Serving New Jersey, Philadelphia and New York
Action Termite and Pest Control
www.njbedbugdog.com
Phone: 800-920-0906
Bed Bug Dogs
Meet Sara and Rex, both are certified Bed Bug
Dogs,
trained
by
the
Florida
Canine
Academy. Each has over 800 hours of training to
detect bed bugs in commercial and residential
buildings. Both were originally rescued from a
shelter in South Florida and is now helping Action
Termite and Pest Control protect the environment
of our customers.
You've heard of Bomb dogs? Drug dogs? Arson dogs? Now, Man's Best Friend is
the latest weapon in the war on bedbugs. Traditional bedbug detection methods
can be very time consuming and labor intensive. Certified Bed Bug Dogs generate
quicker and more accurate results.
►The bedbug canine can search the average hotel room in less than
two minutes.
Bed Bug Dogs
Take a closer look at the Bedbug Dog...
•From a single drop of urine, the sniffing dog learns
the marking animal’s sex, diet, health, emotional
state, and even whether it’s dominant or submissive,
friend or foe.
•Tracking dogs follow a biochemical trail of dead
skin cells, sweat, odor molecules, and gasses.
•For dogs, a scent article is like a three-dimensional “odor image” - much
more detailed than a photograph is for a person.
•Dogs can track a scent through snow, air, mud, water, and even ash.
Bed Bug Dogs
According to a report prepared by the Institute for
Biological Detection Systems (IBDS) of Auburn University
(Auburn, AL), dogs have the following capabilities:
•Sensitivity: Documented limits of olfactory detection for
the dog range from tens of parts per billion to 500 parts
per trillion.
•Discrimination: Dogs are extremely good at
discriminating a target vapor from non-target vapors that
are also present, even at relatively high concentrations of
non-target odors.
•Odor Signatures: When being trained to detect a
substance, dogs learn to alert to one or two of its most
abundant vapor compounds.
•Multiple Odor Discriminations: Dogs can easily learn
as many as ten odor discriminations.
What are Bed Bugs?
The common bedbug (Cimex
lectularius) is the best adapted
to human environments.
It is found in temperate climates
throughout the world and has
been known since ancient
times.
Bed Bugs
• Adult bedbugs are reddish brown,
flattened, oval, and wingless, with
microscopic hairs that give them a
banded appearance.
• A common misconception is that they
are not visible to the naked eye, but
adults grow to 4 to 5 mm (one-eighth to
three-sixteenths of an inch) in length
and do not move quickly enough to
escape the notice of an attentive
observer.
• Newly hatched nymphs are translucent
and lighter in color and continue to
become browner and molt as they reach
maturity. When it comes to size, they
are often compared to lentils or apple
seeds.
Bed Bugs Biology
•
Traumatic Sexual Reproduction (TSR) the female has no natural
opening for reproducing.
•
The male has to tear open the abdomen of the female in order to
penetrate and inseminate the female. The female does not like the
experience and leaves the area where the mating took place. She is
impregnated and will start to lay eggs shortly.
•
Female bedbugs can lay up to five eggs in a day and 500 during a
lifetime.
•
The eggs are visible to the naked eye measuring 1 mm in length
(approx. 2 grains of salt) and are a milky-white tone in color.
•
The eggs hatch in one to two weeks. The hatchlings begin feeding
immediately.
Bed Bug Biology
• Bed Bug nymphs pass through five molting stages
before they reach maturity.
• They must feed once during each of these stages.
• At room temperature, it takes about 5 weeks for a
bedbug to pass from hatching, through the stages,
to maturity.
• They become reproductively active only at maturity.
• There may be 3 or more generations a year
The Bed Bug
Life Cycle
Feeding Habits
• Bedbugs are generally active only at night, with a peak attack
period about an hour before dawn.
• Given the opportunity, they may attempt to feed at other times
of day.
• Attracted by warmth and the presence of carbon dioxide, the
bug pierces the skin of its host with two hollow tubes.
• With one tube it injects its saliva, which contains
anticoagulants and anesthetics, while with the other it
withdraws the blood of its host.
Feeding Habits
• After feeding for about five minutes, the bug returns to its
hiding place.
• The bites cannot usually be felt until some minutes, hours, or
days later, as a dermatological reaction to the injected agents.
• Some people don’t have any reaction at all to the bites and
don’t even realize they have bed bugs until the population
grows
•
Although bedbugs can live for up to 18 months without
feeding, they typically seek blood every five to ten days.
How Bed Bugs Travel
• They can travel up to 100 feet for feeding, although they prefer to
be 10 to 20 feet from their host.
• Consider that a very small bedroom is 10 x10 feet. In apartment
buildings, condominiums, and nursing homes, 100 feet gives them a
lot of range which they usually take advantage of by moving both
outward horizontally and upward to levels above by way of the wall
voids.
• In a single family home with at least one person, the bedbug would
remain very close to their human food source by living in a mattress,
box spring, headboard, bed frame, nightstand, etc.
