Category Archives: Bed Bugs Iowa

August 22, 2017

Sunny summer days give us the opportunity to enjoy fun outdoor activities. However, the warm summer months are also the prime time for Iowa insects to multiply and claim their territory in your backyard. Don't let the possibility of bug bites stop you from enjoying the warmer weather! If you're worried about which insects bite, follow our guide to learn more about insect bites and stings.

If you're ever outside after dark, you've most likely been a victim of Iowa's mosquito population. Mosquitoes are summer's most common insects that bite. There are two types of mosquitoes found in Iowa: floodwater mosquitoes and vector mosquitoes.

Floodwater mosquitoes lay their eggs in moist soil (not standing water) and the eggs need to dry out before they can hatch. When rain from storms inundate these low lying areas, the eggs are provided a cue to hatch. These pests can be pretty annoying because their bug bites can be painful, but the floodwater mosquitoes rarely carry diseases.

Permanent water mosquitoes tend to lay their eggs in clumps of 50-300 on the surface of standing water at the edges of lakes, ponds, ditches and sewage plants. Some species prefer clean water, while other species prefer stagnant or polluted water. This species usually doesn't travel far from its home, so try to avoid these areas after dark.

These pests are most active from dusk to dawn, but will also search out prey in shady areas. You will rarely see mosquitoes in the daylight because they have a slim chance of surviving in the light. They're best known for feeding on your blood to support their eggs and leaving a red, slightly raised bump when they bite. What most people don't know, is that these Iowa insects also feed on nectar from flowers.

You'll notice a mosquito infestation if you run into a lot of buzzing and a large number of bug bites occur. Most likely, these bugs are protecting their eggs. If that is the case, you will want to call a professional right away! Once those eggs hatch, your mosquito problem will get exponentially worse. Preferred Pest has solutions that specifically get rid of mosquitoes from your home or business.

Ants are social creatures that live in colonies by the hundreds. They tend to be the biggest nuisance to Iowa homeowners in the spring and summer time. If you're finding these little pests around your home in Iowa, you're probably seeing these popular ant species: carpenter ants, odorous house ants, pavement ants, larger yellow ants and thief ants. Don't let these little critters ruin your picnic this summer! If you have an ant problem, call a skilled exterminator.

Although they may be tiny, these insect bites and stings can cause some big discomfort. Contrary to common belief, some ants will actually sting instead of bite, but both should be cared for the same way. Insect bites and stings should be washed thoroughly to prevent infection. For pain and swelling, apply ice to the affected areas, and if you experience redness or itching from an ant bite, it might be a good idea to find a cream for the reaction.

When comparing which insects bite, ticks are definitely on the rise in Iowa. Their population is increasing year over year with more reports of ticks carrying Lyme disease. The three tick species found in Iowa are the deer tick or blacklegged tick, American dog tick or wood tick and the lone star tick.

Ticks are commonly found in the woods, forests or areas with tall grass and vegetation. It's beneficial to wear long sleeves or clothing that covers your skin if you're going exploring in that type of setting. You should regularly check for ticks in the summer, because these insects that bite regularly carry Lyme disease.

If you remove a tick and a red rash appears around the bug bite, you could be infected. It typically take 24-48 hours for a tick to transmit the Lyme disease, but if the tick is properly removed you will avoid this problem. If the tick bite is accompanied by headache, fever and a stiff neck, you should seek medical help immediately.

To effectively remove ticks, you must be very careful not to crush them. If the pest's mouth is left in the skin it can still spread Lyme disease. To be safe, it's best to use a tweezers to firmly grasp the tick as close to the head as possible and pull it out. Make sure you disinfect the area of the bug bite once the tick is removed.

You've probably run into a variety of spiders on multiple occasions. Even though these critters are arachnids and not insects, we will still include them in our list since spiders are very common in Iowa. Luckily, most species found in Iowa are harmless, but there are a couple to look out for. The easiest spider prevention method is to take down their webs. The types that are regularly found here are the black and yellow garden spider, common house spider, fisher spider, grass spider, wolf spider, black widow and brown recluse. Like other insect bites and stings, a spider bite will typically be left on arms and legs or other exposed skin and can be identified by small, red bumps.

