PEST PROSpectives

Hitchhiker Bugs: Let Them Hop On and You Bring Them Home (or Not!)

• Pest Pros of Michigan

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Think pests sneak in through open windows? The ones causing the most stress are often the stowaways you carried inside. We unpack the world of hitchhiker bugs—bed bugs, German cockroaches, and pantry invaders like Indian meal moths and cigarette beetles—and show how they ride along on luggage, boxes, clothing, and even used appliances. With real stories from the field and clear, calm guidance, we trace how a single “bargain” purchase or a weekend trip can seed a full-blown infestation.

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Pest Pros of Michigan



PEST PROSpectives is a Livemic Communications production.

Richard Piet:

I'm Richard Piet. Welcome back to PEST PROSpectivess. From the Pest Pros of Michigan, second word there, pros. This is what we're talking about. Talking with the pros about pest control and some of the things maybe you didn't know about or don't think about when it comes to controlling the pests that might be in your environment. Associate certified entomologist Tony Sorentino's back with us on PEST PROSpectives. Today, we're talking about hitchhiker bugs. Now, I'm a child of the 70s, Tony. So I remember vaguely riding in my parents' car, and there'd be somebody standing on the side of the road with their thumb out. And I know we're talking to some people today who are going, What? What is that about? That was hitchhiking back then. People would thumb a ride. They'd stand on the side of the road and thumb a ride to get somewhere. And you would, yes, get in a stranger's car and uh ride as far as they were willing to take you toward your destination. Not the same thing, but the concept is similar here.

Tony Sorrentino:

Picked up along the way. Picked up along the way.

Richard Piet:

Exactly. Hitchhiker bugs don't even stick their thumb out, they just hop on. And uh that's what we're talking about today. And the notion of that might seem a little bit scary or icky or something. So we're really trying to understand what that means. What are hitchhiker bugs anyway, Tony?

Tony Sorrentino:

Typically, hitchhiker bugs are pests that don't they don't always walk in or through the cracks in your foundation or fly in through an open window. Uh instead, they come in with us, and I refer to it as trafficking in because you pick them up at one location and you traffic them to another location. What we're talking about, they ride in on our our luggage, our our boxes, even our clothes or our pets. So, like the most common ones are like German cockroaches or bedbugs or stored product pests like your your cigarette beetles or flower beetles or uh Indian meal moths, bed bugs on our luggage, or you can pick them up if you're someplace where bed bugs are at. But um, the classic top-of-the-list heavyweight champ for uh hitchhiking bugs is bed bugs.

Richard Piet:

Yeah, I think folks are probably of the ones you just listed, they're most familiar with the notion of bed bugs, and we've done, in fact, an episode about that. So check it out when you uh subscribe to Pest Perspectives, you'll find it in there. But uh, yes, we know about that one for sure. All you have to do is man, set your suitcase down where some are, put your clothes down where some might be, and they gravitate toward that, and we might not even realize we're bringing them home with us.

Tony Sorrentino:

Then a gravid female bed bug could potentially then travel with you and lay eggs in your luggage, or lay eggs once you get to where you're going, and that's the beginning of an infestation. Yeah, like that's that's how it happens is the bedbugs are not gonna walk into your house. You're you're never gonna have a situation. I've never seen it in my experience where the bedbugs walked in from the outside. That could happen in a multifamily living situation where shared walls are are an issue, but bed bugs are you're not gonna wake up one day at your home and just all of a sudden there's there's bed bugs. It's not like ants, it's not like flies where you leave the window open or you have the door open or the garbage is stored too close to the garage. Why are all these flies in here?

Richard Piet:

Uh-huh. Yeah, uh, they like to latch on and come along for the ride. All right. So, bed bugs we know about. You mentioned a certain kind of cockroach, too. German cockroaches.

Tony Sorrentino:

German cockroaches.

Richard Piet:

You don't have to go to Germany for that, do you?

Tony Sorrentino:

No, no. That's the that's the terminology that's used to identify that species. They are domestic pests, they they live and thrive right alongside humans. Water sanitation conditions, standing water, or uh poor sanitary conditions, poor garbage management, poor food storage. The all of these things can be a contributing factor. Now, these pests are drawn to food, they're here looking for food. That's core essential to most pests. They're looking for a food source. So sometimes the grocery store could have them. You could get a box that had some in it. There are so many different ways that you could wind up with cockroaches at your house.

Richard Piet:

I'm trying to imagine a cockroach hitching a ride. So they're usually pretty large, are they not? Not like a bedbug that would be hidden.

Tony Sorrentino:

Bedbugs are small. Typically, a a grown adult bedbug is the size of an apple seed, uh, or something relative to that. Uh German cockroaches can be up to a half inch in size. So that's more substantial, but they are negatively phototrophic. They're adverse to light, they don't like to be out in the light. If you're seeing numerous cockroaches in broad daylight, uh, you have a higher level infestation that you're dealing with.

Richard Piet:

There's not enough room in the darkness for all of them. That's what you're saying. Terrible. Yeah. So you mentioned that these German cockroaches are happy to be around conditions where food is available. You talked about sanitary conditions, or I should say, unsanitary conditions might be uh where they want to be. But I think you're also saying they'll hitch a ride and go with you somewhere else.

Tony Sorrentino:

You you can traffic them, just like bed bugs, uh in food materials. They can travel in appliances, used appliances. Oh my. Uh so, like if you go buy a washer or dryer or a refrigerator or a stand-up freezer or microwave or a used TV. In some of those cases, you want to be very careful if you're if you're looking into those situations, uh, because you could inadvertently bring them into your own home. German cockroaches are one of the most severe pests. Nothing is beyond control, but it it just takes a longer period of time with uh an established high-level infestation.

