Category Archives: Bed Bugs New York

Before coronavirus took over all news cycles in March, the world was worrying about another rapidly-spreading plague: bed bugs.

Paris had become so infested in them the government launched an eradication campaign, complete with an emergency helpline number. The flat, apple-seed sized bugs, which come out at night to feast on the blood of sleeping humans, are thriving in New York, too, with complaints about infestations growing so fast that the city has had to issue restrictions on how to dispose of old mattresses in order to try to curb their spread.

Pest control experts estimate that the number of bed bug infestations worldwide has increased by more than 4500% (no, thats not a typo) in the early years of this century. In part thats down to increased travel spreading them but also because bed bugs are becoming resistant to pesticides.

Not good news.

But AI may be able to come to the rescue. At least that is what Cambridge-based startup Spotta claims. The company, which just raised a $1.18m in seed funding from Cambridge Angels, the Angel CoFund and US VC REMUS, has developed traps equipped with image recognition that can help hotels and homeowners detect the bugs at an early stage before the infestation gets out of control.

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The key challenge for hotels is finding them before the guests do. Hotels may be asking their housekeeping staff to look for signs, but someone cleaning a room is typically spending just 15 minutes in it, whereas a guest will spend 9 hours in there, says Robert Fryers, Spottas co-founder and chief executive.

Typically, a hotel will catch only a third of bed bug infestations before guests do, leaving guests to discover the other two thirds, says Fryers. And any guest-pest interaction generally leads to bad reviews, refunds and in even lawsuits.

Which is why hotels have become interested in the Spotta traps, which, in one trial last February, allowed the hotel to catch 95% of the infestations before their guests. Spotta estimates it could save the average 200-room hotel up to 67,200 per year.

The technology is a mix of computer vision that can recognise the insect accurately, and an internet-of-things connection that can send an alert when there is a problem. Neither of these are technologies unique to Spotta, but the clever trick has been to get image recognition to work on remote devices without taking up too much power and at a price point that means you can use them on a mass scale. Spotta does this through its proprietary software that splits the image recognition between the bug-catching box and a central server.

The bug detection service costs around 60 per room per year and Spotta has two hotel chains and several independent hotels as customers (none of them, unsurprisingly, are willing to be mentioned by name in an article about bed bugs). Talks are also ongoing with two household name hotel chains, says Fryers.

Covid-related travel restrictions have, of course, helped slow down the spread of bed bugs as well as slowing down hotels willingness to spend money.

It was a question I was asked a lot by investors in this round, says Fryers.

But not only is the bed bug problem not going away any time soon (the bugs can lie in wait for a year without feeding), Spotta sees plenty of markets beyond just bedbugs. Insect pests cause some $320bn in damage each year, says Fryers, mostly in industries like agriculture (10-15% of crops never make it off the farm because of this), forestry and infrastructure (think termites).

There is already some interest from agrichemical companies looking for ways to make pest control more efficient, and the new funding round will be used in part to explore these markets.

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AI takes on the growing bed bug problem - Sifted

A friend, whose suitcase became a bedbug vector apparently during storage in the luggage room of a high-end hotel in upstate New York, found one crawling on her when she donned nightclothes and sat down to read shortly after arriving home in Brooklyn. She spent $1,300 to get the house fumigated, and now routinely quarantines her luggage and its contents out in the freezing cold after a trip to minimize the risk of a repeat invasion.

What my friend didnt know, however, is that bedbugs can live for many months without feeding on human blood, so waiting even weeks to unpack may not help. Brooklyn backyards and even home freezers may not be cold enough to kill them: Experts recommend minus 4 degrees Fahrenheit.

As an Orkin entomologist, Chelle Hartzer, warned about bedbugs, They are excellent hitchhikers and they reproduce quickly, which make it nearly impossible to prevent bedbugs. Increases in both domestic and international travel in recent decades contributed greatly to their current ubiquity. Complicating control efforts, theyve become resistant to most commonly used insecticides, including pyrethroids.

No one, not the most fastidious among us, is immune to a bedbug infestation. They can be found just about any place where people sit or sleep cinemas, offices, schools, churches, hospitals, buses, trains, cruise ships and airplanes, as well as in hotels and homes. According to a lengthy report by Australian scientists in Clinical Microbiology Reviews, an entire buildings infestation can start with only a few bedbugs or, possibly, even a single female.

