The Pest Collective
The Pest Collective brings together thought leaders, scientists, operations experts, and business innovators to share practical insights that impact real-world commercial environments. Whether you manage facilities, oversee compliance, or lead operational teams, this podcast provides perspectives that help you anticipate challenges, strengthen strategies, and stay ahead in a rapidly evolving industry.
The Pest Collective
One Room Away: How Bed Bugs Become a Crisis
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Welcome to the Pest Collective, a podcast sponsored by Terminex, where we break down pest risk from the inside out. We go beyond the problems you can see to uncover root causes and deliver solutions that make a real impact on your operations. I'm Dr.
SPEAKER_01Nancy Traiano and I'm Jen Fox, and today we're discussing with board certified entomologist Eric Braun why bed bug incidents escalate quickly and how response planning determines whether businesses contain or amplify the crisis. All right, Eric Braun. I'm so excited. This is going to be a great episode. I have had many a tutelage from Eric about things related to bed bugs. And so I'm very excited, Eric, to have you here today. Thank you for joining us. Thanks for giving us your time. And uh really just for lending your expertise and your subject matter expertness. Is that the right expertise? Expertise? Expertness. Yep. We'll get there. But uh thanks for joining us today, Eric. We appreciate your time.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, happy to be here anytime.
SPEAKER_01So, Eric, on this call, Nancy and I know of your awesomeness, but can you please just give our listeners a bit of your background and your expertise, please?
SPEAKER_02Uh sure. I have a bachelor's degree in entomology from the University of Delaware. I am uh BCE as well, board certified entomologist with uh with ESA. I've been with Ehrlich and now RentaKill for 29 years. So uh quite a while. And that probably half of that time, the last 15 years or so, I've spent a lot of time working with bed bugs. So heat treatments, conventional applications, canine inspections. I held a couple of positions within within RentaKill that focused solely on bed bugs. So a lot of time in the last 15 years has been spent doing a lot of work with bed bugs.
SPEAKER_01That's great. So I think you'll give us a good viewpoint on all the things we're gonna discuss today. So I guess our first question it'll be awesome. Why do bed bug incidents create such disproportionate reputational risk? So, from uh a business standpoint, how does that really affect them?
SPEAKER_02I think it's based on public perception and how people react to bed bugs. So if they see one, they experience getting bitten by one. The reactions are usually, the reactions by the people are usually pretty significant. So causing public issues, uh being unhappy with like staying at a at a residence or the ride they're taking in their, you know, their taxi or their Uber or their bus, wherever they are, if they're experiencing bed bugs, they become very, very upset and agitated and irritated with that experience. So that translates, I think it translates into dollars for businesses. So hotels uh have to deal with high-rate customers that have bed bug incidences or observations, and they're less likely to go back to those locations. And they're going to spread that via you know social media. And I think uh the combination of public outrage and social media platforms where they can communicate these feelings make it very problematic for businesses.
SPEAKER_00Sure. So I have a two-part question for you, Eric. How are bed bugs most commonly introduced into commercial facilities? And then once they're there, how do they spread?
SPEAKER_02So bed bugs are always introduced by people and their belongings. So whether it's through a customer or an employee, let's say, for instance, a hotel, it could be a housekeeping staff member, it could be a manager or a maintenance person that visited that room. They're gonna be attached into the personal belongings or clothing of an individual that is brought into that space. So it's always gonna be that way. They're never coming in from outside, crawling in under a door, or flying in through a window. They're always brought in by a staff member or a customer of those facilities. And then once they're there, once they're there, they can do the same thing. They can hitchhike onto housekeeping carts or employees. And if that population goes unchecked, eventually they could spread naturally through that infestation or that introduction through, you know, potential voids and walls or underneath front doors and down hallways. There's uh they can hitchhike on an individual living in an apartment complex, wheelchair or personal mobility equipment, and get spread throughout an apartment building, uh, taken down to a common area and then picked off by somebody else and then taken to their room. So once they're established in a facility, they can actually spread pretty quickly throughout.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, for sure. And so, look, let me nerd out just for a minute here as an entomologist and a fan of bedbugs as far as the kind of insects that are interesting to study. Interesting is that bed bugs, like many insects, only need to mate once and they're good to go for life to produce eggs for their lifetime. And so that means if you just have one female, one single adult female bedbug introduced into a facility, that's all you need to start an issue. Can you just talk to me a little bit about how quickly they multiply? How prolific are bedbugs?