The black widow is one of the few poisonous spiders found in Iowa, but thankfully they are rare. If you did run into one of these critters, it would most likely be found on outdoor objects that have not been used for an extended period of time, like playground equipment or seasonal gardening tools.

Brown recluse spiders are hunters, and do not spin webs to catch their prey. They are normally found outdoors in piles of loose debris. If these pests do find their way inside, you can usually find them under towels or clothing that's left on the floor. They are not aggressive by nature, but they are poisonous so you should be cautious around them.

Bed bugs are one of the Iowa insects that you definitely do not want in your home or business. They feast on blood and can survive long periods without a meal, so you can never be too careful. These beasts are common throughout the year, but bed bug bites tend to increase in the spring and summer when more people are traveling and coming into contact with various people on planes, hotels, etc.

Since these bugs are typically transferred while traveling, it's important to be cautious while you're vacationing. Always keep bags, purses and clothing off the ground of your hotel rooms, because bed bugs are great hitchhikers. When you return home, you should wash your clothing in hot water. If you did pick up these critters, the heat will eliminate them.

As their name implies, these insects are typically found in beds and like to hide in your mattress. Bed bugs also hide in furniture or floor boards along the wall and they can move quickly! An infestation is usually found when bed bug bites are noticed. These insects that bite will leave behind tiny red welts that could be itchy and are commonly found in a cluster on the arms, legs or exposed skin.

If you have a bed bug infestation you need to act right away! These critters are not easy to get rid of and will multiply quickly, which is why it's usually easy to spot them in your home. Contact professional pest services immediately to get rid of the infestation. Preferred Pest Control has canines that are trained to detect bed bugs and uses a thermal treatment to get all bed bugs out of your home or business.

Despite what most people think, wasps are usually not aggressive. They will not sting you unless they are provoked or they think their nest is in danger. Not all wasps have hives; some are solitary creatures travel on their own. In Iowa, the four most common wasp species include yellow jacket wasps, paper wasps, mud dauber wasps and cicada killer wasps. Each of these wasps have unique habits for colonizing and building nests. If you're seeing an alarming number of wasps around your house, you might have a problem. It's best to call an exterminator who can safely remove these Iowa insects.

If you do encounter a wasp, it's best to leave them alone because they usually don't attack until you do, and wasps can deliver multiple blows. Wasp stings will have an initially sharp pain followed by redness and swelling in the areas that the stinger was injected into the skin. Generally, the pain and swelling should subside in a few hours.

Most insect bites and stings can be cared for at home by simply cleaning up the affected area and getting as much venom out as possible. However, if you're allergic to wasps and have more severe reactions you should contact a physician right away. Allergic reactions could include swelling of the face, lips or throat, dizziness, difficulty breathing, feeling light headed, nausea or vomiting and a weak or racing pulse.

During the spring and summer months most insects are very active, and bees are no exception. This is the time where they come out of hibernation and start buzzing all around in search of materials to build their hives. When they're not constructing their new home, the worker bees are out and about collecting nectar from flowers to feed to the larva back at the hive. Most insects that sting will usually not attack unless they believe their colony is in danger. The types of bees found in Iowa are the honey bees, carpenter bees, ground bees and bumble bees.

During the spring and summer, you might want to keep an eye on the activity happening around your garden. However, flowers aren't the only things that attract bees. Some bee infestations can be tricky to spot since these critters can set up their hives in the ground, within tree branches and sometimes inside your home or business. If you're noticing a sizable amount of bees, call a pest removal expert before it's too late.

Preferred Pest Control wants to ensure that you don't have any of these insects that bite or sting wreaking havoc on your property this season. We have specialty services depending of the pest problem, or you can get rid of any bug issues with our residential pest control services. Call Preferred Pest today at (515) 276-7277 or schedule an appointment online.

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Common Iowa Insect Bites and Stings

Bed Bug Hotel and Apartment Reports. Click on the city below to find our latest bed bug reports in Iowa on hotels. To report a new bed bug incident, navigate to our city page below to see further details.

Recommended tips after hotel check-in: 1. Pick up the mattresses in the rooms and look under it. Check around the edges of the box springs. 2. Check under the box spring. 3. Lift up each headboard an lay it on the bed. Carefully inspect the hole where the headboard was lifted out of. Also, inspect all niches and corners of the headboard. 4. If you decide to stay in the hotel, do not put any clothes in dressers. Keep them in your luggage and your dirty clothes in plastic bags.

