Help - Bed Bug Trauma

If it's a rental they are usually liable to treat your apartment for the bedbug problem (at no expense to you), which consists of two treatments within 10 days. (I wouldn't volunteer all the travel information and how you think you may have gotten them). You must be compliant in anything that the pest control company requires ie. bagging of clothes, getting rid of carpets, mattress etc. My advice is to tell the management company that you have a problem and get treated for free. Bedbugs are a big nuisance, but if your apartment is relatively clean and clutter free you will be OK. I own a pest control company and have been able to get rid of bedbugs in all situations.

Haven't you seen the commercials? Call Bell Environmental and get that adorable Beagle Roscoe at your apartment ASAP!!!

Isn't this a little weird that you have two confirmed, and now on additional possible bed bug issue within about four or five months?...Honestly, the reported data is suspect.

Deminimus, my partner and I had them a few years ago. You should get an exterminator in immediately because bedbugs multiply like crazy. Let a professional confirm whether you have them or not. We used Tonto and they eradicated them, but it took 3 visits. If you wait on this, the problem gets worse and worse.

Move to Long Island City. Not even bedbugs can survive long there.

get it professionally treated as soon as possible, make it your top priority, don't wait. they are more services available now since the problem has been getting worse in NYC. I saw a commercial for one company that freezes them and they die. There are probably several options. I think you can also buy a special light that shows where they are hiding. I have never had this problem but it is my worst nightmare. sorry to hear about your situation, and best of luck getting it eradicated and getting your regular life back.

Update on the situation: Two different pest control companies gave my apartment a clean bill of health. They set up glue traps but no bed bugs have been caught. I have had two bites in the last two weeks. Every night I go to bed thinking that the critters are hiding in some nook or cranny busily multiplying and tonight is the night they're going to come out and get me. It's frustrating that I don't have closure.

Deminimus, could you have a mosquito in the apartment? They seem to live forever. If two exterminators told you you don't have them, it must be some comfort to you. They use special lights, and know what to look for.
Glamma, it IS a nightmare, I had panic attacks, couldn't concentrate at work, I nearly passed out at work when I saw a black seed from my roll on the floor of the office, I thought I brought one in on my coat and that the office was infested, too, and everyone would know I had bedbugs....it was horrible.
But it's over! It's a problem and you solve it.

http://www.nypost.com/p/news/local/bitten_by_bedbugs_man_drops_pants_10clXoLspYIDt7rGdz9y1J

What ever you do don't follow the lead of 60-year-old Guillermo Enriquez.

West New York police say 60-year-old Guillermo Enriquez went to town hall in the Hudson County community this week to complain about an infestation of bedbugs at his residence, The Jersey Journal of Jersey City reported Saturday.

While speaking with staffers there, police say Enriquez became very angry and agitated. He then decided to show the employees "what the bedbugs had caused" by pulling down his pants, police told the newspaper.

The staffers lodged a complaint with police, and Enriquez was arrested Friday and charged with lewdness.

Mosquitoes do seem to live forever indoors. I've been woken up by buzzing in the middle of the night.

A mosquito leaves a big bump/welt & bedbugs leave little red spots on your skin, I beleive. No bedbug experience, thank god, but mosquitoes, yes. I wonder if it's a spider. I heard a character on 'Law & Order' say that you're never more than 8 feet away from a spider. Heartening!

I don't think it's a mosquito. I am pretty familiar with mosquito bites and they're not what I am experiencing. The last set of bites flared up from just below my shoulder almost all the way to my elbow; I've never had such a bad allergic reaction to a bug bite. Since the two pest control companies gave me the all clear, I've experienced bites on 3 occasions. I think I need a third opinion...Can anyone recommend a pest control company?

(Michael: I know what you mean about panic attacks...Seeing a little piece of black lint on my white sheets sends me into a bed bug inspection frenzy!)

Just curious, did you alert your neighbors to your potential "bed bug problem"?

MAV - Don't be a passive aggressive ass. I came here for advice, not to be on the receiving end of nasty insinuations. I told the building manager, who was responsible for sending one of the pest control guys to my unit.

