Bed bugs can cause problems with tenants who tend to hoard items or keep the apartment or rental unclean. But if units are left alone, the problems can be just as bad.
While an empty home may seem easier to control and treat, it’s also sometimes harder to pinpoint the source of the problem, some pest scientists say. In addition, free units that are not empty make things doubly difficult.
The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), in its Federal Bed Bug Workshop document “Collaborative Strategy on Bed Bugs,” issued guidelines outlining bed bug protection strategies to help the industry achieve better control. Regarding vacant units, the strategy document states: “When a unit is vacant, bed bugs may behave differently (e.g. becoming inactive or more active during the day) while awaiting the arrival of a new host.”
So, in addition to knowing how to properly treat bed bugs, pest technicians need to understand as much as possible about the insect’s behavior in order to be aware of these differences when studying free units.
The bed bug chapter of the Mallis Handbook of Pest Control states that active surveillance devices are one of several preventive measures PMPs can take when inspecting unmanned units suspected of having bed bugs. According to Mallis, preventive use of monitors includes:
• Active monitor lizards use one or more baits, such as CO2, heat, and chemical attractants, to attract bed bugs (typically host hunters). These devices can prove particularly useful for detecting bed bugs in unoccupied hotel rooms, vacant residential units, or units that share a common wall with a known infestation.
Other preventative measures offered by Mallis include containment, containment equipment, daily routine inspections, and periodic intensive and specialized inspections.
Jeffrey King is President of The Pest Rangers, based in Pennsylvania, which has four locations across the state and provides ongoing bed bug work as one of its primary services. According to King, vacant units pose challenges for the pest control community.
“We believe that vacancy inspections are always a risk,” says King. “When the unit is empty, there isn’t much to inspect. They might look for signs if they had a significant infestation, but a small to moderate infestation can go undetected in an empty unit. We would use K-9 dogs to sweep empty units instead of sending technicians to inspect.”
Ashley Roden is Technical Manager for Sprague Pest Control in Tacoma, Washington and they work with mostly commercial customers across the board.
“They let us go through each unit, many are based on tenant complaints, and when they complain, we check the surrounding units,” says Roden. “Every time we do inspections, we check surrounding units and set traps so we can monitor them and see if a treatment is working. We also do many chemical treatments and some heat treatments.
“We’ve seen a huge spike in bed bug service requests in apartments, and some of the tenants are there and have been waiting through COVID-19, and others have been (previously) evicted and left behind (the issue). In the case of apartments, it is not the tenant who requests services, but the property manager. But things are really locked down on the west coast too. Here people are quite careful, so we don’t build single-family houses, we deal with apartment buildings.”
David Poplin, ACE, is CEO and President of CDS Services. Working with all types of commercial clients, he understands the problems that vacant rental space can cause.
“A plan of action to inspect all newly vacated units can help detect bed bug activity before it spreads to a new tenant,” says Poplin. “It could also be beneficial to conduct a random inspection for occupied units, particularly those with long-term tenants.”
