Think your bed is all cozy? You're not alone

This holiday season you could leave Grandma's house with more than a bag of leftovers.

Bedbugs -- blood-suckers associated most commonly with grungy hotels and a popular bedtime rhyme -- are hitching rides into the homes and apartments of a growing number of Twin Cities residents.

More than 140 landlords recently attended the first meeting of a bedbug task force, and all but five said they'd had problems with the pests. Three years ago, Plunkett's Pest Removal had three cases all year. Now it has three full-time exterminators tackling nothing but bedbug problems. At Adams Pest Control, bedbug complaints have increased 25 percent in just a year.

Debbie Amrani still can't get a good night's sleep since being bitten by bedbugs that she believes accompanied her back to her Shakopee townhouse from a trip to Miami. She's since spent more than $2,300 on a new method developed in the Twin Cities to get rid of the pests, and that doesn't include the cost of replacing two bed sets.

"I'm emotionally scarred," Amrani said. "They can live for a year without feeding, so I still haven't gone out and bought a mattress and box spring."

For centuries, people have lived with this scourge, which inspired the old bedtime saw, "Good night, sleep tight, don't let the bedbugs bite." Stacy O'Reilly, president of Plunkett's Pest Control, says that when her grandfather started the business nearly 100 years ago, bedbugs were common and people used to put the foot of their bed in a can of kerosene to keep the critters from climbing onto the bed.

By the time her father took over the business, DDT had come into use to kill the bugs and their eggs. But DDT was also killing eagles and other unintended victims, so it was eventually banned. Now that the last residue from the old poison is gone, and the bugs are back.

Relearning the insect

"The industry was taken flat-footed when this started back up again," said Steve Dennison, operations manager for Adams Pest Control.

That's why Stephen Kells, an entomologist from the University of Minnesota, and others are busy attending national conferences devoted to the subject. "We've had to relearn this insect," Kells said.

Many speculate that the increased frequency of international travel and the growing popularity of thrift shops and secondhand stores have helped the bugs spread. Rampant in many Third World countries, they also are expert hiders that will seek refuge in couches, mattresses, electronics, even computers, and any other items in proximity to their primary feeding grounds -- your bedroom. And the bugs don't discriminate, happy to relocate to penthouses as well as tenements.

Worse, there's some evidence that many strains of bedbugs have become resistant to the most commonly used pesticides. A report published by the National Pest Management Association says that bedbugs tend to avoid residues of a commonly used pytrethroid insecticide, so getting them to hang out in treated areas also is difficult.

One of the latest and some say most effective treatments was developed by Tempair, a Burnsville company that developed a mobile system that can essentially turn a house, apartment or hotel room into a giant convection oven. It includes four heaters and several high-speed fans powered by a huge diesel generator that's concealed within an enclosed trailer.

The fans and heaters are situated throughout the affected rooms and heated for several hours until dozens of wireless temperature sensors signal that the temperature has hit 130 to 140 degrees. The fans direct the heat where bedbugs hide - furniture, boxes of clothing and other hard-to-heat spaces.

Since launching the product this summer, Tempair has been sending one machine a week to customers such as Texas A&M University, which had its first outbreak in the fall of 2006. Dan Mizer, associate director of the Department of Residence Life at A&M, said that in just the past couple of weeks workers discovered that nine couches in a student lounge were infested, probably from bugs that crawled out of a student's backpack. Last year the school also spent $37,000 on special bedbug-sniffing dogs.

"Awareness is helping, but once you get an infestation you don't get rid of it," Mizer said. "It's a vicious cycle."

Because they are only about the size of a woodtick and are very flat, bedbugs can pass through an opening as thin as a credit card. That's why treating them in hotels and apartments usually requires inspecting and treating the rooms and apartments above, below and next to the one that's affected.

The property owner who helped organize the Twin Cities task force said that the since the first report of a bedbug problem at one of his buildings more than three years ago, the complaints have continued. He paid $67,000 to buy the same kind of thermal remediation system that was used in Amrani's house.

"It's a lot more prevalent than people know and I think people are going to see more of this," he said.

Worse than roaches

Though he spends tens of thousands of dollars every year to treat bedbugs, he said that asking tenants to foot the bill is risky because it's difficult to prove the source of the bedbugs, and putting tenants on notice that they might have to pay could discourage people from reporting a problem. Bedbugs, he added, are much more troublesome than roaches and other vermin.

"If this gets to be an epidemic, this is one of the things that could drive me out of this business," he said.

Bob Ogren, chief engineer at an upscale downtown Minneapolis hotel, said the company recently bought its own heat system in part to send a message to guests that the company is serious about eradicating bedbugs in a timely and environmentally friendly way. Ogren said that the first complaint he received about bedbugs was a few years ago and that every year he gets a couple more complaints. Though the problem seems to be worse in other parts of the country, he said it's pervasive. "I don't think there's a hotel in downtown or across the metro that hasn't [had a complaint]."

The Internet has helped fuel awareness -- and fear -- about the bugs as blogs, websites and videos can quickly spread reports of suspected encounters. There's a website -- www.bedbugregistry.com -- where you can blow the whistle on hotels, apartments and other lodging where there's been a sighting. Kells, the U of M entomologist, said that the problem seems to have moved beyond the travel industry. More complaints are coming from hospitals and social service organizations where employees are coming in contact with people who live in low-income housing where the owners and managers aren't willing or able to invest in prevention or eradication. "The situation is getting worse," he said.

Despite his warnings, the industry isn't getting much help in the way of funding for research and prevention.

"I'm trying to push for people to recognize that this is a public health concern," Kells said. "This is a really critical point in time. If we treat it as a simple nuisance, it's going to keep spreading within various areas of society and it will be more costly to get rid of it."

Though the bites can cause allergic reactions and painful welts that can get infected, raising awareness has been difficult in part because the bugs don't transmit disease. That's no consolation, however, to bedbug victims who continue to live with the "ick" factor long after an infestation.

"Even my husband will jump in the night if he feels something," Amrani said. "He'll take a flashlight and check the baseboards and check my son's bed. It makes us nervous. It's very traumatic."

Jim Buchta • 612-673-7376