"..... that you're never more than 8 feet away from a spider."

I did not need to know that! :)

THis whole over sanitized attitude and overly worried pitch of voice is just not warranted. In most cities in the world, it would get a scoff. There are people without jobs, people with serious illnesses and problems, and the cliche of millions of hungry or tortured Africans. While I appreciate your concern and trouble sleeping, the seriousness you treat it with is amusing. As obama said "new yorkers need to go out and see the rest of the country one day". (no obama retorts please, its a wast of time, i am not his biggest fan, just quoting him).

okay, you want "constructive" and actionable feedback ? If you did all you could, just wait for few weeks. See if the problem goes away eventually. If it gets worse, call the experts and they will catch it. If you still have occasional intermittent bites but can never find anything, chill out. It is either not a bed bug. In any case you can afford to lose a drop or two of blood a year.

From what little I know, if a unit has bed bugs they have to "bomb" the entire building.

Is sleeping on the couch an option in the meantime? That's where I'd be with a rubber sheet on the bottom.

Ill put the name calling aside, and ask you again if you asked your neighbors if they had experienced anything similar?

Let me ask you this: is your bed near a window?

This past summer, we had an infestation of pigeon mites. They are barely visible to the naked eye. Pigeon mites are from the same family as bedbugs...they survive by biting humans in the night. They appear when pigeons -- who have been roosting on your AC or windowsill -- decide to fly the coop or die off. The mites then enter the human environment -- where they can subsist between bites of human blood for months.

Very often, at the beginning of the summer season, a person will turn on the AC for the first time, and blow mites directly into the bedroom. Mistakenly thinking s/he has bedbugs, the tenant will throw out the bedding. But the problem doesn't go away. Why? Because you don't have bedbugs; you have pigeon mites.

You have to treat the source: open your window and disinfect the sill. Clean the filter on your AC. Vacuum the hell out of it.

Cilantro: I think you may be onto something here! I have a through the wall A/C unit and a pigeon was nesting in it after the grate somehow went missing. The pigeon nest was removed and the grate replaced this summer. It's also right across the room from my couch, where I think the bites are taking place.

(How do I know? Looking back, there seems to be a correlation between falling asleep on the couch and getting bites; besides, I bought these Climb Up interceptors (http://www.insect-interceptor.com/) for the bed and there's zero evidence of bugs in them. Unfortunately, the couch legs are too big for the interceptors. I am going to try the dry ice/dog food bowl approach discussed here http://bedbugger.com/2009/12/21/effective-cheap-diy-active-bed-bug-monitor/ once I can get my hands on some dry ice.)

Fascinating - I've never heard of pigeon mites. Apparently, neither have the pest control people because I asked them several times what else could be biting me and they said mosquitoes or fleas. I will look into taking out and cleaning the AC unit and the

MAV - According to the building manager one neighbor has bites (on a different floor on the opposite end of the building) but will not tell me what the pest control people told her about their findings in that apartment.

sorry, "cleaning the AC unit and under the sleeve"

Be careful with dry ice; I believe that it needs to be handled with great care.

I hadn't heard of pigeon mites, either. And having called 2 exterminators with no results, I decided to do something radical. I swept some specimens into a plastic envelope and brought them over to Louis Sorkin -- a forensic entomologist w/ The Museum of Natural History. Often interviewed in the NY Times, Dr. Sorkin is a prominent researcher in the area of bedbugs. It was he who examined the specimens and told me exactly what they were: pigeon mites. Often confused with bedbugs. Often treated, unsuccessfully, as such.

>>>...you're never more than 8 feet away from a spider.<<<

Forget spiders--in NYC you're never more than 8 feet away from a rat. And roaches? Don't even ask.

Rationalobserver, think about YOUR home being invaded by bugs that have about 500 babies a day. By the time you see even one, it's very late in the game because they breed and spread like wildfire and only come out at night. They get into your dressers, bed, clothing, your television, your computer and your stereo. You wake up and there are two on your pillow, and one in your box of tissues that you keep by the bed. And the ONLY way to kill them is to wash or dry clean everything you own then bag it tightly. Go through EVERY BOOK and magazine and bag them, and then go to a hotel while they spray extremely toxic chemicals. You'll come home to your furniture turned upside down, including your wall units, and all your paintings taken off the walls and sprayed. Then you have to leave everything the way it is for days until it's safe for the exterminator to come back, because it usually takes two sprays, sometimes three. It is a NIGHTMARE. Don't think it's some small thing, like roaches, roaches are a dream compared to this. Not to mention how much it costs!!