One impregnated female can lay two to five eggs a day.

And the bugs can be devilishly difficult to detect. The eggs of this flightless insect are pearly white and the size of a pinhead; adults are brown or reddish brown (if they had a recent blood meal) and the size of an apple seed, about a quarter-inch long. Two French doctors, writing in The New England Journal of Medicine in June, reported that between blood meals, bedbugs hide in dark places, such as household cracks and crevices, walls, luggage, bedclothes, mattresses, bedsprings, bed frames, spaces under baseboards, loose or peeling wallpaper, electrical switch plates and conduits for electrical cables.

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The Pandemic May Spare Us From Another Plague: Bedbugs - The New York Times

What Are Bed Bugs & What Makes Them Unique

Bed bugs are tiny and oval shaped and they are generally flat. They are insects that suck blood and infest areas where humans and other animals sleep. Bed bug infestations are not always the result of having a dirty home because bed bugs can find their way into your home even if all the necessary precautions have been taken. Once they do get in, they can multiply quickly and become a problem to the lives and welfare of everyone inside the residence or workplace. Although Canada generally only has an issue with one species of bed bugs, they like to live in a variety of places like houses, condos, apartments, motels and hotels as well as barns and in a variety of other buildings where warm-blooded animals live.

Although bed bugs are rare in Ontario, there have been cases where bedbugs associated with bats and swallows have been discovered. These insects are nocturnal feeders that suck on blood when the victim is tight asleep. In dim lighting conditions, they will feed during the day only if they are extremely hungry, which is very unlikely since they get enough blood while humans sleep. An anticoagulant is injected by these pests to prevent clotting. This makes the skin inflamed with welts developing and itching as a result. These insects molt at various stages in their lives. The discarded exoskeletons are clear. Bedbugs molt five times before reaching adulthood.

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Bed Bugs Toronto - Pestend Affordable Pest Exterminator

As your Buffalo bed bugs expert, we use an array of treatments to attack your infestation, adapting which techniques we utilize depending on your specific circumstances. We know the safety and wellbeing of your family is your main priority, and, therefore, we will talk through our various approaches with you to ensure you are comfortable with our treatment plan. In most instances, we will use various methods on a single property to eliminate 100% of your bed bugs. Of course, the bed bug pest Buffalo exterminator cost can vary depending on which treatment you need.

One of the most effective methods we use is bed bug heat treatment for Buffalo homes. High temperature steam is applied to the entire mattress and bed, specifically focusing on seams, creases, and small gaps where bed bugs hide. The bed bug heat treatment will destroy the bed bugs and their eggs on contact.

Our specialized steam machines produce a dry steam, which will leave less moisture in your air and on your furniture than standard steamers. Our thermal approach is especially popular because it gives immediate relief to the homes inhabitants. It means that your family or your tenants can go home to the property on the same day. It also requires no use of chemicals, making it incredibly eco-friendly and safe for the environment. Call our Buffalo bed bugs exterminator to find out more.

Another treatment method we use alongside other methods is high-power vacuuming. We vacuum all areas where bed bugs are typically prevalent. This will remove live bed bugs, their skins, eggs, and excrement from your furniture and upholstery. Our specialist vacuum filters ensure an efficiency of over 99% of particles in the exhaust air. Vacuuming will not remove all bed bugs, so it is used amongst others in ridding your home of bed bugs. The plus point of high-power vacuuming is that it is a quick and effective way to physically remove a large part of the infestation from your home. We can vacuum before and after other treatments for added efficiency.

Freezing bed bugs is another environmentally friendly way to eliminate an infestation in its entirety. This non-toxic treatment destroys the insects and their eggs after contact with a snow-like substance. It can be used alongside heat treatment, with heat being more suitable for some surfaces than the dry ice.

Encasements can be used for bedding, mattresses and box springs. This treatment traps any newborn bed bugs in casing, in which they cannot survive.

A bed bug dust application can be applied to various areas of your home, such as cracks in the floor, near baseboards, and other hard to reach areas where bed bugs may be residing. This special dust is made from diatomaceous earth, and is popular because it is eco-friendly. However, it is not a solution on its own to remove bed bugs and must be used in conjunction with vacuuming, heating, or freezing.

