College Cities Continue to Experience a Rise in Bed Bugs as EcoRaider® Kills in the Hardest Hit Markets

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One of the most aspects of colleges and universities that bed bugs have going for them is the transient nature of students. As each new semester and school year comes and goes, so do new students – some from throughout the country and others from international destinations.

What this does is create a major opportunity for bed bugs to travel from person to person, dorm to dorm and in many cases, university to university. For the last 10 years, bed bugs have experienced a major comeback that has become a tremendous financial problem for colleges and universities.

Each year, a major pest control firm ranks the top bed bug cities, with the top being the worst city in the country based on the amount of bed bug jobs that were performed there. For the 4th year, Chicago has been given that dubious distinction.

In Chicago and surrounding areas, students attend Northwestern, DePaul, Loyola, the University of Chicago and the University of Illinois at Chicago among several other universities and colleges in this top bed bug market.

And while this problem has really been listed more as an epidemic in the greater Chicago area, one firm has found a true solution to managing bed bugs.

Rose Pest Solutions, one of the leading pest control firms in the Midwest, has been using EcoRaider Natural Bio-Insecticide to protect its clients from bed bugs. Bill Hastings, Director of Special Services for Rose Pest Solutions Chicago, says EcoRaider has made a big difference in their bed bug protocol.

“We use EcoRaider as part of our heat treatment services for bed bugs,” he said. “We spray EcoRaider before applying heat to immediately knock down the bed bug populations … EcoRaider has helped us increase our percent control and reduce our bed bug callbacks.

“I gave it to several of our technicians to use and their feedback was, ‘We want more of this stuff,’ which is usually a sign it works,” said Hastings. “I went out and tested it myself and had bed bugs dying four to six seconds after coming in contact with the product which impressed me.

“It acts quickly and fits into our integrated approach to bed bug management that includes heat and conventional pesticide treatments,” says Hastings. “We take it with us on our inspection visits and if we spot bed bugs can we apply it to stop the spread of the infestation and provide the customer with some immediate emotional relief.”

On the top list of bed bug cities, Chicago is followed by Los Angeles, Washington D.C., New York and Columbus, Ohio to round out the top five – or the worst five. Those four additional cities are home to schools such as USC, UCLA, Loyola Marymount, NYU, Columbia, Fordham, St. John’s, George Washington, Georgetown, American and The Ohio State University – not to mention smaller universities, colleges and technical schools.

STUDENT FRIENDLY

EcoRaider is unlike most products on the market, it is a natural, green solution that does not stain linens or bedding and is safe for college students. It is used in many sensitive areas because it is safe for use – especially dorms

EcoRaider, available online, quickly kills bed bugs on all stages without adversary environmental effects. It is also available to professional pest control operators through national distributors. It demonstrates as the only natural product that kills bed bugs with 100% efficacy based on a research paper published by The Entomological Society of America’s Journal of Economic Entomology – it allows bed bug control with a green, natural product.

EcoRaider offers ready-to-use, naturally derived bio-insecticide that can be applied anywhere bed bugs are found without restriction. EcoRaider can be used in various sensitive environments, including schools, health-care facilities and public spaces.

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Dealing with Bed Bugs? Interview with the Glens Falls Housing Authority

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GFHALOGO

This month’s EcoRaider Interview is with Robert Landry, Executive Director of the Glens Falls Housing Authority. Situated on the eastern edge of New York, Glens Falls is about 60 minutes north of Albany and three hours north of Manhattan.

ECO: How much of a problem are bed bugs?

RL: They’re a big problem and in many cases everyone has the wrong impression of what bed bugs are. If you have bed bugs in the building everyone panics and in the community they decide they aren’t sending their mom or their dad to that specific senior housing facility. So there’s an overreaction and then the second problem is prevention. You can’t control where people go when they leave your buildings. It’s very easy to feel you’ve eradicated all of the bed bugs and we’ve come to the conclusion as long as we provide education and detection that’s the best we can do. That’s what everyone does and that’s how you control bed bugs but just having them is a black eye that we all in this industry have to deal with.

ECO: How did bed bugs first become a problem for you?

RL: Originally we hired a heat guy and that blew them throughout the building. So we put up a gallant battle and once we got them under control, our staff started using detection devices and monitors and we developed a plan where our maintenance people were checking for bed bugs more often. Do we still have bed bugs time to time? Absolutely. Do we still have hysteria in the building? Absolutely not. It cost us a lot of money in the beginning but I think we have a good plan and program in place.

ECO: How did you hear of EcoRaider?

RL: A friend of mine in New York City has a pest control company and he gave me a lot of suggestions and he said to get EcoRaider until the exterminating company can get here since we aren’t in the middle of a big city. That has really worked and helped kill the bed bugs quickly. We’ve also used your enewsletter to help educate our tenants to show them we have a protocol in place and that EcoRaider is a part of it. We have some used high capacity dryers now so we can take items to a special place to heat their clothes to eradicate bed bugs.

ECO: Where are most of the bed bugs found?

RL: The largest infestation was in the bedroom, second would be the living room area in most cases. The majority of bed bugs were found in bedrooms though and on whatever piece of furniture the residents frequent the most.

ECO: Are there any trends regarding bed bugs?

RL: The trend that I’ve found is that bed bugs have been coming from primarily our active tenants who go out in the community every day rather than those who just go to the grocery store, for example. So we’ve sat down with those who frequent social clubs and those who frequent facilities that provide mental health services because both have people coming and going from areas that may have no pest management.

ECO: Do you use encasements?

RL: Yes.  It’s been hard to tell if just one thing is effective so we regularly monitor and treat quickly. It’s been hard to say that works well but from everyone we talk to it encasements seem to be a good thing. Our protocol is about quick inspections and responding quickly to a bed bug – we provide large bags for mattresses and box springs and furniture so we can do what we can to control any further spreading of the problem.

ECO: How important is it to have a Green or Natural bed bug solution?

RL: It’s big to us and we’re tree huggers so we’re environment by nature. It’s also a protocol that we bid that out every three years that they use chemicals that are environmentally friendly. We attempt to do that with everything we do and that’s why EcoRaider is good as a green product. The reason we do that is because senior citizens don’t want us to spray a bunch of chemicals so we go out of our way to provide a green solution.

ECO: How have you used EcoRaider?
RL: If we have bed bugs then our guys can take EcoRaider and they can spray a little around if there’s been traffic to kill the bed bugs immediately. We’ll put a little here or there as a preventative product too.

ECO: Is having a product that’s preventative important?

RL: Yes absolutely. To me it’s top of the list. We are now proactive and looking for problems to solve them immediately and if someone has seen a bed bug there’s a good possibility if we get in there we might be able to isolate the location quickly and rather than wait two days to get someone in there to see them we can take care of it immediately.

ECO: What advice would you give to a peer who handles bed bug situations at another housing authority?

RL: To remember that it’s not a disaster but you do have to have a bed bug plan before you have a bed bug outbreak. Educate tenants, have a protocol plan and I think that’s what we all can do. Housing authorities are tremendously underfunded but we can still do the job. To me having a plan in place is the key because bed bugs can be very costly if you approach the problem wrong.