ATLANTA – Chicago has a new gold medal of # 1 on Orkin’s Top 50 Bed Bug Cities List, with Baltimore and Washington, DC in second and third place. Despite less travel in 2020, bed bugs are still biting in Chicago, a popular hub for tourism. In fact, the Windy City typically welcomes more than 48 million visitors annually and has a transit system of buses and trains that transport 1.7 million passengers every weekday1 – a bed bug dream.
After Toledo got on the list last year, the biggest jump jumped 23 spots to 27. Denver and Charleston both fell in the top 20, and six new cities made their top 50 for the first time this year.
The list is based on treatment data from the metro areas where Orkin performed the most bed bug treatments from December 1, 2019 to November 30, 2020. The ranking includes both inpatient and commercial treatments.
1. Chicago (+2)
2. Baltimore
3. Washington, DC (-2)
4. Detroit (+3)
5. Columbus, OH
6. Cleveland, OH (+5)
7. Indianapolis (+2)
8. Cincinnati
9. Los Angeles (-5)
10. Grand Rapids (+8)
11. Charlotte (+9)
12. New York (-6)
13. Atlanta (-3)
14. Philadelphia (-2)
15. Champaign, IL (+1)
16. Dallas (+1)
17. Raleigh, NC (-3)
18. Charleston, WV (+8)
19. Pittsburgh
20. Denver (+7)
21. Flint (+7)
22. San Francisco (-9)
23. Greenville, SC (-9)
24. Norfolk (-9)
25. St. Louis (+3)
26. Richmond, VA (-5)
27. Toledo, OH (+23)
28. Dayton, OH (+21)
29. Buffalo, NY (-5)
30. Omaha (+2)
31. Nashville (-2)
32. Milwaukee (+1)
33. Fort Wayne, IN (+13)
34. Greensboro, NC (-9)
35. Cedar Rapids, IA (+6)
36. Knoxville, TN (-13)
37. Houston (+1)
38. Davenport, IA (-1)
39. Tampa (-5)
40.Youngstown (new to the list)
41.South Bend (new to the list)
42. Phoenix (+3)
43. Lexington (new to the list)
44. Seattle (-1)
45. Orlando (-9)
46. Louisville (new to the list)
47. Miami (-15)
48. Lansing (-18)
49. Peoria-Bloomington (new to the list)
50. Minneapolis-St. Paul (new to the list)
Typically, bed bugs are 3/16 of an inch long and are mostly nocturnal insects that come out of hiding to take blood meals from sleeping humans and are red to dark brown in color. Bed bugs are hematophagous, which means that blood is their only source of food. You can travel from place to place with ease, including luggage, wallets and other personal effects.
“Bed bugs are a problem for everyone because they are hitchhikers and travel home with people when they are unlikely to realize it,” said Ben Hottel, an orkin entomologist. “Their way of hiding in hard-to-find cracks and crevices, once inserted into a room, can make them difficult to control. Therefore, it is recommended that a trained professional be consulted upon viewing an insertion.”
