbugs. (Photo: pins image by dinostock from Fotolia.com )

You can identify bedbug infestations by noting reactions to bedbug bites -- small, itchy bumps or welts -- on a room's occupants. However, if you are staying in a room while traveling, you won't have that handy warning sign available, and you'll want to know about the problem before the first bite. If you suspect a bedbug problem, you can check a room for bedbugs, beginning with the places they most often live and hide -- in beds, sofas and chairs.

Pack and bring items useful for identifying bedbug infestations. A flashlight and a magnifying glass will help you see signs, often tiny, of infestations. You can use an old credit card or similar piece of plastic to scrape and dig for signs of bedbugs.

Examine the room's bedding. Check the mattress, box springs, frames and linens. Adult bedbugs are oval, brown, flat and wingless; they are approximately 1/4 to 3/8 inches in size, or about the size of an apple seed. They change from brown to purplish-red after they eat, becoming larger and more cigar-shaped. Young bedbugs are shaped like adults but smaller. In addition to looking for live bedbugs, search for signs bedbugs have been present earlier. Look for rusty or reddish stains on bed linens, pillows and mattresses -- signs left by bedbugs that have been crushed.

Look closely at the furniture. Bedbugs shed their skin as they grow, leaving eggs and eggshells, which are white and about 1 mm in size. Open and inspect any zippered coverings on furniture, and look at frames and feet of pieces such as sofas and chairs.

Check walls, including wall hangings such as paintings and clocks; baseboards and floorboards; and electrical outlets. Inspect electrical items by eye only. You can use a card from a deck of cards as a probe, or you can fashion a probe from an old credit card or similar piece of plastic. Cut the plastic into a long triangle with one sharply pointed end. Use the pointed end to probe into crevices around floorboards; scrape crevices with the probe to dig out any live bugs or remains.

Sam N. Austin began writing professionally in 1990, and has held executive and creative positions at Microsoft, Dell and numerous advertising agencies. Austin writes on health and well-being as well as linguistics and international travel, business, management and emerging technologies. He holds a Bachelor of Arts in French from the University of Texas where he is a Master of Arts candidate in Romance linguistics.

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How to Check a Room for Bed Bugs | USA Today

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Caption: Signs of a heavy bed bug infestation on the bottom of a box springs. Photo: Lou Sorkin

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Caption: A screenshot showing the comparison tool of the Proof app.

Youre packed for your trip, your boarding passes are downloaded and then that little moment of terror hits. What if the hotel youre going to stay in has bed bugs? Its a real concern, but by being vigilant, you can reduce your chances of bringing home some unexpected souvenirs.

I dont put a lot of trust inonline hotel bed bug ratings or reports; infestation status can change from day to day, and there is no reliable way to verify that reviews are not fake.

Heres how I search for bed bugs when I arrive at a new hotel. I cant promise this is foolproof, but knowing how one slightly-paranoid entomologist deals with the threat of bed bugs might be useful to some readers.

Tools you will need: A flashlight, or the flashlight feature of your phone. Use your phone to take photos of anything suspicious.

What you are looking for: Bedbugs hang out near their food sourceyou. After feeding, bed bugs poop, creating tell-tale brown stains of your clotted blood. You typically wont see bugs they are fairly tiny and can scurry quickly but you will see these stains. You can find many itch-inducing photos hereto help you know what to look for.

1. Put your luggage in the bathtub when you arrive.Luggage is amajor way that bed bugs are moved from place to place. The bathroom has the fewest places for bed bugs to hide, and is the most vigorously cleaned part of a hotel room. If you actually find something suspicious in your search, you can grab your bags out of the tub and run away without risking contamination.

2. Tear the place up.Pull the bed away from the wall, if possible.Headboards fastened to the wall next to the bed are a great place for a flat little insect to stay.Shine your flashlight behind headboards and under beds.Strip the bed, right down to the mattress and bed springs to see whats underneath the sheets and mattress pad. Lift the mattress and box springs up and look underneath. If its a platform bed, inspect carefully under the springs and around the base.Pay special attention to the seams of mattresses and the box springs.These are spots the bugs like to hide in.

