Ep. 157 All About Bed Bugs with Entomologist Dr. Kacie Athey | #GoodGrowing
Welcome to the Good Growing podcast. I am Chris Enroth, horticulture educator with the University of Illinois Extension coming at you from Macomb, Illinois, and we have got a great show for you today. We are gonna be talking all about bedbugs. Yes. I'm starting to itch already.
Chris Enroth:It is contagious, and we'll tell you all about how that itch can be contagious just by us talking about it. But don't worry. By the end of the show, you'll have plenty of tips to avoid bedbugs for this holiday season. And you know I'm not doing this by myself. I am joined as always every single week by horticulture educator Ken Johnson in Jacksonville.
Chris Enroth:Hey, Ken.
Ken Johnson:Hello, Chris. How are you? It's been a while.
Chris Enroth:Ah, yes. Yeah. You you look very nice. A nice beard trim. I see was it your wife that got you cleaned up finally for Thanksgiving?
Ken Johnson:Yeah. Pictures and kids comment. It's the first time they've ever seen my lips before, which it's not true, but it's been a few years. So
Chris Enroth:It's been a while. Yeah. It's the first time I've seen your lips for a little while, so it's it's good to see, a little bit more of your face there. So are you enjoying the fact that it is unseasonably cold right now? I think we're we're sort of branching up into the mid twenties where I'm at Macomb currently.
Ken Johnson:I am. It was beautiful this morning. It was, like, fourteen, fifteen degrees. See your breath. It's a great time to be alive.
Chris Enroth:It is. It is. It it's a good reminder that you're alive when it hurts, when you breathe outside. So, yeah, it's a very, very cold. So I moved the last of my plants from the garage into the basement, and I literally have no room for anything else in my house.
Chris Enroth:I had to brutally act the lemon trees so that it would fit, And I'm overwintering several potted annuals, and they are now all in the basement along with the worms for the worm bin and the cockroaches. So for all of our school stuff that we do. So everybody is out of the garage. The garage doors can be open and freeze to the heart's content. Are is is everybody safe in in your house, Ken, in the warmth?
Ken Johnson:We do have a few pots of dahlias that didn't make it in. We've had them in those pots for three or four years, then I kinda forgot about them even though the right as you walk inside outside. But then it got down into the twenties. Like, yeah. They probably froze, and they're definitely frozen now.
Ken Johnson:So that's three fewer pots I have to deal with and bring in. But other than that, everything's in. Not necessarily where it needs to be. We gotta set up some grow lights still. All of our citrus is blooming right now, so it smells really good in our dining room.
Ken Johnson:So
Chris Enroth:I don't I can't get my lemon tree to bloom. So one day. I think it's, like, eight years old now. So one day, I'll get something from it. But, yeah, I I I would say we are fully prepared.
Chris Enroth:Everything's crammed in there. I even added a whole another light shelf, a rack of flats and lights, and it's mostly ginger. Keeping it going.
Ken Johnson:Yeah. I think I think I've gotten rid of most of the stuff that you're I think probably down to five, ten pounds left. See if get rid of that or save it for next year and go from there.
Chris Enroth:Sounds like a plan. Well, Ken, today, we are going to be talking about, at least the subject matter is is a favorite of yours in terms of insects. So, you know, you, everyone listening, Ken, really does, favor insects, invertebrates, you know, the guys without the spine. There's skeletons on the outside.
Ken Johnson:Creepy crawlies.
Chris Enroth:Creepy crawlies. How what else can we say here? But but, yeah, Ken really does enjoy this topic. So are you excited to be talking about bed bugs? I am excited.
Ken Johnson:Any any topic about insects is a good topic.
Chris Enroth:Well, that sounds great. I I am pretty happy to to be talking about this one too. So let's introduce our special guest for today. We're gonna be chatting with entomologist doctor Kacie Athey in Champaign Urbana. Casey, welcome to the show.
Kacie Athey:Thanks for having me.
Chris Enroth:Well, we are happy to have you. So on the topic of bedbugs, I I guess, let's just start out with what's your background in bedbugs? Because I know you from, commercial ag entomology dealing with, pesky critters in, like, high tunnels and such. So tell us your background here with bedbugs.
Kacie Athey:Yeah. So my research background has been kind of all over the place. So, of course, I now work in specialty crops, but I did do a postdoc for a while for about two years in bedbugs. So I worked on looking at bed bug behavior after they've been exposed to insecticides. And so I actually had colonies of bed bugs that I took care of and did experiments with.
Kacie Athey:Our lab actually had, I wanna say, like, 12 to 15 different colonies of bedbugs. So I spent a lot of time with bedbugs for about two years.
