Feb 16, 2012 – Bed Bugs – The Beat Goes On Too
QUESTION:
We know bedbugs are dificult to treat. We are currently treating a residential single family home where bed bugs were found in 2 rooms and inspected for in every room. We use Temprid at the labeled rates, but after the initial spraying and repeated follow ups every 10 days we are still seeing adult, nymph and egg stages of these critters. The main culprit is a child's wooden bed frame and headboard. Many cracks and crevices are present and breaking down of the bed is not an option. This doesn't concern me as much as the fact that I fan spray the head board, out in the open, on a decorative groove that every 10 days still has live adult bugs collecting there and living in the area where the residual should be. How can they still be there time after time (6 total treatments, full inspection and treatment each time)? What can we do to make the treatment more effective? Could it be resistance? I hear nothing but good results from Temprid by others and chemical reps.
ANSWER:
I will approach this from several angles, and the first will be the wisdom of constantly applying a toxic material to the headboard of a child's bed. Now, let me qualify that a bit. Temprid is an excellent insecticide composed of 2 active ingredients - the pyrethroid cyfluthrin and the non-pyrethroid imidacloprid. There is nothing wrong with either of these materials, and I suspect that bed bugs confined to a surface in contact with these active ingredients for a long enough period of time is going to die. Yes, The Common Bed Bug demonstrates a VERY high degree of ability to become resistant to most active ingredients, but it is not yet completely immune to them. But, because of this high level of resistance our industry experts still tell us that total reliance on insecticides is probably not the solution to bed bug eradication. And, as you state, 100% eradication must be the goal or the problem will continue.
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We know bedbugs are dificult to treat. We are currently treating a residential single family home where bed bugs were found in 2 rooms and inspected for in every room. We use Temprid at the labeled rates, but after the initial spraying and repeated follow ups every 10 days we are still seeing adult, nymph and egg stages of these critters. The main culprit is a child's wooden bed frame and headboard. Many cracks and crevices are present and breaking down of the bed is not an option. This doesn't concern me as much as the fact that I fan spray the head board, out in the open, on a decorative groove that every 10 days still has live adult bugs collecting there and living in the area where the residual should be. How can they still be there time after time (6 total treatments, full inspection and treatment each time)? What can we do to make the treatment more effective? Could it be resistance? I hear nothing but good results from Temprid by others and chemical reps.
ANSWER:
I will approach this from several angles, and the first will be the wisdom of constantly applying a toxic material to the headboard of a child's bed. Now, let me qualify that a bit. Temprid is an excellent insecticide composed of 2 active ingredients - the pyrethroid cyfluthrin and the non-pyrethroid imidacloprid. There is nothing wrong with either of these materials, and I suspect that bed bugs confined to a surface in contact with these active ingredients for a long enough period of time is going to die. Yes, The Common Bed Bug demonstrates a VERY high degree of ability to become resistant to most active ingredients, but it is not yet completely immune to them. But, because of this high level of resistance our industry experts still tell us that total reliance on insecticides is probably not the solution to bed bug eradication. And, as you state, 100% eradication must be the goal or the problem will continue.
We also know that around 70% of the bed bugs in an infested room are going to be found in the immediate vicinity of the sleeping person - the mattress, box spring, and bed framing. The next largest percentage will be nearby in night stands, dressers, etc., and the rest of the bugs could be along edges of carpets, behind items on the walls, in adjacent rooms, and in anything else in the infested room. Perhaps what you are experiencing is a movement of bugs from these outlying locations to the locations where they are now closer to the food source. It may be a factor of available harborage that causes many of the bugs to hide further away, and when the numbers immediately near the person are reduced it opens up some places for the distant ones to move closer. Just my thought, but a possibility.
These active ingredients definitely should still be present at a reasonable level after 10 days, but the question is "contact time". Some of the studies done on resistance show that for certain active ingredients it may take 24 hours or longer for the bed bug to die from its exposure to a pyrethroid, and perhaps other actives as well. For this reason it is less efficient to treat open surfaces than it is to treat directly into holes, crevices, and voids that the bugs, theoretically, hide in for most of that 24 hours each day. Treating an exposed surface may achieve only minutes of contact with the traveling bug, as opposed to the bug resting directly on the active ingredient for 23 hours or longer. This may be what you are doing with this framing and headboard - treating crack & crevice - in which case my sermon is unnecessary. However, you do indicate you are fan spraying the decorative grooves in the headboard, which leads me to perceive it as treating open surfaces.
You say that breaking down the bed frame and headboard are not options, and this should not be necessary if you can access all the hiding places and treat them. Obviously a major need at this time is to eliminate the bugs from that bed so that child can sleep without being fed upon. Can this entire frame somehow be heat treated so that you know all bugs and their eggs are now killed? If so, then perhaps the bed can be isolated by placing the feet of the framing within traps, and ensuring that no blankets touch the floor. This may not stop bugs from falling onto the bed from the ceiling, but it should greatly reduce the problem on that bed from bugs walking over to it.
Do you have the mattress and boxspring of this bed inside quality encasements? This at least reduces the harborage opportunities for the bugs. Could the headboard itself be enclosed within some plastic material to remove it as a harborage opportunity? Is this customer cooperating fully be passing all bed coverings through a cycle in the hot dryer? In short, do you feel that these bugs you continue to see must be hiding in and on the bed and framing themselves, or are they moving into this location from other places in the room? Have you treated EVERYthing within this room, including all electronic equipment? With Nuvan Prostrips available now with good labeling we have the opportunity to isolate difficult items within plastic bags and to fumigate them with the dichlorvos in the strips, killing bugs and eggs that otherwise were impossible to treat.
Are you treating along all edges of carpets, either with a steamer, with a residual spray, or with a dust such as Tempo or Drione dust. Are you treating within wall voids in this room using a dust product? I really doubt that you have stumbled upon some population of bugs that are dramatically different than those found everywhere else, but somehow these bugs continue to hide where they are not being exposed to treatment methods. Again, why they would seem to be surviving right there in plain sight on surfaces you have previously treated would seem to be a result of insufficient contact time with the active ingredient. But, hopefully you can take some other steps that will allow you to stop the constant application of the insecticides on this sensitive location so close to the child.
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