• If the population increases, the pressure for more food moves them
out further and further into the home. This is when the possibility of
hitchhiking insects or their eggs increases, and people may spread
the infestation outside of their dwelling.
Bed Bugs
Movement
•When you consider the high rate of reproduction and the
distance that bedbugs can travel, an extreme infestation of
a single room, apartment, home, or condo can create a
domino effect.
•As the bedbug population grows, the pressure for more
food can send insects scurrying through the wall voids or
down the hallway.
•Before long, the infestation in one apartment can move to
another, spread to a whole floor, then move between floors.
Bed Bugs
Movement
• Most of the time, there are no solid barriers
between apartments or condos, so plumbing or
electrical lines provides direct access to the
next unit and conditions they favor,
• Once in the wall void, their search is aided by
carbon dioxide exhaled by the occupants in an
adjoining living area.
• The higher the occupancy, the more attractive
the new space.
How they Spread
•
•
Apartments and condominiums can
present the worst-case scenario for
bedbugs. In multi-family dwellings,
shared common areas (hallways and
laundry), frequent high occupancy for
each unit, and shared wall voids
provide ample opportunities for
spreading bedbugs very quickly.
One apartment or hotel room with a
moderate to severe infestation can
infest whole floors and multiple levels
over a period of months.
•
From the point of origin, bedbugs
usually spread out in a pyramid shape.
•
With 109 being the start apartment;
the infestation quickly moves
horizontally and vertically from the
point of origin. This can take weeks or
months depending on how promptly it
is reported and how intense the
infestation is.
4th
floor
401
403
405
407
409
411
413
415
417
3rd
floor
301
303
305
307
309
311
313
315
317
2nd
floor
201
203
205
207
209
211
213
215
217
1st
floor
101
103
105
107
109
111
113
115
117
How Bed Bugs
Find you.
• Bedbugs are attracted to the carbon dioxide that you
exhale.
• Bedbugs come out for feeding when they detect the presence
of carbon dioxide, which humans produce upon exhaling.
• Since they prefer darkness, this one sensory asset is their
guide to where you are. It dictates where they will live, which is
usually going to be no more than 10 or 20 feet from where you
sleep.
• Carbon Dioxide also guides their movement if they have to
find other food sources.
Bed Bug Habits
• Bedbugs are often erroneously associated with
filth.
• They are attracted by exhaled carbon dioxide, not
by dirt, and they feed on blood, not waste.
• In short, the cleanliness of their environments has
no effect on bedbugs. Their numbers may be
reduced temporarily by vacuuming, but will
recover and require vacuuming again, and again.
Bedbugs have
a food
preference.
• Humans, this preference is so strong that they are more
likely to travel a good distance to seek humans than feed
on a pet that is easily accessible.
• Women and children are generally more sensitive to bites,
although men do get bitten.
• Two people can even sleep in the same bed, and one
person will be bitten while the other is not affected.
• Though it is more likely that both are being bitten, but one
is more sensitive to the allergen in the bedbugs saliva than
the other person.
Bed Bug Feeding
• Bed bugs feed for about five minutes and
immediately return to their hiding place.
• Should feeding be interrupted then
multiple feedings can occur during the
night.
• It then crawls into hiding, remaining there
for several days to digest its meal. When
hunger returns, the bug emerges from
hiding and seeks another blood meal.
Where they hide.
• Heavily used hiding places are evident by black or brown spots of
dried blood excrement on the surfaces where the bugs rest.
• Eggs, egg shells, and cast skins may be found near these places.
• Usually there is an offensive odor where bed bugs are numerous.
• In early infestations the bed bugs are found only about the tufts,
seams, and folds of mattresses and daybed covers; later they spread
to cracks and crevices near the bed area.
• If allowed to multiply, they establish themselves behind baseboards,
window and door casings, pictures, and moldings, and in furniture,
loosened wallpaper, and cracks in plaster and partitions.
Treatment
Procedures
•On the first treatment Action will steam and treat the entire interior of the
residence paying special attention to the areas that the canine team alerted to.
•The treatment consists of a full crack and crevice treatment to the entire
home. In the rooms that the canine team alerted,
•Action will treat the insides, underneath and exterior of all furniture and
mattresses that are in the rooms.
• Any decorations that are on the
walls will have to be treated. We
will remove all outlet covers in
the alerted rooms and dust the
wall voids.
• We will then mist the interior and
all occupants must be out for 3
hours after treatment.
Treatment Procedures
Cont.
• After the steaming and treatment process all
mattresses must be covered with approved
mattress covers that will stop bed bugs from
exiting or entering the mattress.
• These covers can be purchased from Action
at an additional fee. The cost depends on
the size and quantity of the mattress and box
spring.
Treatment Procedures Cont.
• On the final treatment Action will perform a
sweep to the structure.
• Whether the dogs alert or not to areas that
were hit on the first sweep Action performs a
final treatment to all those areas and any
additional areas alerted on the final sweep.
• There is a 60 day warranty after the final
Treatment
Thank You
www.njbedbugdog.com
1-800-920-0906