Ken Johnson:So if you're if you're raising a colony of bedbugs, how do you feed them? You just stick your arm in there?
Kacie Athey:No. So, actually, what's interesting is when people first started doing research on bed bugs again, after, you know, the first resurgence, people were actually feeding bed bugs that way. So you get them in a little cup, and you basically take the cup, and you put it on your arm, and you let them feed that way. We don't do it that way anymore. So there's an artificial feeding system, and you use some sort of, other animal blood in there.
Kacie Athey:And then you feed the bed bugs that way. So you don't have to use yourself. I don't think I would have done it if that had been the case.
Chris Enroth:No. Well, I I guess well, maybe we're getting too far into the show, but you'd have to be a person who doesn't react to their bites. But that would be important. But we're getting ahead of the game here. So we have we have a lot to talk about when it comes to bedbugs.
Chris Enroth:And so, Ken, would you mind getting us started this week, please?
Ken Johnson:Sure. So I think well, one of the reasons this one thing that prompted this topic was, I guess, was back in October, I guess, Paris fashion show. There's all kinds of news articles about bedbugs being all over the place in in France and Europe in general. More recently, there's been a lot of stuff coming out about resurgence of bedbugs in Asia. So what what exactly is going on around the world with bedbugs everywhere?
Kacie Athey:Yeah. So that's a that's a complicated question, of course. I think the first thing to note is that I think it's really interesting that this is making news right now. Part of what's happening right now is likely that there are a few more cases of bedbugs currently than there have been in the last, you know, three or four years. The reason for this is during the pandemic, people didn't move around nearly as much as they do right now.
Kacie Athey:Right? You're in quarantine. You're not going to stay at a hotel. You're not traveling. You're not interacting with as many people.
Kacie Athey:And so there truly was a decrease in numbers during the pandemic. And now here we are, you know, really probably two years out ish of when people started moving around more, and this is about the time we might expect to see a few more cases from pest control operators. So that is a little bit going on. However, the bedbugs in big cities across the world have been with us again since the late nineties. And this resurgence, this making news, is likely not because all of a sudden there are more bedbugs in Paris or in, you know, different areas in Asia and Europe, but that it's making news.
Kacie Athey:So one thing that I noticed when I was looking into this is sort of the influence of social media, of course. So there was a CBS News story, and it's talking about how bad these these are in Paris, and it's talking about how they're everywhere, and they're on the trains, and everybody's seeing them. And it has a picture that someone on Twitter took, and it has posted this picture on a train. And in the picture, you can see something that may have been an insect. It may not have been an insect.
Kacie Athey:Kinda looked like it had wings. It did not look like a bed bug to me, but that was enough evidence to have CBS News write an article about how there are bedbugs all over these trains in Paris. And not to say that you can't have bedbugs on trains, on subways, you certainly can. But I think grain of salt with all of this. And one of my PSAs that I will give all the time is that somebody's blurry camera picture of a bug does not actually tell you anything about anything.
Kacie Athey:And it it shouldn't be the reason why people panic and try to get off the train, when there's not necessarily evidence that there were there were bedbugs there. So I guess I'll start with that, that although there are definitely bedbugs in Paris, there are definitely bedbugs all over Europe. There are bedbugs kind of everywhere. I don't think it's a time to think, oh, all of a sudden, they're way worse than they they were before.
Chris Enroth:I I guess, like, that picture, people do that. Maybe they post it on social media because there's a little bit of hysteria or a little bit of fear when it comes to these. So is
Ken Johnson:there
Chris Enroth:a reason why we should be concerned about bedbugs? Is there a risk of disease? What's what what is the hysteria? What is that being fed? Like, what's the creating that?
Kacie Athey:Yeah. I mean, bedbugs don't first of all, bedbugs that we know of don't spread any disease, and that's not really why we're worried about them. Right? So bedbugs, there are several things. One is that it's it's a huge nuisance, obviously, to have bedbugs biting you in your sleep.
Kacie Athey:And most people, or people react very differently to their bites. So some people, you'll have a little bit of a reaction. Maybe the bite itself will stick around for a day or two. Some people have extreme reactions, and those bites will stick around for a long time. Myself, I have been bit by a bed bug once while I was working with them, and my reaction is to get a welt that sticks around for, like, two weeks.
Kacie Athey:It isn't particularly annoying, but it does not go away. And I think the biggest problem with bedbugs is really the stigma that becomes attached to them. So we often talk about how the real sort of symptoms of having bedbugs aren't actually the bites. It's the mental the mental health issues that come with it. Because people often feel like they did something wrong, that they're dirty, or they brought them on them this on themselves and that sort of thing.