3. Check your sheets the next morning.When you get up the next morning, look for little blood stains or tiny rusty spots on your sheets.Reactions to bed bug bites vary widely, from no reaction at all to lots of swelling and redness. You may be one of the people that doesnt react with itching to the bed bug bites, so the presence of bites isnt always a reliable check.Bed bugs sometimes bite ingroups of three but so do fleas, so that isnt always definitive. Dont use luggage racks, closet shelves, or drawers during your stay unless you feel confident that they are bed bug free.

This video is an excellent walkthrough of what should be your standard drill when you travel. Bookmark it. At the end, there are also some good tips for how to negotiate with your hotel if you actually find bed bugs.

Bed Bugs: Theres an App for that.

Itd be handy if you could have all of this info on your phone so you dont miss any steps, and had photos of bed bugs and bed bug poop spots to compare to. Several different apps are on the market at prices ranging from free to $10 bucks.Every app I looked at was put out by a commercial entity, with the purpose of selling you something.

Most also had epically bad user interface (UI) design and graphics; it seemed like pest control companies just ported their vintage 1996 websites into a phone app. Im afraid I must also report there was some use of Comic Sans Fonts.

The problem with a commercially-created phone app is privacy. You hand over a lot of personal information when you install an app. I honestly didnt see much in terms of value added that would make it worth downloading any of these apps. I found joke apps pretending to be bed bug detectors for the purposes of freaking your friends out, and some highly bogus ultrasonic repelling apps that suggest they turn your phone into a sonic threat to bugs of all kinds. There is no evidence that bed bugs or mosquitoes are repelled by ultrasound. Dont waste your money.

Only one app stood out as slightly useful:Bed Bug Proof. (Important caveat: every few screens they try to sell you their product, a neem spray called Proof.) The inspection walk-through is a good overview, and if you give the app access to the photos on your phone, you can access a photo comparison tool. The user interface is clear and easy to use.

Happy Hotel Hunting.

Additional Bed Bug Resources:

Homepage Image: Gilles San Martin/Flickr

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How to Search Your Hotel Room for Bed Bugs | WIRED

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Caption: Female of the bed bug - Cimex lectularius. Scale : bug length ~ 5 mmGilles San Martin

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Caption: Graph of products tested. Only the first two products significantly killed bed bugs--when sprayed directly on them. Singh et. al 2014

Consumers desperate to eradicatetiny domestic vampireshave created ahuge marketfor natural bed bug control. Salesarehigh, as are some of the claims; bogus bed bug products have prompted multipleFederal Trade Commission (FTC) actions for deceptive advertising.

Newresearch put11 over-the-counter bed bugspraysto the test to see if essential oils can do more than make your bedroom smell nice. The results were underwhelming.

Potential of Essential Oil-Based Pesticides and Detergents for Bed Bug Control. 2014. N. Singh, C Wang, & R. Cooper.J. Econ. Entomol. 107(6); DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1603/EC14328

The products tested containedingredients foran aromatherapy overdose: cedar, cinnamon, geraniol, clove oil, peppermint, rosemary, lemon grass oil, citronella, and others. Additionalingredients were soap (sodium lauryl sulfate, a foaming agent commonly found in shampoo); salts (potassium sorbate); and 2-Phenethyl propionate, which occurs naturally in peanuts.

Most of the products failed a very simple test: if you sprayed the stuffdirectly on live bed bugs in a petri dish, would they die? Researchers measured bug deaths after 1, 3, 5, 7, and 10 days to make sure they captured any lingeringeffects. Two conventional pesticides were included for comparison purposes in the tests:Temprid SCandDemand CS. There also were control bed bugs that got spritzed with water as a mock spray treatment.

Seven of the natural products tested did not manage to kill even(50%)of the bed bugs sprayed, measured by dead bugs 10 days later.

Only Temprid SCandEcoRaiderkilled 100% of the bugswhen applied directly. AlthoughTemprid SC, a synthetic pesticide, killed 100% of the bed bugs on the first day, only88% of bedbugs in the EcoRaider tests had died by the 5th day. None of the compounds tested acted as repellents to bed bugs in climb-up tests, where the bugs had to walk over a treated area.

Thesecond synthetic pesticide, Demand CS, performed poorly in these trials, probably because of resistance to pyrethroid insecticidesin the bed bugs tested. It did, however, do betterin residual tests; 14 days later Demand CSwas still killing on a level with EcoRaider and Temprid SC.