I'm sorry I know it's piggish to post twice in a row, but I consider myself pretty knowledgeable about this. My exterminator (Tonto) said that you really can't bomb a building because they just run to other apartments. You have to spray everything and then caulk all the baseboards. I think the caulking helped a lot. We had to tell all our neighbors just out of decency, and fortunately, no one else in the building got them.
As far as freezing them, the last I heard, the freezing doesn't really kill them, it just kind of suspends them, and they can come back to life later on.
Deminimus, I hope you're doing better, maybe it's something a dermatologist can help you with...

All this apocalyptic bed bug hand-wringing has me a-wondering : do evil people ever plant bed bugs?

"As far as freezing them, the last I heard, the freezing doesn't really kill them, it just kind of suspends them, and they can come back to life later on."

CRYONICS FOR BED-BUGS!!!...wow, another SE scientific break-through

Wow, what aa way to get revenge!

hello all
would you buy an apt that had a bed bug problem a few months ago? I was told that it was treated but I am a little worried about it.
thanks.

No.

I suggest an escrow arrangement as follows: put 25,000$ of the purchase price in escrow for one year; at the end of one year if no bed bugs problem then the funds are released; have your butt photographed on the closing date, and then each month, and if bed bug bites appear then that shall be taken as evidence of a infestation.

And on the closing date both parties should initial the photograph (and any blemishes) to establish the starting reference point. Otherwise, these things tend to get hairy.

I found several bed bugs on the wall between the 2 bedrooms in my apartment, and my roommate and I both had bites. We got inspected by 2 different companies and the only reason both confirmed that we had them was because I saved the bugs I killed, the couldn't find any other sign of the bugs on numerous inspections but we kept getting bit! In other words, a clean bill of health inspection can mean nothing if the infestation is in its early stages! Turns out they were coming from the building next door, but we were really lucky to catch it so early and get treated which took over 6 months (and multiple treatments) because they kept coming from the building next door.

greennyc- after what I have been through I will NEVER buy an apartment that "had" bed bugs. They really are so hard to get rid of and find. Maybe if you could confirm no problems at all from all tenants for over 6 months...

A new case study of a massively infested high-rise apartment building shows that in half of the infested apartments, bedbugs could not be detected by visual inspections alone. The study said "interceptors" - dish-like traps that you put under the legs of upholstered furniture--were more effective.

New clues on spread of bed bugs in high-rise buildings
http://www.brickunderground.com/blog/2010/02/new_clues_on_bed_bug_spread_through_apartment_buildings

Update from OP:

- After not having a bite for several weeks and beginning to believe the hype (that I didn't have bed bugs), I caught a live one crawling on my couch.

- I got my apartment treated. The exterminator confirmed that my catch was indeed a bed bug. He also could find "only" one other bug (also in the couch). Fortunately, the bedroom was clean - I knew that because I had interceptors under the legs of my bed and they didn't catch anything. The couch legs were too big for the interceptors, unfortunately. They need to make a larger model.

- I am getting a follow up treatment later this week. In the meanwhile, living with everything in plastic bags is hellish. Also, the preparation for the treatment sucked.

- While the rational side of me knows that it is very unlikely for my apartment to be infested right now, the emotional side of me continues to hallucinate bed bugs.

- Because I had so few bugs (in contrast to a friend of mine who found tens, if not hundreds, of dead bed bugs after his apartment got treated), I keep wondering if they are coming from the neighbors. I have two neighbors who have been resisting my efforts to have my exterminator inspect their place (at my expense).

- Right now, every piece of luggage that makes its way into my apartment gets treated in the packtite unit (http://www.packtite.com/), no exceptions.

- My landlord offered to split costs relating to the treatment.