This is a different state bill in New Jersey that would create a warranty:
Preparation, money, and the shortening of the window to act
Preparing an apartment for traditional1 bed bug treatments has become an essential component of bed bug eradication.
- Prep is also required for novel treatments and for the two reputedly one-shot treatments, thermal and true fumigation, but since those treatments, while available in New York City, are even more unaffordable, we are not discussing them here. And yet, are they more unaffordable? One could argue that the long-term distribution of costs is disregarded in this conventional piece of wisdom. Something to explore. [↩]
Use the Force
Sorry, silly mood.
A new bacterium in bed bugs has been found. It’s related to an endosymbiotic bacterium already identified in ticks, Candidatus Midichloria mitochondrii. Yes, named after the bacteria that communicate with the Force. Pretty neat, that prerogative of naming. I’m not caught up on the later Star Wars films so I had fun looking this up.
Ending the 30-day trial risk plus remembering the essential mattress problem
Update: This bill was vetoed in July 2010, plus other news in mattresses here. Continue Reading
An excited condition
We have a one-track mind here, no doubt, and so I’ve been looking for articles that discuss how bed bugs find their human hosts. Recently I read about the phases of host-seeking behaviors in blood-sucking insects—hungry searching, activation by stimuli and orientation, and finally attraction, “in which the decision of whether or not to contact the potential host is made”—Biology of blood-sucking insects, M.J. Lehane (1991), p. 26.
NYS IPM Program’s How to Talk to Callers about Bed Bugs
Have you seen this? The NYS IPM Program’s guidance for master gardeners, How to Talk to Callers about Bed Bugs (PDF), part of the resources collected here—do not miss the travel wallet cards (PDF).
IPHPW presentations
The International Public Health Pesticides Workshop presentations are a good place to learn about the problems of pesticides development and availability. (Disease vectors are the focus here as we’ve already noted but we should nevertheless pay attention to this process. And certainly long-term benefits and ‘new paradigms’ are something to hope for.)
No good in an ambush
This made me laugh even though it’s not funny. (?)
In the 1960s the US Army considered several arthropod species for use in a portable insect ambush detector or a stationary intrusion detector device.
Michigan’s Bed Bug Workgroup
I found these background notes (PDF) on the website of the Property Management Association of West Michigan (PMAM); they describe the efforts of a workgroup on bed bugs brought together by the Michigan Department of Community Health. The first meeting was in January:
Blaming EPA is not the answer either
I have been wanting to write about this for a while but the most credible public proponent of the idea that the great bed bug debacle of the 21st century is all EPA’s fault was Rich Kozlovich who has written two passionate posts on this subject, Bedbug Summit: Activity As A Substitute For Accomplishment and The Butterfield Bill: Activity as a Substitute for Accomplishment, Part II, but writing about Kozlovich’s views seemed daunting because he has already divided the pest control industry into Chamberlains and Quislings and, well, what do you do with that, engage, laugh? For someone on the outside, even selective engagement would be acquiescing to the futility and politicizing.