The Lakewood Bed Bug Outbreak

How Bed Bugs Are Currently Affecting Lakewood, OH

As the owner of Lakewood's only local pest control company, we have a slight insight into the state of local pest infestations. Although not every resident calls us for their pest problems, we do hear from multiple residents per week. We get a lot of carpenter ant calls, along with yellowjackets, mice, cockroaches, and spider calls. It depends on the time of year.

The majority of our Lakewood homes were built pre-1940. All of the gaps, and voids of our older housing structures really make it easy for outdoor insects to become indoor pests. If you have a pest problem, you most likely have a perimeter pest. There are also parasites and stored product pests. Unlike most of Lakewood's pests, bed bugs are not a perimeter pest. This well-adapted human parasite is taking a liking to Lakewood in a different way.

Well over half of the housing units in Lakewood are rentals. We have over 4,000 duplexes. We have over 6,000 apartment buildings with 20 or more units. Bed bugs flourish in places where large amounts of people in transition come together. This is why hotels can have problems. Bed bugs are everywhere people are. They are even hitchhiking their way into schools. I recently saw a bed bug in the locker room after my kid's swim class. Think about it, fitness centers have a lot of people coming and going. They are a perfect place for bed bugs to translocate themselves. Another place to be cautious of is movie theaters. There is a constant flow of people, and it is dark! Anyways... Renters in Lakewood, especially the ones in apartment buildings, are being affected most by the local bed bug outbreak. Tenant turnover and ineffective conventional pest control practices are the main reasons bed bugs are gaining a foothold in our local apartment complexes. 

Not many people know much about bed bugs. They know you pick them up traveling. They know they have been found in local schools recently. And they know a good way to get rid of them is by using heat treatments. Not many people know that more people get bed bugs from bringing used furniture into their homes than from traveling these days. The used furniture industry is the number one method bed bugs use to proliferate themselves across the country.

Now they are even using the new furniture industry to translocate themselves. Most mattress and furniture companies have a 30-day comfort guarantee on their mattresses. People are buying a new bed set, getting bed bugs, and then returning the mattress. The infected mattress is returned on a truck with new furniture that is getting delivered. Can you see the problem in this? While in the truck, the bed bugs simply crawl into the new furniture. Then this furniture is delivered into people's homes!

You can pick up bed bugs nearly anywhere nowadays. The places with the highest risk are places like hotels, schools, movie theaters, airports, homeless shelters, hostels, that sort of place. To protect yourself when returning home, keep your shoes, purses, and backpacks in the garage instead of on the home. If that is not possible, place them inside a tight fitting tote right when you enter your home. During the warm months, you can give your suitcases a heat treatment when you return from traveling. Keep them outside. Wrap them in a tightly sealed dark colored trash bag. Place the bag in the hot summer sun and let it heat up. After a few hours, you will have fried any potential hitchhikers.

Vacuuming your bags help, but then instead of being on your luggage, they are in your vacuum. Bed bugs can easily live inside of your vacuum. If you have bed bugs or are vacuuming up potential bed bugs and bed bug eggs, lace the inside of your canister or vacuum bag with an insecticidal dust. Also empty what you suck up into a tightly sealed bag and take it outdoors to the trash can immediately. Do this everytime you vacuum. Vacuuming is a great way to reduce pest populations within the home. But if bed bugs are given the opportunity to crawl out of the vacuum, vacuuming does not do much good. This goes for all pests, especially fleas and bed bugs.

There are bed bugs all over Lakewood. You don't have to travel to get bed bugs. You don't have to buy used furniture to get bed bugs. Remember I told you they can live in vacuums? We just had a customer that got them from hiring a cleaning service!

Out of around 28,000 housing units in Lakewood, about 60% are located in multifamily housing structures. Bed bugs travel through walls. If you live in one of these multi-family housing structures they can invade your home from neighboring apartments. They travel through walls. Electrical outlets can be a bed bug's best friend.

There is a certain stigma that goes along with having a bed bug infestation. Having bed bugs has nothing to do with the cleanliness of a person, but it is embarrassing. Tenants who find out they have bed bugs often delay in reporting it. By then the population has grown enough to spread to neighboring apartments. If bed bugs are found in one unit, the adjacent units must be inspected and treated too. In these cases, it can be difficult to get cooperation from surrounding tenants. 

Most of Lakewood's larger apartment complexes are on a monthly spray cycle. Every month an exterminator comes in and sprays a pyrethroid insecticide under the sink, along kitchen cabinet bases, in door thresholds, and in the bathrooms. They get paid in the range of $0.75- $1.00 for each apartment they spray. This is an industry standard. There is no pest monitoring involved. Apartments get treated every month even if they don't have pests. In essence these large apartment complexes are not doing anything to prevent pest infestations besides the spraying. And even that is relatively ineffective. It's not like they are spraying DDT that stays around killing bugs for over a year. Pyrethroids are repellents. If you don't hit them straight on you are pretty much just repelling them somewhere else.

Don't think that the exterminator wants to talk to tenants about their pest problems at a rate of 0.75$ per apartment. He wants to keep moving. As a result the landlord becomes the middleman. Communication is essential between the tenant, the landlord, and the exterminator. Often this is a big reason pest problems get out of hand. Not many landlords have a clue about pest control. It gets even worse when the landlord has the maintenance man do the pest control. Not many of these people are Licensed Commercial Pesticide Applicators.

Recently, our business heard from a number of young women. They have pest problems in their apartment complexes. Their units have been sprayed for bed bugs. None of them received any information before or after the treatment. The exterminator never talked to the tenants. All of the tenants who shared their story with us had small children that crawl on the floor. When they inquired to the landlord about the treatment, all that they were told was that it is safe for children and pests. They were not told where the treatments were made or what product was used. There was no follow-up with the exterminator. They all received one treatment. It is a pretty well-known fact in the industry that a minimum of three treatments is necessary to gain control.

As you can see, there are a number of issues that complicate bed bug control in Lakewood. The fact that hardly anyone has mattress encasements is alarming. Encasements make it very difficult for bed bugs to establish themselves. There are a ton of changes we can implement to stop the spread of bed bugs. One entomologist recently stated that if we do not step in and make changes; that one in every three homes will have bed bugs. As of now Lakewood is facing some heavy pressure from bed bugs. And from our insight as a local pest control company, it looks like we are headed down a slippery slope. 

Shawn Payne lives with his family in Lakewood, Ohio. He is a groundskeeper at NASA Glenn Research Center. He is also the small business owner in town. He runs the only pest control company in Lakewood, OH. Lakewood Plant And Pest is his passion and he loves helping the community solve their pest problems. Shawn is a graduate of Ohio State University where he studied horticulture. He is an avid gardener and provides landscaping services to many local residents.

Shawn Payne

Shawn Payne lives with his family in Lakewood, Ohio. He is a groundskeeper at NASA Glenn Research Center. He is also the small business owner in town. He runs the only pest control company in Lakewood, OH. Lakewood Plant And Pest is his passion and he loves helping the community solve their pest problems. Shawn is a graduate of Ohio State University where he studied horticulture. He is an avid gardener and provides landscaping services to many local residents.

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Volume 11, Issue 23, Posted 4:01 PM, 11.10.2015