SPEAKER_02They're not quite as prolific as like German cockroaches, but they're very prolific. We typically see infestations rise from a couple of insects to dozens within a month or so to hundreds within 60 to 90 days. So there is, you know, you could potentially have hundreds of bed bugs in an area if everything goes right within the three-month span. So when we typically get in calls, it's you know, two or three months after a person had visited somewhere and had brought that infestation back to their home. But you could have thousands if gone unchecked within six to eight months. And it usually doesn't get that severe, but it can in you know certain circumstances and extenuating issues with them not being they're unknown. So if a tenant or a resident doesn't tell you about an issue and it goes unchecked for six to eight months, they can have a significant issue that will then bleed into the surrounding areas and get you know distributed, like we mentioned before, around that facility.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, that's super scary because they're so tiny, they're hard to notice. And so it's like you said, you probably already have a significant problem by the time you you notice that they're there.
SPEAKER_02By the time most customers call us, they already have something going on that's pretty significant because they don't know what to look for, like a trained professional does. They don't know the early warning signs of that bed bug infestation.
SPEAKER_01So, Eric, can you speak a little bit? I know this is a little bit of a bonus question. Can you speak a little bit to what people should look for? I know we'll get into more what the business should be doing, businesses should be doing, but just for anybody, maybe that doesn't have any experience with bed bugs, and I think people assume you just will never see them. You just get attacked and you'll never know. You just have to assume it's them. But what are the signs of a bed bug infestation or what you should look for just as a a lay person, maybe traveling, or um if you don't know what you don't know?
SPEAKER_02When I travel, I look for droppings. So the fecal matter left behind by them, they poop a lot. So if they're gonna be in there, you're going to most likely see that most evident and first. So what the droppings look like is you know little black dots in fabric surfaces, they kind of bleed into the fabric like it was touched with uh a felt marker. On solid surfaces, they can sometimes feel a little like a little black bump. But I'm looking for fecal matter first. You can certainly see the insects. They're they are small as nymphs, but as they progress through their instars, they become about the size of a tick. So everyone can, most people can see ticks on their body. And you're not going to find the bed bugs on your body, but you will see them in and around the areas that you're sleeping or spending a lot of time sitting still. So they can be seen. And I would start with uh the fecal matter, then I'm looking for live insects and potentially even cast skin. So as they molt through their nymphal stages, they will cast their skin. That's a lot lighter sometimes and will filter out of their harborages, and you'll find that on the floor underneath maybe some of the areas where they're harboring. So those are the three main things that I would look for. And those are also the same things that we're looking for when we're doing inspections for bed bugs as well.
SPEAKER_01Awesome. And I know everything loses skin, but could you imagine if we did that? Like you just leave a whole shell and you're like, new skin, like and we just did the same. That's amazing. It is gross, but it's amazing. Follow-up question to that though, Eric, you said places that people sleep a lot and sit a lot. What are some areas that you wouldn't expect to find bed bugs, but we know they can be in as well?
SPEAKER_02I would expect to find them anywhere. But one of the areas, and I talk about this a lot when I talk to a lot of our hospitality service teams or customers is the curtains. So at the very tops of curtains and hotels where they are pinched together and they have those little pleats, the bed bugs love to harbor in those. It might seem odd because it's, you know, it might be far enough away from the host and it's eight to nine feet up in the air, but they really like those pleats in those curtains. Other places in hotels that people might not think of are luggage racks. People come into a hotel, they throw their luggage right down that rack. If there's a bed bug on one from someone previously, they're gonna crawl off of it and into the folds and the straps potentially of those luggage racks. Those are kind of maybe two in the hospitality area. Well, one area I kind of touched on earlier, personal mobility equipment. So wheelchairs, scooters, walkers, those types of things. If you're doing a service or an inspection for a resident in a multifamily housing property type scenario, and they leave that area during your inspection, they might have them on their person, not necessarily on their person, but on their equipment that they're using to move around their apartment building. And if it's not there when you're doing your inspection, you can't see it. So those are maybe some areas that I would think aren't the expected, but we we as service professionals find them in those areas quite frequently.
SPEAKER_01That's great. So that kind of transitions nicely into what would be some of the most common mistakes businesses make when responding to bed bug issues. So you have, you know, one of them is is not looking in all the appropriate places like you just described. What would be some of the other pitfalls that they might run into?
