Oct 5, 2011 – Bedbugs Vs Roaches
QUESTION:
I was asked a question pertaining to bedbugs by an engineer of a school building. He asked about the relationship of roaches to bedbugs, meaning he knows he has a lot of roaches in his building, but when it comes to bedbugs he also realizes that the kids bring some in and then they are gone. Is it because of the roaches or is this just a coincidence that the bed bugs disappear?
ANSWER:
Well, this is an interesting question, and my advice to this school employee would be NOT to put too much faith in the idea that the bed bugs are no longer at the school. If children bring them in, and we know that schools now are commonly infested with bed bugs, it would be really important for the school administration to take it seriously and do everything they can to monitor and determine if the bugs are still there. The U.S. legal industry has chosen to label people who have bed bug problems as "victims", and of course "victims" need to sue someone for victimizing them. If it were found out that a school has bed bugs and the problem was not directly addressed, and suddenly some parent finds bed bugs in their home............ well, I can connect the dots, even if they really are not connected.
If you are the PMP who does pest management for this school it would be useful to discuss this with school administrators, and offer them information on the tenacity of bed bugs and the liabiltiy problems that could ensue. This might put you in the position of taking on some added business with the use of bed bug monitors and trapping. Perhaps the bed bugs, if they really were present at this school, were not The Common Bed Bug but instead were bed bugs from birds or bats, in which case they would naturally phase out of existence without their normal hosts, although they certainly could feed on humans for awhile just to try to get by. Perhaps what this engineer thought were bed bugs were in reality some other kind of insect, and without YOU seeing the bugs yourself for a positive ID I'd suggest not taking his word for it. Engineers generally have just about ZERO training in pests or pest management.
So, with all of that soap box taken care of, down to your actual question, which seems to be one I have gotten before - do roaches eat bed bugs? Of course, it's also interesting, and probably worth yet another soap box, that this person "knows" this school building has lots of roaches but seems to accept it as normal and acceptable. Perhaps you could get a roach control job here too. Roaches are scavengers and opportunistic, so I would suspect that if a hungry cockroach happened upon some bed bugs hiding in a crevice, the roach just might eat them. However, in the excellent book the Bed Bug Handbook by Pinto, Cooper, and Kraft, they state that "reports that cockroaches feed on bed bugs have not been substantiated, although it seems likely that they do. However, none of the predators feed on the bed bugs extensively enough to serve as an effective control agent."
There are a number of other insect predators that are known to eat bed bugs, but only onesy twosy when the predator finds a bed bug out and about. These predators will never eliminate all of the bed bugs, and with the egg-laying potential of the female bed bugs it is just too likely that plenty more bugs would exist to replace the few that got munched on. So, here's your opportunity to suggest that steps be taken to monitor the school rooms to see if any bed bugs are present. This could be with the use of a trained dog or with the various passive and active bed bug traps and monitors now available.
View past Ask Mr. Pest Control questions.
I was asked a question pertaining to bedbugs by an engineer of a school building. He asked about the relationship of roaches to bedbugs, meaning he knows he has a lot of roaches in his building, but when it comes to bedbugs he also realizes that the kids bring some in and then they are gone. Is it because of the roaches or is this just a coincidence that the bed bugs disappear?
ANSWER:
Well, this is an interesting question, and my advice to this school employee would be NOT to put too much faith in the idea that the bed bugs are no longer at the school. If children bring them in, and we know that schools now are commonly infested with bed bugs, it would be really important for the school administration to take it seriously and do everything they can to monitor and determine if the bugs are still there. The U.S. legal industry has chosen to label people who have bed bug problems as "victims", and of course "victims" need to sue someone for victimizing them. If it were found out that a school has bed bugs and the problem was not directly addressed, and suddenly some parent finds bed bugs in their home............ well, I can connect the dots, even if they really are not connected.
If you are the PMP who does pest management for this school it would be useful to discuss this with school administrators, and offer them information on the tenacity of bed bugs and the liabiltiy problems that could ensue. This might put you in the position of taking on some added business with the use of bed bug monitors and trapping. Perhaps the bed bugs, if they really were present at this school, were not The Common Bed Bug but instead were bed bugs from birds or bats, in which case they would naturally phase out of existence without their normal hosts, although they certainly could feed on humans for awhile just to try to get by. Perhaps what this engineer thought were bed bugs were in reality some other kind of insect, and without YOU seeing the bugs yourself for a positive ID I'd suggest not taking his word for it. Engineers generally have just about ZERO training in pests or pest management.
So, with all of that soap box taken care of, down to your actual question, which seems to be one I have gotten before - do roaches eat bed bugs? Of course, it's also interesting, and probably worth yet another soap box, that this person "knows" this school building has lots of roaches but seems to accept it as normal and acceptable. Perhaps you could get a roach control job here too. Roaches are scavengers and opportunistic, so I would suspect that if a hungry cockroach happened upon some bed bugs hiding in a crevice, the roach just might eat them. However, in the excellent book the Bed Bug Handbook by Pinto, Cooper, and Kraft, they state that "reports that cockroaches feed on bed bugs have not been substantiated, although it seems likely that they do. However, none of the predators feed on the bed bugs extensively enough to serve as an effective control agent."
There are a number of other insect predators that are known to eat bed bugs, but only onesy twosy when the predator finds a bed bug out and about. These predators will never eliminate all of the bed bugs, and with the egg-laying potential of the female bed bugs it is just too likely that plenty more bugs would exist to replace the few that got munched on. So, here's your opportunity to suggest that steps be taken to monitor the school rooms to see if any bed bugs are present. This could be with the use of a trained dog or with the various passive and active bed bug traps and monitors now available.
View past Ask Mr. Pest Control questions.