Kacie Athey:And so there can be PTSD associated with people who end up with bed bug infestations, a lot of anxiety. And I think truly, that's more of the harm, if you will, from these than really the bites themselves. And, of course, in extreme situations, really extreme situations, people can develop anemia, but that's if somebody has such an infestation that they've let go for a very long time. And, usually, there's comorbidities that go with that. Often, the people who let that go, there's other things going on, that cause them not to get their their infestation treated.
Kacie Athey:So a person who just ends up with bedbugs, is never gonna become anemic. That's not gonna be a a an issue for them. It'll be probably more on the, anxiety, side of of the spectrum, really. And I wanna note forever that it is not your fault if you get bedbugs. I I do have some tips to prevent, and if you do some of these, it's only slightly your fault.
Kacie Athey:But for the most part, it's just not you can't know usually where they come from. And this is especially true if you live in an apartment building. Like, if you get bed bugs and you live in an apartment building, it it does you no good to think, like, did somebody come in here and bring them or blame family and friends? Like, you just gotta try to get it treated.
Ken Johnson:Little bit like cockroaches, especially in
Kacie Athey:apartments. Yeah. Exactly. Like, you just you don't know where they came from, and it's again, for the most part, it's it's not your fault if you get bedbugs. It's a thing that happens, and it happens it happens to anyone.
Kacie Athey:One of the things that we used to talk about when I worked at UK, even before I worked in bedbugs, was that when you go into hotel people often assume that you're gonna get bedbugs from, like, the seediest motel you've ever seen. I guarantee you, you're gonna get bedbugs in a four star hotel as well. You're just as likely to encounter them there because as people travel, things just move with them. It doesn't have anything to do with the type of place you're in.
Ken Johnson:Theme parks in Florida. Let's see which ones we don't get disappeared.
Chris Enroth:Disney is now honing in on your location. I think I hear a helicopter approaching Jacksonville. But I guess in in all a very serious vein, if we kind of think about the the stigma and that that mental, paralysis that can sometimes occur. I have dealt with with clients that have come in, and they are just going, like, you know, literally scratching themselves till they bleed. And it's something where we can't even identify an insect anymore.
Chris Enroth:Even if maybe they treated it and it's gone, it is still in there. It's it's just kind of like the brain gets trapped in this loop of something's on me. I got a scratch. And then we call that delusional parasitosis, which, is very difficult to deal with. I mean, that's often like, it's something I just wanna say to them, like, you know, you need to talk to your medical doctor and and also maybe talk with, like, a licensed, you know, mental health person, to try to work through breaking through that cycle of something's on me.
Kacie Athey:Well and it it's interesting that you bring up delusionary parasitosis because, you know, we often that often is not associated with having bedbugs or Mhmm. Anything like that. Now it can be as a result of the anxiety after it's gone, believing that it's not gone. But delusionary parasitosis is really, really hard because there are many causes for why people end up with it. Some of it is sort of the easiest, you know, sort of low hanging fruit is, drug abuse can cause delusionary peristosis.
Kacie Athey:So that's one thing that can happen. But there are other illnesses as well as there are some Parkinson's drugs that actually will one of the side effects is delusionary peristosis. And one of the biggest issues we have with or that I've dealt with with clients who have that is that they basically get shunted back and forth. So they go to a doctor and a doctor says, oh, well, go talk to an entomologist. And then the entomologist says, well, I don't see any bugs.
Kacie Athey:I don't see any evidence that would have, you know, an entomological cause. Like, I've I've looked at everything, and I I don't see that that is what is causing the issue. But it is difficult to get them to a mental health professional because often they will deny that entirely. And so you're really kind of in this really hard place, to help, And you don't want to discount what they're going through because it's severe and can be really debilitating, but it's very hard to help in that case. Whereas if you have bedbugs, often, the bites although they will manifest differently on people, bedbug bites often will happen in a line.
Kacie Athey:Because often when people are laying in bed, the bedbugs will sort of be biting along where that you know, where your body is hitting the mattress. And there are other ways to kind of tell if that's what someone has. Not to mention the fact that we do talk about bedbugs being small, and they are, except the adults aren't that small. They're really pretty easy to see, and they're dark in color. And the the eggs, you can see with the naked eye too.
Kacie Athey:So, you know, if somebody has bedbugs and they're trying to collect for insects, they'll be able to find some probably versus somebody who has delusionary parasitosis often will bring samples that don't have any arthropods in them at all.
Chris Enroth:Yeah. And they'll often just keep saying, I have bedbugs. I have bedbugs.