We will thoroughly treat all areas of your home, which will involve removing outlet covers and light switch covers, and lifting up the edges of carpets to find any well-hidden insects. Any bed bugs we find will be frozen or treated with heat or dust.

Pesticides can also be used, though they are generally less successful for our Buffalos bed bug pest exterminators than thermal or freezing methods, and take much longer to completely destroy your bed bug infestation. While bed bug heat treatment will give you immediate relief from bed bugs, pesticides will take around thirty days to take full effect. This is because pesticides will only kill the live bed bugs and not their eggs, meaning the eggs will continue to hatch and you must then wait for them to ingest the pesticide for it to destroy them. The bed bug pest Buffalo exterminator cost of pesticide is lower than other treatment methods, so it may be an attractive option for those with a lower budget.

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Buffalo Bed Bug PCP | Professional Pest Control Buffalo ...

Recent Bed Bug Reports for New York City

April 16

The Franklin Hotel Horrible seeping bedbug mess through bedbug cover. S

February 01

150 Corbin Pl This building is infested with bed bugs i was bitten all

January 29

Avenue Plaza LLC Room 206 had bedbugs on January 28th, 2016. I and my w

January 28

263 Eastern Pky Bedbugs have been spotted crawling on kitchen walls, ha

January 27

167 E 102nd St There has been a bed bug infestation going on for over a

January 26

261 Seaman Ave UPDATE to my original post on 12/02/15 - exactly NOTHING

Eurostars Wall Street Having seen the report now for bed bugs, I wish I

January 25

Sofitel New York I used to stay at this hotel frequently and was always

January 24

506 W 172nd St 1 bedbug found in Apartment 2A. Please beware! They may

January 22

312 W 34th St, New York Was bitten all over my neck at this theater. D

January 21

325 W 45th St My neighbor has bed bugs. Its simply disguising. This p

1331 Pacific St Apartment 6- unfed bedbug crawling up wall in one of th

January 19

Ace Hotel New York Oct 23rd 2015. Stayed at the ace in a room in the ba

January 18

153 Avenue B 2013 - All floors infested. Owners wanted to sell and want

January 16

Roosevelt Hotel Of New York City Stayed in room 1250 on Jan 13, 2016. L

Courtyard By Marriott New York Manhattan / Central Park I stood at this

January 14

8000 4th Ave Wide infestation in the building. It's horrible

3079 33rd St Bedbugs found & being treated for on 3rd floor of this 4-f

Holiday Inn Express Madison Square Garden Stayed there January 10th, 20

January 13

735 Rogers Ave As of June 2015 this whole building has been vacated, re

January 09

Astor On The Park Saw a video on Youtube about a horrible infestation a

January 08

1213 Avenue Z There are bedbugs in many apartments. The bugs are trav

961 Washington Ave Doing an Airbnb my husband got bit but I didn't we f

Comfort Inn Times Square West Stayed 1/03/16-1/04/16. I'm full of bite

January 07

Hampton Inn Manhattan Times Square North Hotel My husband and I stayed

January 06

754 Washington Ave My wife, myself and a new born baby was living in 3L

January 04

345 W 86th St Building has building wide infestation of bedbugs. 6th,8

Doubletree Guest Suites Can't remember which room I stayed in, but it w

January 03

67 93rd St Located 2 separate bedbugs in 2 different rooms of apartment

Intercontinental New York Times Square Hotel Lovely hotel No incidents

465 Central Park W http://www.nydailynews.com/new-york/bedbugs-bite-wom

1886 Broadway On December 27, 2015, I attended a showing at Lincoln Pla

1035 Washington Ave Is 1035 Washington Ave still having problems with b

January 02

510 Amsterdam Ave Between November 2012 and April 2013, there was an in

784 Saint Johns Pl My bed got infested with bed bugs last week. The man

Astor On The Park Hotel See this video https://www.reddit.com/r/videos/

535 W 49th St Had bed bugs three times in 4rw 2012 and 2013. Landlord

111 Macdougal St Moved into a 3rd floor apartment in May 2014. Immediat

December 31

Affinia Shelburne I have stayed at the Affinia twice now. Once for 4 mo

December 30

Doral Court Hotel This property now goes by the following name: THE

The Court - A St Giles Premier Hotel December 30, 2015 Early morning

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Bedbug Registry: Recent Bed Bug Reports for New York City