SPEAKER_02The businesses shouldn't make that mistake. I think they should hire someone to do the looking for them, right? So as far as the businesses go, I I think sometimes there's a couple they try to treat themselves. And I understand that everyone is cost conscious these days. And you want to, I'm a I'm a DIY guy myself. So if I can do it, I'm gonna do it. But this is one of those things I really don't recommend that you try to handle yourself because as you mentioned earlier, they can hide in such small, tight areas. It's extremely hard to find. And the products that a homeowner might have or a business might have for, like, say a maintenance guy or a manager wants to do something on their own, those products have a lot of repellent chemistries in them. So they end up making our job more difficult for inspection and treatment because they're going to push these insects into areas they typically wouldn't be in. So when we go out to do an inspection in the area where we thought we will find them, we don't find them. And it that just means that that infestation is going to be more complicated to eradicate on our side because we don't know exactly where they are. Treating for these pests, it's really important that we get the products, the right products, into the areas where they're harboring. And if we don't do that, it's a more complicated process in order to get control. Not having a plan in place is something that businesses sometimes make the mistake of doing it. You want to be preventative, right? You want to be proactive when you're dealing with bed bugs. You want to know, even if you've never had an issue, what to do the moment you have one, as opposed to waiting and be reactive when you do have that issue. So that's a a big issue. Have a plan in place before it happens, not after it happens. And then sometimes waiting too long to act or not acting at all. The longer that infestation is there, the more it's going to reproduce, the larger it's going to become, the more places these bed bugs are going to move into, the harder it's going to be to get control.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, they're not going to just go away one day. Like we've had enough. We're good. No. Leave. There's probably also a safety risk of some DIY as well, right? If you're not a trained professional and you haven't been licensed or trained, there's a good possibility you're putting materials that could be more dangerous. Like I'm thinking in a hotel or something, you're treating something you shouldn't be, and then how many exposures could happen that shouldn't?
SPEAKER_02I've seen people try to do something that they think is is more safe than using something like alcohol, which is extremely flammable, and then setting fires and starting fires by trying to do something on their own with a product that you think is safe, but has some other risks that are not associated with actual exposure to the product, but some issues like flammability.
SPEAKER_01Oh, yeah. So definitely don't follow the kill it with fire motto. Definitely not. Not at all.
SPEAKER_02Unless it's a licensed pest control person doing a heat treatment. That's a different story.
SPEAKER_01Different, yeah.
SPEAKER_00But heat, not fire.
unknownCorrect.
SPEAKER_00Big difference. Yes. So, and you kind of touched on this in in your previous answer, but why is response speed so important in containing the problem? Especially when we're thinking about a business like a hotel.
SPEAKER_02Simply because the longer you wait, the larger the population it becomes and the more difficult it is to control. If we if there's a small infestation, we can eradicate those pretty easily, right? Or easier than we can if that population grows to a point. The larger that population becomes, the more hiding places these bugs are going to seek out and find, which means more thorough inspections need to be done. Um potentially more treatment applications need to be made. So it's really comes down to the amount of bed bugs are going to be in that space and the way it's going to be more complex to get rid of them during in a treatment option.
SPEAKER_00So that leads me to another question, which is how often then should the hotel staff be checking for bed bugs?
SPEAKER_02As often as they can. We talked a little bit about what are some things they do wrong, what some things that they should be doing are training their staff to do these types of inspections. You know, what does what does bed bug fecal matter look like? What do bed bugs look like? So as they're doing their daily activities, if they notice something, you know, they can report in, you know, the whole see something, say something thing. Having that education, having that knowledge passed on to their staff members to identify these as quickly as possible goes a long way to solving them quickly and then getting that business back, making money as quickly as possible.
SPEAKER_01And you said, you know, having a plan before you need one. So speaking of that plan, what expectation should a business have of their PMP to have a strong response plan? And maybe there's like there should be one proactively on the business side. There should be one when you're partnered with a company. So you've gone and made a good choice and hired a professional pest company to come out. What does a really strong plan look like?