Kacie Athey:Mhmm.
Chris Enroth:Or or some something is biting them. Yeah.
Kacie Athey:Yes. Something is biting. Yep. Yep. And it's that's it's that's so hard.
Kacie Athey:It really is. And it's hard when I'm not a trained medical professional, but medical professionals who aren't psychiatrists aren't trained to deal with it either. And so these patients often get shunted back and forth because there's not a lot we can do for them.
Ken Johnson:So we we can we cover the stigma now. That's probably one of the primary reasons that people are concerned about bedbugs. But another one is they're increasingly difficult to control. Yes. Why is that?
Ken Johnson:Why is it why are they so difficult to to manage?
Kacie Athey:Well, so I'll I'll start this by saying that the reason for that is insecticide resistance. And we think, least most of there's others, but this is the main thing. Most of the reason for the resurgence of bedbugs is probably insecticide resistance. So up until, you know, around the end of World War two, bedbugs were just a common thing that people dealt with in, you know, sort of The US and European countries and that sort of thing, and and, of course, around the world as well. And at the end of World War two, with the advent of DDT and the ability to spray that literally everywhere all the time and other broad spectrum insecticides we had, we just kinda got rid of bed bugs.
Kacie Athey:Not fully. They were always there under the surface. But for the most part, they were kinda gone. And so even by the seventies, nobody had bedbugs. And in fact, a lot of the research on bedbugs didn't exist so much during that time either.
Kacie Athey:And the result of that was that things that people may have done such as, I'm not gonna pick up a mattress off the street and take it home. I'm not gonna use secondhand plush furniture. I'm gonna be more careful with my secondhand goods and make sure that they are that I've checked them to make sure I'm not bringing bugs into my house. People stopped doing all of that because there were no bedbugs, so why worry? So by the late nineties, we were seeing this resurgence.
Kacie Athey:And bedbugs are very resistant to most of the insecticides that, I should say, many bedbugs are very resistant to a lot of the insecticides we use for them. And so all of a sudden, were seeing them a lot more, and no one was taking the precautions to try to prevent them from spreading as they had done in the past. And then in addition, you know, we think that as travel became more common for people, you're just people are moving around a lot as far as travel goes now more so than they did in the past, and that moves things around as well. And I should say too that it can be very expensive to treat for bed bugs, and the non insecticidal treatments, although they work, are often the most expensive way to go. And so it's really difficult for people who feel like they can't afford or maybe can't afford treatment.
Kacie Athey:And then, usually, you need more than one treatment to get rid of infestation, and you can't do it on your own. I will say there are certain pest problems that you could go to Home Depot and buy the thing and spray it and do it right. If you have a bedbug problem, you have to get a pest control professional in to take care of that. You just can't do it yourself.
Chris Enroth:Casey, let's say let's start from, you know, square one here. We have some bites on us. We're like, well, we just got home from traveling. We wonder, do we have bedbugs? And if they're in the house, I guess, where do we start?
Chris Enroth:Maybe you start with scouting. Where do we look first? And then if we find them, what do we do?
Kacie Athey:Yeah. Yeah. So if you think you have bedbugs in your house already, you wanna look in places they're most likely going to be. And as the name would suggest, look at your bed first. Now the scouting, I'm gonna do this twofold.
Kacie Athey:So there's two things the scouting will give you. This is the scouting you can do in your house if you wanna look for bedbugs, and this is also the scouting you should do every single time you go to any hotel room or Airbnb for ever and ever for the rest of your life. So you wanna go and take the sheets off. You don't have to fully unmake a bed. If it's in your house, go ahead and fully make a bed.
Kacie Athey:If you're in a hotel, pull the sheets and the liner and everything off. I do it at the top of the bed. So I pull that off, and then you're gonna wanna inspect the seam of your mattress first. Always look at those seams. You're gonna be looking for little brown spots.
Kacie Athey:You're gonna be looking for bugs. The eggs are white. They're small and sort of cylindrical. You're gonna look for those. The brown spots are gonna be your first giveaway, which is their poop.
Kacie Athey:And so if you see a bunch of brown spots, that's indication that you may have had bedbugs, you may currently have them, and you're gonna wanna look for the bugs. Bedbugs are what we call pygmotactic, positively pygmotactic. I love that word. All it means is they like to be touching surfaces on as many of their surfaces as they can. So you're looking at folds.
Kacie Athey:You're looking at small areas. That's where they're gonna be. Bed bugs aren't just gonna be, like, hanging out in the middle of your bed unless you have a crazy infestation again.
