Why home remedies may cost you in the long run

Most people implicitly trust products that are sold in stores because we assume that they had to go through the FDA or some other form of evaluation that guarantees their effectiveness. This is one of the most potentially devastating misconceptions people have. The FDA does not regulate an alarming number of products that are available and when it comes to products claiming they can kill bed bugs, almost all of these products don’t do what they say that will.

Don’t fall for the hype on quick remedies for killing and preventing bed bugs. Federal regulators say they lodged deceptive advertising charges against two companies marketing anti-bed bug products.

There’s no evidence that the ingredients in “Rest Easy” and “Best Yet!,” – including cinnamon, lemongrass and cedar oil – can eliminate or prevent bed bugs, the Federal Trade Commission said Monday.

“Best Yet!,” sold by Cedarcide Industries Inc., also claims to treat head lice. Also deceptive, the FTC says.

The agency sued Cedarcide and RMB Group LLC, marketer of “Rest Easy,” in federal court. RMB and its owners agreed in a settlement to make no claims that their product or any pesticide kills or repels bed bugs or creates a barrier against them.

Read more at: http://huff.to/1J5BL6G

Hotels and bed bugs

Just because it isn’t your bed, doesn’t mean there aren’t bugs in it. There have been huge infestations uncovered in hotels around the country. People are scared and for good reason. This new information of infestation is hurting the hotel industry in quite a few ways.

In 2010, it seemed all but impossible to escape bedbug infestation and paranoiain New York City. Almost everyone knew someone that had to deal with them; I remember guilt-ridden conversations of how to politely escape social gatherings at the homes of friends who had had them.

That year was the peak of bedbugs in New York. The Department of Housing Preservation and Development reports that infestation cases have been falling since thenlast year’s case number—2,268—is less than half of what it once was.

Nevertheless, bedbugs are still a huge concern for the hospitality industry.  The reason isn’t merely the bugs themselves, but how travelers choose their accommodations these days: online, guided by the reviews of their fellow travelers. And those online reviews can do real damage to a hotel if there is just the slightest hint of a bedbug infestation.

That’s the finding of three researchers—Michael Potter, veteran entomologist, and agricultural economists Jerrod Penn and Wuyang Hu at the University of Kentucky—who teamed up to look at the economic impact of bedbugs for the hotel industry. Their forthcoming report was funded by Protect-A-Bed (a company that makes mattress protectors), and it shows that bedbug reports lowered the value of a hotel room by $21 for leisure travelers and $38 for business travelers.

The researchers conducted a survey of more than 2,100 respondents, asking them what factors were important to them when picking a hotel. In order to mimic the way bedbug information would be discovered in real life as travelers booked hotels online, Penn explained, the information about bedbugs required a couple extra clicks from the participant. They found that bedbugs were at the top of people’s lists of concerns when picking a hotel. Further, if an actual bedbug was found—participants reported it as the number one reason they’d leave the hotel immediately.

Read more at: http://theatln.tc/1KjaI8H

Is it a bed bug?

Bed bugs are an increasingly common problem in the United States. There is so much fear and anxiety surrounding these creatures (mostly for good reason), that causes many people to misidentify their infestation as bed bugs. To be sure, read this article about the common culprits that may resemble bed bugs. If you still have questions, be sure to call Arizona Heat Pest for a free quote and inspection so that you will know for sure what you are dealing with.

Bed bug identification resources:

  • All bed bug life stages
  • Life cycle with images
  • Gif of a bed bug
  • Illustrated guide to identifying bed bugs
  • Identification of bed bugs close relatives

Note: flattened body, rusty brown coloured (less so in younger nymphs, which are more translucent). Thin 4 segmented antennae. 11 segmented abdomen. Short legs (6 of them) and reduced wings incapable of flight.


These are insects or other invertebrates commonly misidentified as bedbugs!

Not bed bugs.

  1. Carpet beetle larvae (Dermestidae) and adult – More Info
  2. Bat bug (Cimex adjunctus pictured) – More Info
  3. Cockroach nymphs – More Info
  4. Tick (nymphs) – More Info
  5. Woodlouse – More Info
  6. Kissing bugs – More Info
  7. Booklice/barklice – More Info
  8. Smooth spider beetle – More Info
  9. Drugstore beetle – More Info

Note: If it has wings or more than 6 legs, it is not a bed bug. Do not mistake antennae for legs, look at the illustrated guide to avoid confusion.

Read more at: http://bit.ly/1ovdl4h

Offices are not impervious to bed bug infestation

Many people say that working in an office is one of the most safe things that a person can choose for a career but new research is suggesting that there are a lot of aspects about working in an office that can really hurt your health. One of them, is the likelihood of bed bugs being in your office. You may think it’s impossible but even the nicest buildings have been known to be infested from time to time.

 “YOUR SOFTWARE’S BUGS ARE NOTHING COMPARED WITH THE REAL-LIFE CRITTERS LURKING.”
Modern office workers have much bigger problems than a bad boss – or should we say smaller? From Google’s corporate offices to the bureaus of the Internal Revenue Service, even the most secure workplaces have fallen prey to increasingly brazen trespassers: bedbugs. A survey by the National Pest Management Association and the University of Kentucky found that 38% of extermination companies treated bedbugs in office buildings in 2011, compared with only 18% in 2010. The office environment is the ideal habitat for not only bedbugs but also roaches and other insects who thrive in the climate-controlled digs, feed on workers’ crumbs (or their flesh) and stretch their legs at night when all the humans go home (allowing them to survive longer undetected), says Orkin’s Baumann.

Even bedbugs, which need human blood to survive and normally come out at night while their targets are sleeping, will alter their habits in offices and bite people during the daytime. The office safari doesn’t end there: Occupational safety consultants like Towles have seen a range of wildlife invade the workplace, including birds, rodents, small snakes and even venomous brown recluse spiders, lurking in office drawers and file storage areas. “That’s called a bad day,” Baumann says.
And employees have more than bug bites and diseases spread by pests to worry about – experts report seeing workers shunned by their colleagues after an infestation is found in their desk.

Read more on how to prevent bed bugs at work here: http://bit.ly/1m5aC0m