Boom time for region’s bedbugs

SEATTLE – Bedbugs are a growing problem nationwide and the Pacific Northwest is no exception, pest control business operators say.

“When I first came here in January 2000, literally, we never heard of a bedbug call,” said Steve Warneke, an operations manager at Orkin Pest Control Services.

Three years later, the Orkin branch began receiving bedbug calls, and inspections have multiplied to the point that Orkin answered more than 20 inquiries about bedbugs in June.

The Seattle branch of Sprague Pest Solutions receives on average two calls a week and more than 100 a year, of which 20 percent turn out to be false alarms, according to an e-mail from Carrie Thibodeaux, the company’s marketing director, to the Seattle Post-Intelligencer.

Sprague’s Puget Sound regional manager, Jeff Miller, “has been in Seattle’s pest industry for 31 years,” Thibodeaux said. “For his first 25 years, he only received two bedbug calls – and these actually turned out to be bat bugs, a related pest, and not bedbugs at all.”

The National Pest Management Association Inc. has recorded a 35 percent national increase of bedbug cases in the past year, Vice President Cindy Mannes said.

“Some people think this is the pest of the 21st century,” Mannes said.

Bedbugs were largely wiped out by DDT after World War II, but that pesticide was later abandoned because of its often devastating side effects on fish, birds and other wildlife. More targeted spraying might also figure in the bedbug boom, Mannes suggested.

Bedbugs, slightly smaller than apple seeds as adults, are nocturnal, wingless parasites that tend to feed in five-minute increments every five to 10 days. Despite being annoying, they are not considered a major health hazard because they are not known to transmit disease.

If a home or hotel is unoccupied, bedbugs can go almost a year without eating. “When they come back, boy, that bedbug is hungry,” Warneke said.

Nor do they limit themselves to beds.

Eradication includes professional laundering of linen and drapery, thorough inspection for eggs and bugs under carpets and in bed and picture frames, and application of steam.

One time, Warneke said, “we treated this room and treated it very well. We even pulled the headboard off the bed. We were sure we got rid of the infestation.”

Even so, the customers complained within three weeks.

On returning, Warneke dismantled the expensive headboard, removing the outer cloth and the inner foam, then prying apart the pieces of plywood on the inside.

“It was like a sandwich of plywood,” he said. “I pried the glue apart. Inside, there were bedbugs.”