Chris Enroth:Or it's the middle toddlers. Like to cuddle. Yes.
Kacie Athey:Truly. And so when you're in a hotel room, you're looking at that seam. And if you're in your house, you wanna look at the areas, like, if you have a headboard, you wanna look at areas where it comes to a corner on the headboard. You can also look at outlet covers. So if you take your outlet covers off at your house, they can be behind that.
Kacie Athey:They can be small enough to be in the the screw that's in the outlet cover, the little line that you put the screwdriver in. They can be in that. So small spaces. But you're really gonna wanna inspect around the bed. So in a hotel, you wanna inspect those seams, look for those.
Kacie Athey:And then if you're really, really worried about it, you can also take the headboard off the wall in a hotel. So they're on rails. You can actually just lift them up and then look back there as well and look for bedbugs. Full disclosure, I don't usually do that. I usually just inspect the mattresses in a hotel, but that's where you're gonna wanna start.
Kacie Athey:They also make some things that you can put your bed the feet of your bed into that are a monitoring device. They're called climb ups. But you're gonna wanna contact your pest control professional if you really think you have bed bugs and have them come out and scout for you. Once you do your cursory glance, if you're still worried about it, just contact a professional and have them come out. They'll do a much more thorough job.
Kacie Athey:I will say too in a hotel, sometimes you'll find those that your mattress is completely encased in a zippered bed bug protector. Those are a good thing. If you see that, big old thumbs up. The reason for that is because bed bugs can't get through that. It's zippered.
Kacie Athey:And so they can't really get in and, like, get in those folds, and there's nothing in that cover for them to hide in. And so you could still have bedbugs in the room, but they're not gonna be living in the bed. And so those things actually are nice to see in a hotel room.
Ken Johnson:And for a hotel room for that headboard, you take credit card too. You gotta swipe. Yeah. Headboard if you don't wanna take it off.
Kacie Athey:Yeah. Yeah. You can do that too. And if you get, you know, gooey stuff on it, that's yeah. Yeah.
Kacie Athey:And it's gonna be brown. It's always gonna be brown
Ken Johnson:Mhmm.
Kacie Athey:Dark. And the other thing is I know that I'm answering sort of many things at once, but when you go to a hotel, go to an Airbnb, always and forever do this as well. Put your luggage on a hard surface before you've done your inspection. So I usually we usually end up putting it on, like, the desk or whatever's in the room. You may also put it in the bathtub, those sorts of things.
Kacie Athey:Don't put it on the carpet. Don't put it on the beds. Do your inspection first. Hard surface. Those things the thing about the putting it on a hard surface and checking the bed, it's not gonna take you very long.
Kacie Athey:It takes you a couple of minutes, but it's a good first line of defense because if there's bed bugs there, you're gonna see evidence of it. Because in a hotel, the infestation, if it's bad enough that it's all over, well, you're certainly gonna see it. But in a hotel, you would expect an infestation to be kind of light, and so it's gonna be in the bed likely. And so, you know, that's the place to inspect.
Chris Enroth:They're likely to be managing an infestation. So if they are there, population's probably not exploded.
Kacie Athey:Correct. And, you know, something important to remember about bedbugs. Bedbugs aren't like lice or fleas. They don't live on us. They live on a different surface, and then they come out and feed on us.
Kacie Athey:So it's not like bedbugs are regularly hitching a ride with everyone all the time. Even if you have bedbugs, you're not necessarily taking them with you everywhere, because that's just not really how they work. Like, at night, they're during the day, they're asleep in wherever place they wanna be asleep in, which, again, is probably your bed or areas around it. And so if a hotel is doing their job and getting reports of any bed bugs that are found and treating it regularly, there there's not a lot to worry about. These are incidental infestations that are easy to deal with.
Kacie Athey:It's when you end up in a place where maybe if you go down if you're ever in a hotel and you think you found bedbugs and you go down and tell them and they refuse to check, they deny it, they that's worrisome because they need to be on it's good if they're like, oh, yeah. We'll go check. We'll get you in a new room. We'll make sure we get that taken care of. It's bad if they're like, absolutely not.
Kacie Athey:That can't be possible, and I'm not doing anything about it. Because that's when it gets worse.
Chris Enroth:If I've reached out to a pest control professional Mhmm. And and I've heard this dealing with other folks that have had to eliminate bedbugs in their home. They'll offer different treatments. Sometimes it's a fog, chemical fog. Sometimes it's heat treatment.
Chris Enroth:Is there any a recommended treatment, or do we do go case by case basis when people are faced with having to pick which treatment is being offered by the company?
