Managing Bed Bugs in Multifamily Housing

A community-wide bed bug management program was evaluated in a study just published by Richard Cooper, Changlu Wang, and Narinderpal Singh.

A model IPM program for managing bed bugs was implemented in an affordable housing community for elderly and disabled residents in New Jersey. The IPM program included resident and staff education, initial inspection of apartments using Climbup® interceptors, and treatment of infestations. Initial treatments included laundering of bed linens, encasement of mattress and box springs, vacuuming to remove visible bed bugs, and steaming. Pesticide applications during initial treatments were limited to diatomaceous earth and Phantom aerosol.

Follow-up service visits continued every two weeks until no bed bugs were captured in interceptors, seen during inspection, or reported by the residents for three consecutive visits.

At the onset of the study, property management was unaware of 71% of the infestations. These results show that depending on residents to report bed bug infestations is unreliable, which may lead to increased infestation size and further spread of bed bugs to other apartments.

Cooper's experiment is the first research to document the success of a bed bug IPM protocol in an entire apartment complex. Key findings of the study included:

• Reporting of bed bug activity by residents was unreliable. 
• By the end of the 12-month study, a 92% elimination rate of treated infestations was achieved, reducing the community-wide infestation rate from 15 to 2.2%.
• The high level of success achieved in the study required a great deal of persistence and vigilance. An average of seven visits were required in the apartments where bed bugs were eliminated.
• The use of interceptors proved to be valuable tool in the IPM program. Ninety-four percent of the apartments identified through proactive inspections were detected using interceptors. In visual inspections conducted in 286 units where interceptors detected no bugs, only four additional infestations were found.
• Control strategies relied mostly on non-chemical measures. No pesticides were ever applied to beds; instead, mattress and box springs were encased, and visible bed bugs were removed or killed by vacuuming, steaming, or physical removal with forceps. When pesticides were used, applications were mostly targeted to areas bed bug activity was seen. Just three of 66 apartments where bed bug activity was high received treatment of baseboards with liquid residuals. An average of 201 g of finished product was applied to treat 66 apartments, which is >90% less compared with other reported field studies.
• Average labor and chemical costs for the 12-month IPM program for 66 apartments was $456 per apartment, a figure in line with other programs and which the authors believe can be reduced in subsequent years of a contract. Proactive inspections accounted for 54% of the costs, while treatment accounted for 46% of the costs. 

The study’s bed bug IPM program provides a model that is both effective and economically practical for use in affordable housing communities suffering from chronic bed bug infestations.

You can read the publication in its entirety here:  https://www.researchgate.net/publication/271589914_Evaluation_of_a_model_community-wide_bed_bug_management_programin_affordable_housing