Richard Piet:

You mentioned some beetles too that like to be hitchhikers.

Tony Sorrentino:

Oh, the uh are stored product pests. I went to a client's house, she was finding these little beetles in her room, they could fly. That's an indicator. Uh, I went out on the job because we were seeking the first role, and we talked about this when we talked about stored product pests. Because I'm gonna seek out the source, I'm gonna figure out why, why are they here? What are they eating, and what do we got to do to get rid of them?

Richard Piet:

Yeah.

Tony Sorrentino:

So as I'm walking through the house with her and she's showing me the places where the beetles are showing up. They're showing up where the light is, they're in the windowsills, they're in the kitchen, they're they're over here. Uh, we walked past and she said, they're all in that closet, too. And I looked in the closet and there's a box of milkbone dog biscuits. And I told her right then, I said, the beetles are in that, but we're gonna keep going. This is your this is your show. You tell me everything you need to tell me. And then uh after the whole inspection, we we identified it. I opened up the unopened box of biscuits that she bought at a garage sale, and it was literally full, hundreds and hundreds of larval stage beetles and adult beetles. And the it was I got my HEPA vacuum out and cleaned it up, and she didn't have any more issues after that. It's but she inadvertently carried it into her house. She bought that's a good deal, two big boxes of of milk bone dog biscuits. It's a good deal at a garage sale. So be mindful about buying even pet food, cat food, dog food, dry kibble that could be uh infested, you bring it to your house, you don't know about it. Now you've got these little bugs all in your house. Indian meal moths, same scenario. Uh stored product pests, dry goods. They just hitchhike in on your stuff that you're bringing into the house. So if you start seeing little moths, if you start seeing little beetles, yeah.

Richard Piet:

Well, you make a good point. So this lady thought she was getting a terrific deal on dog biscuits at a garage sale and they were infested, which tell me if I'm wrong, I suspect that means they were sitting around for a while. That's right. And in a pet store, that probably wouldn't be the case. The inventory turns over fast.

Tony Sorrentino:

Actually, we service pet stores for that reason because they run into these issues. There's a there's a couple of local pet stores that that we've serviced for this issue for stored product pests, for grain beetles, for cigarette beetles, for drugstore beetles, um, Indian meal moths. If the food is there, they will share. They don't care. And I didn't mean for that whole thing to rhyme, but it worked out. So here we are.

Richard Piet:

Well, I would suspect because a pet store is more mindful of these things, they deal with them a lot faster, unlike the example of the person who brought them from somebody else's garage and and had no idea. This is incredible uh as to how this goes. So when it comes to those food hitchhikers that you talked about, the German cockroaches, the beetles, the meal moths, how do we check that out? How do we assure that we're not bringing them in with us, particularly if we're buying a box of dog biscuits? We can't exactly open them again right there in the store.

Tony Sorrentino:

But then if you you open it when you get home and then store it in an airtight container where the pests can't get to it, then we're in business. And this is all sanitation and and behavioral changes that are made. I'm not storing dry goods in a box that has multiple gaps, cracks, and crevices where any pest could literally get in there, like the it's literally taped across the top. So uh even sealed food. I've done Indian meal moths, and the source was Quaker oatmeal, the the instant oatmeal packs, and they had eaten through the little paper bags. The box was sealed. So I literally was we're going to seek out the source, we're opening up all the groceries because we couldn't solve it with traditional methods. We thought we got it, we were wrong, back again.

Richard Piet:

Well, you it's interesting you brought up oatmeal because that's the first thing I was thinking about is the boxes of cereal in your pantry. Those are not airtight, so the recommendation would be to try and use airtight containers as much as you can.

Tony Sorrentino:

Airtight containers, and it adds to the freshness and stability of your food over time, too. That's also true. It's multifaceted, rodents, pests, moisture, yeah, helps freshness and keeps them out. Yep.

Richard Piet:

All right. Now we've talked about what complexities are involved with bed bugs and getting rid of those. Again, listen to that bed bug episode. You talked about the beetles in the example with the dog biscuits vacuuming them up, and it was over. Is it generally that easy for some of these that like to be in dry goods?

Tony Sorrentino:

Remove the source, and then in some cases, we'll apply a residual like to windowsills where where the adults are drawn to, right? The the adults uh in many cases don't aren't the ones that cause damage. Those are the nuisance ones, those are the breeders, those are the ones that have already lived their life cycle doing damage to the stored goods. So they're leaving, they want to go to the windowsills. So we'll do an application to control any errant. If we're vacuuming them up, a residual application and removing the source, it's over with.

Richard Piet:

All right. I'm just sort of snickering a little bit at your comment. They're leaving. Yep. The the source is gone, so we're out of here. And you're catching them at the exit. Yeah. Yeah. All right. So if uh you've noticed this issue, certainly the Pest Pros of Michigan and their experts can talk a little bit about how to go about dealing with it and help you find that source and uh deal with it. Bedbugs, of course, is a little more complicated, and uh you certainly can ask about that as well. Pest Pros website, link is in the show notes for this episode of Pest Perspectives. You can click right on through and find that and talk with Tony and the team who can come and deal with that. Boy, now you have me wanting to go open up all of my oatmeal packets and check everything.

Tony Sorrentino:

Might not be a bad idea. Yeah, I guess not. Drop them in a Tupperware when you're done. Go open up all those boxes. Maybe you could organize them.

Richard Piet:

Well, wouldn't that be something? That would be an added benefit. The pantry would be a lot neater, wouldn't it? Yes, sir. All right. Tony Sorrentino, Pest Pros of Michigan, giving us some more pest prospectives. Thanks, Tony.

Tony Sorrentino:

Yes, sir. Thank you, Richard.