Kacie Athey:Yeah. Yeah. So, you know, there are a variety of things, and I think you follow the lead of the pest control company as to what they would recommend. There's a big piece here, and that's cost. So heat treatments are great.
Kacie Athey:They're great for a variety of reasons, not the least of which is that hard for bed bugs to become resistant to them. So heat treatments all the way. You can do that. Yay. Heat treatments are expensive.
Kacie Athey:They're probably the most expensive way that we can treat for bed bugs. They also can cause damage to your property depending on what you have in a room. You know, like, you couldn't leave candles in there and stuff. They'd melt. And so that's another issue with with heat because you have to have it when it's a room.
Kacie Athey:You have to have the heat treatment going at a pretty high heat for kind of an extended period of time to kill everything, and it does a good job. Obviously, spraying insecticides is cheaper. Spraying insecticides is always cheaper, almost always. That's that's a cheaper answer. And so it depends on what they can offer you and what you can afford.
Kacie Athey:And so, you know, if we were able to offer everybody heat treatment with no issues, and it wasn't the most expensive, I think it'd be pretty easy for us to say heat treatment's the answer. But it often, can be a little bit more difficult. And so aside from insecticide sprays, there's also something called diatomaceous earth that you can use. It's an irritant, and it works really well, but the bedbugs have to actually encounter it. And they sometimes will have the ability to kind of avoid it, and so you have to get really good coverage.
Kacie Athey:And that brings me to the if you think you have bedbugs, you need to clear any clutter in your house. One of the other big issues for pest control is when people have a lot of stuff out and laying around, bedbugs can get all in all of those things, and it's hard to get whatever control you're doing to permeate into all of those places. And so one of the first things they'll ask you to do is to clean up as much as many things as you can before they start treating to see if, you know, we can get surfaces clear for for the contact of whatever control measure we use to actually get to the bugs.
Chris Enroth:A lot of those if especially if they're clothing items, bedding items, they need to be laundered again at at a high heat setting. Or could they be rogue? Can they use cold also? Is there cold treatments? Because it's really cold outside.
Chris Enroth:Let's put my couch out there.
Kacie Athey:Yeah. So there is there is some cold treatment, but it doesn't work quite as well. The heat is better for sure, and your dryer works beautifully. So if your dryer isn't super full, on high heat for thirty minutes will kill all life stages of bedbugs. So one of the things that people often do when they find out bedbugs, they'll start throwing things away.
Kacie Athey:And it's like, we don't have to do that at all. It's okay. Just start putting your stuff in your dryer. The other thing is bed bugs are nocturnal. So if you're doing all this during the day, it they're not gonna be, like, running around real fast and, like, able to reinfect all of a sudden.
Kacie Athey:You know, you can you have windows of time where you can get things taken care of, where you can get things cleaned up before pest control comes in. There this is not I think sometimes it feels like in the media and stuff, it feels like there's this idea that bed bugs are magic, and they're not. We you know, you can handle this if you get an infestation. There's just a lot of things you have to do. And, luckily, there's a lot of things within your own home.
Kacie Athey:Steamers work pretty well. One of the issues is something like a couch where you have to be able to get that heat in. And so if you're using something like a steamer and trying to kill the bugs in in the couch, you will have to do that for quite some time in each spot. And, you know, there's some other things there as well. But I I wanna caution people from, like, panicking and starting to throw furniture away and pillows and like, if you have a bad infestation, maybe your mattress can go.
Kacie Athey:That might be the one thing that's like, dad, you've given you a mattress. But, you know, most other things, even if you can turn your tumbler on your dryer off, you can put things in there that can't be tumble dried just at high heat, things that can handle that. Other items can be put in there as well. So there's a lot that you can do to help if you have a bedbug infestation.
Ken Johnson:Yeah. So let's change gears a little bit and talk about history of bedbugs. So I guess when did you first kinda start dealing with bedbugs as humans? And I guess go back to why you say sleep tight. Don't let the bed bugs work.
Ken Johnson:Because as a kid, I didn't have to worry about that. But now Right. It all makes sense.
Kacie Athey:Right?
Chris Enroth:That does make sense. Yes.
Kacie Athey:Yeah. So, you know, bed bugs probably started out on bats. At least, you know, the the species that usually is on humans probably came from one that fed on bats. And so when humans were brand new and living in more close proximity to bats, there would have been a switch, to feeding on humans from feeding on on bats, potentially. And as humans moved into cities, then their ability to spread them to each other just kind of exploded, if you will.