SPEAKER_02It's a, as you mentioned, it's going to be a collaborative effort. It's going to be a plan between the business and their provider. So step one is what are the expectations and what are the responsibilities of the people that work at this location? I mean, who is responsible for reporting these infestations? What happens if an infestation gets reported to them? You know, what are the roles and responsibilities of a manager, of a housekeeper when they come in contact or are brought information regarding a bed bug infestation? So they they need a plan of attack. What are they going to do? Then they need to have a direct line to their provider. What are the contact information? That should all be provided to who is responsible for contacting their provider. And then once it gets to the point about, okay, we've identified that we have a bed bug infestation, we've communicated internally appropriately. Now we need to reach out to the pest control provider. Who's making that contact and what information are they sharing to the pest control provider? And then once it gets into our hands as pest control providers, we want to make sure that we're sending the appropriate people out with the appropriate training. We want to make sure that we have a scope of work that is certainly definitive of what we're going to do when we're there. Are we going to inspect first? Is it going to be we treat no matter what, or we do an inspection and then we do a treatment based on the results of what we find, which is what I think is the best way to go. Because sometimes even people that suspect they have bed bugs may have carpet beetles or maybe it is a tick, or maybe it's some other random insect that someone saw and they're not an entomologist, so they don't know. So they reported bed bugs and we get out there and it's not bed bugs at all. So that's great for everybody. We give it a clear bill of health, they clean the room, they put it back in service, and and we're good to go. But if it is in fact identified as bed bugs, you know, what a clear description of what the treatment process is to the client, right? So what are we going to do as a result of this identification? Is it going to be a chemical or conventional application? Are we doing heat treatments in some type of scenarios? You know, what is what is the expectation? What are we going to do for that customer? And then once we're done, a clear after action plan, you know, what are what are the expectations? What happens if you see something after we are out here and do a treatment? What are we going to do? What is the warranty period? What are the steps going to take if our treatment didn't work? So those are all, I think, parts of what a plan should be. As I mentioned earlier, uh certainly training for the customer on how to identify insects or bed bugs and and what to do once they think they see something is I think one of the most important things that sometimes we not only us but the customers are missing. So I know that was kind of a long-winded answer.
SPEAKER_00That was a lot of information, but I took it all in. You you mentioned a few different types of treatments. So what treatment methods are are most effective in your opinion?
SPEAKER_02Um well, we are doing mostly two different uh I put the treatments in two buckets. And those buckets are conventional treatments, which are the application of pesticides and or things like maybe steam. And then there's our true heat treatments, which are treating the entire space with hot air, right? So there's they're kind of those two buckets. They're both effective. It really depends on the scenario which one I would recommend over the other. Sometimes in severe infestation, cluttered areas, heat treatments are more effective. But in low-level infestations, even some more moderately level infestations, the conventional treatments with the products that we have today are as effective as well. I mean, they're we've made a major improvement in the products we have at our availability when it comes to bed bug treatments in the last you know five to seven years. So compared to where we were 10, 15 years ago, it's like night and day with what we have at our disposal to use to help help everybody with their bed bug problems.
SPEAKER_00Excellent.
SPEAKER_01Awesome. And you mentioned proper identification is a big key too, because we've all heard the stories or maybe experienced people saying, like, well, I have this bite on me, so it has to be a bed bug. And so we always caution folks, you can't just identify a pest based on a bite. But can you talk a little bit about traveling and sometimes what that timeline looks like? Because when you're trying to get to a root cause of a bed bug infestation, sometimes the timing of travel matters too a little bit, right?
SPEAKER_02Yeah. I mean, certainly bites, everyone reacts differently to bites, right? So I've met people, they have severe reactions five minutes after they're bitten by an insect. Some people don't react for days afterwards. So if you just showed up at a hotel and you're feeling a bite that day, the likelihood is you maybe picked up that bite a day or two before. It might not actually be at that location. So that's hard to explain to people, though. When you get a when you get an IRA customer at a place and you're telling them that most likely that reaction you're having happened a day or two ago, they don't they're not going to listen to that. And but also, who knows what actually bit them? To your point, we do not know what insect caused whatever reaction you're having. Even if it is, we don't even know if it is an insect that's causing that reaction. And unfortunately, we deal with some folks in the medical community that kind of point people in a direction, and there's really no medical way to determine that either. So it's sometimes public perception is well, I got this information from my doctor, they told me I have bed bugs. We do a very thorough inspection, we find no bed bugs. Bites can be a symptom that just means we have to do more investigation. So if you're getting bitten and you've started getting bitten within the last couple of days, you know, what we want to do is do a thorough inspection of your sleeping areas to rule out bed bugs. If we find bed bugs, yep, that's probably what was biting you. We just still don't know for sure, but we know that a pest, a biting pest is present. If we do one, two, three inspections, we never find any bed bugs, it's probably not a bed bug that bit you. It's probably, you know, a mosquito or um, you know, a noceum or you know, a flea or a trigger, or who knows what else it could be because they all bite and reactions to them can all be similar.