It Might Not Be the Essential Oils, Anyway

Perhaps the most interesting and confusing conclusion from this research is that essential oils are probablynotwhat killed thebed bugs. The same active ingredients inEcoRaider and Bed Bug Patrol were also in other products (Bed Bug Fix, Green Rest Easy, and Essentria, for example) thatwerent effective killers. What actually killed the bugs is likely something in the spray formulation.

Adjuvants, wetting agents, spreaders, stabilizers, defoamers, stickers, and solvents are all in these sprays, and might work in tandem with the essential oils by improving penetration into the insect, or slowing detoxification. Those formulations are generally proprietary and secret, so figuring out what works may take a while.

No, Mr. Bug, I Expect You to Die

If you see a bed bug and spray it with EcoRaider, it probably will kill the insect, based on this research. The problem is, you generally dont see bed bugs. Thats why they are so insidious. Bed bugs are remarkably tiny, flat, and fast. They can live inside the slot of a screw holding your bed-frame together. They mightlive inside electrical outlets near your bed, or behind photo frames. They can bide their time and wait; bed bugs can go for months without feeding. Its the bed bugs you cant see that you should worry about.

As someone whos written about bogus insecticide products for years, the dismal performance of green pest spraysisnt a shock.Bed bugs offerfertile ground for hucksters in the same way that serious medical conditions invite exploitation of the ill. Both topics involve a lot of anxiety and stress, dont have easy solutions, and people are willing to pay lots of money to find a solution.

Ecoexempt, the worst performer in these tests, sells for $84/gallon;Stop Bugging Meis $90/gallon.Over-the-counter insecticide foggers are not effective for bed bug control and are still sold widely for that purpose.

Natural pesticides qualify for exemption from the Federal Insecticide, Fungicide and Rodenticide Act (FIFRA). They dont actually have to provide efficacy data for registration.With an over-loaded regulatory systemand a low cost of development, manufacturers can roll out new products quickly, and rake in the profits.

Hopefully theFTC will follow up on this research with additional warnings to get some of these ineffective products off the market. Consumers usingthesesprays may justgive theirbed bugs alovely peppermint scent.

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Essential Oils Fail at Killing Bed Bugs | WIRED

Las Vegas Bed BugsDont Stand a Chance

In the world of pest control, bed bugs are the most challenging species to eliminate. Bed bug removal in Las Vegas requires a combined effort from the customer and a pest control professional.

Las Vegas bed bugs are very small and elusive making them difficult to detect. Bed bugs hide within the folds of all types fabrics, including clothing, curtains, carpets, and within the edges of mattresses. They lay hundreds of eggs within these areas and can create major infestations quickly without detection. Bed bugs feed on blood and can cause reactions such as rashes and skin discomfort within their hosts.

Bed bugs are generally active at night, but will travel and feed during the day if necessary. These pests find their human hosts, first, by detecting carbon dioxide released from breathing, then by warmth radiating from the body. Although bed bugs are parasites, they do not live on their hosts. After feeding, they find places to hide and congregate. They can seemingly vanish into your sofa, luggage, between mattresses, electrical sockets almost anywhere. In Las Vegas, adult bed bugs can survive for up to one year without food, although they will attempt to feed every five to ten days. Bedbug infestations occur quickly and require immediate action for treatment. Delaying bed bug elimination treatment in Las Vegas has costly consequences. The consequences include loss of personal belongings and furnishings and the possibility of contracting one of the many diseases bed bugs carry.

Fischers Pest Control of Las Vegas guarantees bed bug and other pest elimination in conjunction with ongoing monthly preventative treatments. We partner with the customer to ensure a successful bed bug elimination. Call us today if you suspect a bed bug infestation is developing in your home.

All fabrics, (clothing, curtains, shoes, purses,bathmats, bedding, towels, etc) must be removed from the Las Vegas property, laundered and dried at the highesttemperaturepossible prior totreatment All dressers and drawers must be emptied. These items cannot return to the property until 7 days after initial service is completed.

We apply a crack and crevice treatment with specialized products labeled for bedbugs. Then we treat the entire foundation with liquid residual pesticides. A dust pesticide is then injected into the interior walls via electrical boxes. All remaining, emptied furniture, is treated with specialized products.

The highest-grade bedbug covers are used to trap bedbugs in the mattress and box spring which they are infesting. Large objects, such as furniture, are treated by our technicians then steam is applied to any areas of fabric to eliminate remaining Las Vegas bedbugs.

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Las Vegas Bed Bug Removal | Fischer's Pest Control