On the morning of 12/4/2019 I awoke early (4am). When I threw back the sheets I found a single bed bug running across the area where I had just been laying. I killed it and it was filled with blood (s...

I first noticed I had bed bugs about 1 week after I moved in. That was June 2015. I reported it to management and they had it treated about a month later. I noticed they were back within about 2 weeks...

Numerous stages of bed bugs from adults to first stage nymphs. I wound up with numerous bites on my arms and hand. Also one on my chest, cheek, and eyebrow. Occurred Sept 3,2019. Took two bugs to ...

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Iowa Bed Bug Hotel and Apartment Reports | BedBugReports.com

SIOUX CITY, Iowa (KCAU)- Laundromats in Sioux City have continued to keep their doors open as they are considered an essential business in Iowa. However, like any businesses they are stepping up their sanitation efforts to help prevent the spread of COVID-19.

Were cleaning up with the Clorox wipes and the Windex to just keep things as clean as possible, said John Gleaza, the owner of Pierce Street Laundry.

Glaza said he is doing everything in his power to step upsanitation and social distancing inside his business.

Sundays are our busiest days, so we try to tell people, Hey we got 10-12 people. Lets wait a little bit,' said Glaza.

When it comes to cleaning his customers clothes, he leaves that up to the washing machines.

Dryers run at 160 degrees and they will pretty much kill anything known to man including bed bugs so no need to worry about coming into a dry after someone is using it, said Glaza.

The CDC recommends doing laundry in the highest temperature. And when you put your clothes in the dryer, also use the highest setting and that will definitely kill the virus, said Morningside College Associate Professor Anni Moore, who teaches microbiology.

Moore said COVID-19 is known as an envelope virus.

Which means in addition to the protein coat, this virus also have a lipid envelope around them, and that lipid envelope is like the cell membrane, like any cell you have in your body. And thanks to that envelope, its easier to inactivate this virus, said Moore.

Making the virus a lot easier to kill compared to the common cold.

While the machines take care of your laundry, Moore said customers also need to take care of themselves.

However, if you do handle money, wash your hands afterword. And if you go out in public, do wear the cloth masks if you are one of the carriers, Moore.

Pierce Street Laundry is considered an essential business and Glaza plans to continue to keep his doors open with help from the community.

We really do care. We want to be as safe as possible and keep a lot of distance, said Glaza.

Excerpt from:
Laundromats try to help prevent COVID-19 with precautions - KCAU 9

Donald Lewis, Iowa State entomology professor, and his beloved black labradoodle.

Ohio-grown farm boy Donald Lewis found his passion in a college biology class 40 years ago and is still sticking to it.

Lewis, who is currently an entomology professor at Iowa State, grew up on an Ohio dairy farm and said he assumed after college hed go back and be a dairy farmer for the rest of his life. But sophomore year of college, his plans changed.

Lewis recalled disliking biology throughout the entirety of high school, but it was a college professor that made it interesting to him. The class's insect examples fascinated Lewis enough to continue to take more of his entomology and insect studies courses.

I was hooked, Lewis said. As a farm kid, flies were a nuisance, insects in the field were a nuisance and I paid very little attention to them. It wasnt until college that this lightbulb went on over my head.

After obtaining his graduate degree from Ohio State University, Lewis began as a young professor in 1977 at Iowa State.

When he started, his appointment was with extension. Extension is one of the three missions of a land grant university like Iowa State. Land grant universities teach students, do research to create new knowledge and distribute that knowledge to growers and citizens so they can make better decisions, Lewis said.

For the first twenty years, all of my teaching was off campus. It was workshops and seminars, programs with growers and producers or nursery producers, greenhouse growers and pest control operators, Lewis said.

But in 2000, Lewis started teaching in the classroom on campus. He began with a course for turf grass students and a study abroad course. In the fall of 2009, he began teaching Iowa States famous entomology 201 and 211 online courses.

"I was offered the opportunity to redefine myself, less off-campus teaching, more on-campus teaching," Lewis said.

Lewis called his new appointment to classroom and online teaching, a shot in the arm, but an opportunity he was eager to take.