SPEAKER_01Sure. That's why I plead with PMPs. Please find a body. Find the pest. Do not sell treatment without finding the pest.
SPEAKER_02I stress that with all of our service people when we're trying to recommend a treatment to one of our current customers. Hey, is this actually a bed bug? Well, please find evidence that it is. And sometimes we won't get a body, right? Um, sometimes we'll get a photo. And sometimes photos are okay. Like I can some, if a general manager at a location will go into a room and says, here it is, take a little snap with their photo because they don't want to collect it. I'm okay with that as long as it's a clear enough photo that I can make an ID. And phones have gotten so much better, and that information is so much easier to use than it used to be. Those are helpful too, without actually seeing a body, but no, always one of some sort of specimen or sample if we can absolutely get one.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, I think a nice clear picture on a brand new iPhone or Android is a little bit different than my No. A flip phone back in the day. Yeah. Yeah. Technology has definitely gotten better. It's helped a lot. Are there, uh, Eric, any tools that PMPs would bring on a bed bug inspection versus just a regular general pest inspection? Are there any tools that they should bring with them into a business to help aid that inspection?
SPEAKER_02Not that I would say are different than any other inspection. Sometimes, you know, just a loop magnifier is helpful. But as I mentioned before, we're looking for signs of fecal material and some shed casing. So, you know, a flashlight, their eyes, their minds, and maybe a loop is kind of the only things that I would think would be needed for an inspection. Sometimes people like to use things like lint rollers and they'll collect a sample of maybe some debris and you can look at it that way too. But nothing too crazy or out of the ordinary.
SPEAKER_00I have a burning question. I'm going to shift gears a little bit and go back to brand reputation. There was, and I don't know if this website is still in existence anymore, but there used to be a website that kept track of hotels where people found bed bugs. And for a long time, like I, you know, just in conversation with people and they find out that you work in the pest management industry, they they'll talk about bed bugs and say, like, oh, before I stayed in this hotel, I would go to this, you know, go on the internet to see if they have bed bugs or not. And that used to make me crazy because bed bugs are probably more common than people think. And the more reputable hotels are gonna take care of it. Yeah, you may have seen a bed bug and and somebody's gonna say that on this website, but that doesn't necessarily mean that that hotel, quote unquote, has bed bugs. And then vice versa, you might not see a hotel listed. You remember that site?
SPEAKER_02Like Yeah, yeah, I remember that. And I've always had an issue with those types of sites because at this point, now, I mean, we're dealing with it was though at the early 2000s, so it's it's 20 plus years that the United States has had growing bed bug issues. Yeah, we took a little dip when COVID happened, mostly because people weren't traveling. And as I mentioned before, we carry the bed bugs everywhere. So if we're not going somewhere, they're not either. But it's been, you know, they're here, they're established in the US. Any hotel that says they have never had a bed bug issue up to this point is really, really lucky or just lying to you. So they've had them. And there's nowhere you're gonna go in the US that doesn't have or hasn't had bed bugs at some point. So the the question is how do you keep yourself safe? And also how do you make sure that the businesses you're go visiting, you're you're patronizing, you know, making sure that they have the plans in place to help if and when they happen.
SPEAKER_00Which is exactly my response to people. It's it's not about whether or not you f see that they had bed bugs, somebody had reported bed bugs. It's it's really how the hotel deals with bed bugs.
SPEAKER_02And stop looking at that if I used a pest control company with a vehicle parked inside of a out of side of a hotel thinking that's a bad thing. That's a good thing. They're there to help and to solve a problem. The ones that don't hire the people are the ones you have to worry about. So yeah, I always look at it. If I see a restaurant even that has a pest control vehicle in the back, I'm like, okay, good. They got somebody. They're they're there to help manage those issues rather than not doing anything at all.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. Or they're preventing. Well, this has been really enlightening. I I think I could talk all day about this stuff. But I know, Eric, we at some point we have to let you go back to your bed bug job. So, but we really appreciate you taking the time today to share your insights. And this was some really good information. Thank you.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, absolutely. Thank you anytime.
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