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Bed-bug expert Ralph H. Maestre explains how to spot bed bugs, bed bug bites, how to get rid of them and how to protect against a bed bug infestation. Maestre sites the increase in travel and immigration for the resurgence of bed bugs. "The times were changing; new immigrants were moving into the neighborhood and were bringing the bed bugs with them," he writes in, 'The Bedbug Book.' He also sites used pieces of furniture as carriers of bed bugs, warning people against picking up furniture that has been discarded on the street. Read more below.

Chapter 5: Case Studies

First Encounter

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Oc56_-wuPVc

Within three days, we returned for the treatment. They tried their best to prepare. It wasn't good enough. They hadn't removed anything from the floors, and all of the bagged items were left on the bed. They didn't remove all the clothing from the closets. At this time, we didn't have a policy of walking away when someone wasn't ready. We just treated the best we could. The other problem was a warranty. We gave them one. What a mistake that was.

When a pest control company goes into an apartment such as this to treat for bed bugs, the technician tries to set up a safe zone. This helps in moving items around the room. There was a team of six technicians on this project. In this one building, we had both apartments to service: one team upstairs and one downstairs. One was an easy job to perform and the other a nightmare. Bed bugs were found everywhere in the first floor apartment. I would find out during treatment that this family was using the living room as a bedroom as well--that came to a total of ten individuals living in a two bedroom apartment. Wow! I felt very bad for them and the clients upstairs.

What we didn't know at this time was that one of the products we were using, Suspend SC, was no longer as effective against bed bugs. Resistance was developing. As each generation of bed bugs is born, they carry with them the genetic information from their parents. If we expose one hundred bed bugs to a product and kill 95 percent of them, those are pretty good odds. The five that are left will breed the next generation with more resistance so now you have 10 percent to 20 percent alive. The next generation after that may have up to 25 percent survivors.

This continues until as long as the same product or family of products is used. The problem is that until recently, the pest management industry has had primarily only one family of product available to use against bed bugs, the pyrethroids. It is now known according to a study by Dr. Michael Potter of the University of Kentucky, that a strain of bed bugs we supplied him from New York City, Far Rockaway region, is resistant up to three hundred times the label rate of Suspend SC.

We had to return to this location several times over the next thirty days to fulfill http://ge.tt/4DMAUnd2/v/0 our contract and to control this infestation. We would have to perform many treatments over the next several months before the management would find it too expensive to continue working with us.

I don't know if they http://www.tuugo.us/Companies/aaa-pest-control-control_8000968/0310003519937 ever got complete eradication of the bed bug infestation at this location. We as a pest management company learned to change our preparation procedures and treatment procedures due to our experience with this account.

Again, the level of tolerance those individuals had amazes me. The clutter and level of infestation that would drive many of us mad or insane is just plain normal to many other individuals. When individuals accept that somehow it is OK to live under these conditions, that is going to allow bed bugs to escalate over the next several years as the infestations get worse.

http://abcnews.go.com/GMA/Books/read-excerpt-ralph-maestres-bedbug-book/story?id=12965861