I did and I do love what I did with extension meeting growers, meeting with the public, answering questions about insects, finding out what they need to know and helping them find information about their insect problems," Lewis said. "And I still do that, but thats about half of my time now, whereas teaching is the other half.

Lewis called online teaching a new and invigorating experience, but said it was exciting for him to try something new and find out that he likes that too. His previous work with extension was, a lot of meeting people one time, Lewis said.

You would go talk to insect growers, and youd help them solve their insect questions in the green house, and then you might not see those people for another two years. And then youd go talk to exterminators [] and you might not see those people for a year, so there was this variety in extension it was always a different subject and it was always with different people, as opposed to seeing the same classroom of students 30 times a semester, Lewis said.

The variety extension offered worked very well for Lewis, and he said he would still be doing it if the opportunity of full-time teaching and taking over the online course hadnt been handed to him.

Donald Lewis, entomology professor for more than 40 years at Iowa State.

Lewis acknowledged that a course about bugs isn't the most intriguing opportunity for the average college student, but can end up being a very interesting and useful one.

Part of it is just overcoming the fear, the aversion that insects are only creepy, theyre only disgusting, and part of the way we do that is to stop talking about cockroaches and bedbugs and start talking about lighting bugs or praying mantises and suddenly they go, Oh, yeah, those are kind of neat, Lewis said.

There are certainly parts of entomology that are prettier, or even cleaner, than others. Lewis gets his students' attention by fascinating them with the beautiful parts, rather than the less glamorous insects like centipedesand cockroaches.

And then you start talking about butterflies, and you tell them the story of the monarch migration or you talk about the importance of honeybees and they go, Oh, bees sting you, but then you say But look at the benefits of bees, the pollination service, the honey, and so bit by bit you can introduce some interesting, non-threatening parts of entomology, Lewis said.

Eventually, you might even see the fascination in insects like dung beetles, just as Lewis does.

Lewis said that if you ask most students why theyre taking his course, theyll say its because they needed an hour or three of a natural science credit to graduate.

Thats fine, Lewis said. Come on in, were glad to have you.

Lewis said his courses arent going to be threatening, and they wont be terribly difficult, but they are something youll have to try at. Youll get an exposure to something you may have never known or thought about, which is why Lewis says he teaches these non-major courses.

You get this brief exposure of something outside your normal studies, and thats a good thingto expand your horizons, to see a little bit of a bigger piece of the world, Lewis said.

Lewis said a frequent comment he gets on evaluations and one of his favorites is a student mentioning something new that they learned in his class and saying, I didnt know that was a thing.

Thats why we do it, Lewis said. Thats why we teach service courses courses for non-majors so you go out of here a little better prepared to meet the real world, in the process were eventually going to tell you about bedbugs and cockroaches because you might see those some day, but youll have a little better appreciation [] but thats the goal here, to create this exposure.

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Donald Lewis finds beauty in the small things - Iowa State Daily

Thermal remediation or heat is the strategictool we use to exterminate all stages of Bed Bug life.Not only is heat a reliable and effective method for Bed Bug Extermination, but it is safe and all natural. Bed Bugs are becoming more and more resistant to chemicals, which leads to constant reapplications.

When using heat, you are effectively killing all Bed Bugs and eggs in the treated area. It only takes one treatment and your home can be safely occupied within a few hours of completion.

Bed Bugs cannot survive temperatures above 122F longer than 7 minutes. With special temperature sensors and heating equipment, we bring your home to 135F -145F, effectively killing every Bed Bug in all stages of life.

The heat is evenly distributed and blown around the roomallowingheat to be driven into the tiniest crevices. Temperatures around cracks, cold spotsand other possible points where the heat could escape are monitored throughout the process to ensure a consistent level of heat. Once 130Fis reached in all areas, the heat treatment will continue and temperature will be maintained for a minimum of 3 hours.

Heat treatment is an environmentally safe and non-toxic method for Bed Bug Extermination. You can rest assuredyour children wont be playing or sleeping next to any residual chemicals.

We preform Bed Bug Extermination all throughout Iowa, including Cedar Rapids, Iowa City, Waterloo, Davenport, Des Moines, Burlington, Keokuk, Mt. Pleasant.

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Pest Control | Bed Bug Exterminator Iowa City, Cedar ...