Kacie Athey:And so when you look at the history of bedbugs, I know one of the things I've read is that, you know, when they opened pharaoh tombs from, like, 1,500 BC from Egypt, there are bedbugs dead bedbugs in there. And so they've really been with humans as long as we've been living in anything that we would consider a society and been our constant companion except for in certain countries between somewhere around 1950 and 1990.
Chris Enroth:And I I I just doing a little bit of reading before the show, I came across a fascinating article piece. It's the history of bed bug management with lessons from the past. University of Montana will link down below. I want some of the names that we have called bedbugs in the past, I just think are fascinating. I love I love mahogany flats, is what they used to call bedbugs or redcoats, the Crimson Ramblers, bed louse, which that makes sense, wall louse.
Chris Enroth:But my favorite of all might be the Knight Rider.
Kacie Athey:Well, Knight Rider is great. I think Crimson Rambler is great because that sounds like a mascot for a small non power five conference football team.
Chris Enroth:Just a bedbug.
Kacie Athey:Yes. That'd be great.
Ken Johnson:Might have That would be perfect.
Chris Enroth:Yes.
Kacie Athey:Yes. Yeah. Amazing.
Chris Enroth:Well, so I because we've had them for a long time, and you're right. We are so lucky in this brief history of time that we have been here in North America where we haven't had bedbugs because of a a handy dandy little chemical DDT. It's not that good. It yes. It killed bedbugs and mosquitoes, but it's not good for the rest of the world, environment.
Ken Johnson:So Mhmm.
Kacie Athey:Or really humans for that matter, actually. Yeah.
Chris Enroth:Human health included. Mhmm.
Kacie Athey:Yeah. Yeah. Not great. And, also, bed bugs develop resistance to that too. So, I mean, you know, it was that was bound to happen because it was sprayed so ubiquitously.
Kacie Athey:I think as a note with DDT, resistance to DDT and house flies was discovered, like, I think, like, six years after we started spraying it everywhere, like, so fast. The resistance developed so quickly to that because it was everywhere.
Chris Enroth:So you're it sounds like we're expecting to see maybe a little bit back to historical norms of humans and bedbugs interaction, especially in our developed parts of the world where we haven't as we've said earlier in the podcast, we have not had to think about, should I take that used couch off the curb? Now we do. We gotta really think about it.
Kacie Athey:Yeah. Yeah. And, I mean, that's been true since the late nineties. You know, when in the early in the twenty tens, a lot of research was starting to happen on bed bugs and why we were seeing more. And there were tons of papers written uncovering the insecticide resistance piece of it, of course.
Kacie Athey:And, you know, when I was in college at the University of Kentucky, we had a lot of bedbug infestations in Cincinnati, in Lexington, at Louisville. You just very, very large amounts of infestation for sure. And and in any of these areas, Baltimore, you know, sort of the Eastern Seaboard. So, again, this resurgence is not new, and I I still don't think the thing in Paris is really new. I think it's just making news again, much like we go through these cycles where you get more news about, oh my gosh.
Kacie Athey:There's bedbugs everywhere, and then that goes down. Not because there's not bedbugs everywhere, but it's because we're not talking about it.
Chris Enroth:I've I've had a few cases of false alarms with bedbugs. People bring in a sample, and I'm like, oh, that looks like a bedbug. But then I get it under a microscope, and there is a distinct difference here, and it turned out it was a bat bug. So bed bugs, they're obviously long time ago, there was some type of divergence here between bat bugs and bed bugs, but we still have the bat bugs. What are bat bugs, and do we have to worry about bat bugs now?
Kacie Athey:Yeah. So bat bugs are just another species really closely related to bed bugs, at least here in The US. There are other species, but that doesn't matter because they're you know, in other countries, there are some other species. So bat bugs, again, primarily will feed on bats, but much like bed bugs I mean, bed bugs can feed on chickens and all kinds of stuff. Like, they're not these are not special.
Kacie Athey:So we do occasionally see an infestation of bat bugs in a house. Generally speaking, that's when somebody has a bat roosting in an attic. Well, a lot of bats roosting in an attic, and maybe they get rid of the bats. And the bat bugs don't all go with them, and so then they end up on the people. And your treatment and everything of bat bugs, I mean, you still have to get rid of them, and they will feed on people as well.
Kacie Athey:It's rarer. I think what's interesting to me is because of the stigma of bedbugs, people who know batbugs exist will often come into pest control or an extension office and say, oh, I think these are batbugs. These are batbugs. Right? Yeah.
Kacie Athey:Yeah. And then you'll be like, well, those are bedbugs. And it doesn't really make a difference. Again, it's not your fault that you have either of them. Things happen.
Kacie Athey:But I think people think the bat bug sounds less like, oh, I've done something dirty and bad because I have these instead of the bedbugs. But generally speaking, if you have bedbugs, you probably still have to, you know, get those treated for, because they will still still feed on people a little.
Ken Johnson:Alright. So now now the holidays are full full swing for the holidays here. People are traveling. A lot of us went out, left town for Thanksgiving, and are back now. So we mentioned this a little bit, some of the things we need to do in, like, hotel rooms, checking, and stuff.
Ken Johnson:Is there anything else we can do to avoid bringing bed bugs on, like, after we get home or Mhmm. And all that?
Kacie Athey:Yeah. Yeah. So, I mean, the easiest thing to do when you get home is to put all of your clothes and everything in a dryer for thirty minutes on high heat. That'll kill anything that's in there. You can use a steamer on your luggage as well to try to take care of if you brought anything home with you.
Kacie Athey:That's the easiest thing. And if you it's pretty simple to do. Again, I would bring the stuff in if you're going to do it that way. Don't bring it in your house. Just bring it, you know, the pieces directly into the dryer, that sort of thing.
Kacie Athey:Don't go put the luggage on your bed and then take the stuff to the dryer. Hard surfaces are always a good idea of, you know, putting your stuff on first. But if you have a dryer in your house, that's an easy thing to do. Now, obviously, if you don't have a dryer in your house, that's harder. Steamer is always a good thing.
Kacie Athey:So if you can get yourself a steamer, you can but you'd have to do everything individually that way. The other thing that I've seen recommended from some other entomologists is taking a lint roller on your clothes when you're in a hotel room and just lint rolling Just in case for some reason if you had bed bugs and you didn't see it and you got, like, an egg on there or something, that'll pull them off. They're not gonna be stuck to you. I have never done that myself, but, you know, there's a lot of if you the it doesn't hurt you to do, you know, any of these things. And especially if you don't have a dryer at home, the lint roller might be a better way to go if you don't just have access to a dryer that you can usually easily use once you get home.
Kacie Athey:I will do my PSA one more time about be skeptical when people post blurry photos of bugs and claim it proves anything. Always be skeptical about some person on Twitter saying a thing forever and always and always. Even if CBS News picked up that person on Twitter, just if you can't tell what it is in the picture, I guarantee you an entomologist can't either. And by that, I mean, if it's blurry and you're like, I that's a spot of something. It's not an identifiable thing.
Chris Enroth:Right. Take it into Casey and Ken. Let them look at it under microscope, and then they can give you a confirmed confirmation of bed bug or not bed bug. That that'd be a fun game to play.
Kacie Athey:Because I can do that.
Chris Enroth:Yes. Yep. Until yep.
Kacie Athey:Oh, and if it has wings, it's not a bedbug ever. Bedbugs don't have wings. If it's got wings, then you could just rule that out entirely.
Ken Johnson:Yeah. It's always fun when they bring them in alive.
Chris Enroth:Yes. Yeah. Mhmm. I'm like, oh, this is gonna go to the freezer right away. Mhmm.
Kacie Athey:Immediately.
Chris Enroth:Yep. So so well, that was a lot of great information about bed bugs. I I think what I took away from this is prevention and vigilance, I mean, is really, really key when it comes to avoiding bed bugs and and and introducing your house. And again, it is not your fault. They This is what they do.
Chris Enroth:That's just their life cycle. So they they they want you to take them home. And so it this is there shouldn't necessarily be a stigma attached to this because bedbugs have been part of human civilization since the beginning. So that that I think that's some some key takeaways. Contact your entomologist, doctor Casey Athey.
Chris Enroth:We will we'll have your contact information below. Get ready for the onslaught of emails from our five listeners. So but thank you for being on the show today.
Kacie Athey:Thank you for having me. And, yeah, don't be embarrassed if you have bug bugs. Please just call your pest control operator and let them help you get that taken care of. Yes.
Chris Enroth:Yes. Well, the Good Morning Podcast is production of University of Illinois Extension, edited this week by me, Chris Enroth. A special thank you to Ken Johnson for hanging out with me once again. Good to see you again, Ken, after a couple weeks of podcast hiatus. So thanks for being here today.
Ken Johnson:You too. And again, as always, thank you, Casey, for being on. It's always it's always a good day when you're on because we're talking insects. Indeed. And Chris, let's do this again next week.
Chris Enroth:Oh, we shall do this again next week. It is a holiday surprise of what will be in store for you next week. So download, tune in, watch, whatever it is you do next week and and hear about some more horticultural hijinks. Well, listeners, thank you for doing what you do best, that is listening, or if you're watching this on YouTube watching. And as always, keep on growing.
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