Bed Bugs, the new pest control epidemic has begun! A.N.T.T.S = A North Texas Termite Specialist has seen a huge rise in bed bug calls in the last 6 months more than ever seen before. Grapevine, Keller & Southlake homes are not immune to this bed bug insurgence. We have been receiving calls from all over DFW about these nasty, itchy, blood sucking insects. The crazy thing is that myself I have been doing pest control for almost 30 years now and have never heard of any bed bug problems outside of the stories I have read about in the history of our pest control industry. When we have a new problem arise we always do research on that particular pest and try to learn as much about them. Well with bed bugs being so new and the use of the internet our customers are reading and learning as much as we are. This is a good thing I believe because it helps the customer be prepared for the cost of the estimate they are about to get from us. Bed bugs need so much attention to detail, more than any other bug we deal with, even termites! When we hit the customer with the cost they are more likely to understand after they have read about what exactly goes into a full blown clean out. Because of the nature of the bed bug they can be very hard to totally eliminate if you don’t get them all or use something that will last long enough to still be active for the eggs when they hatch. We uses a growth regulator additive to our pest control product that helps with this problem and with the unseen eggs. Most of the cost in a bed bug treatment goes into the time to do it right! You cannot just be a baseboard jockey and splash the baseboards and pipelines as you would for other pest. You need to pay attention to detail and spend the time treating every nook and cranny. We actually use a scent detection bed bug trained dog (certified) on all treatments of 2 rooms or more included in our fee. What we do is have the dog handler go in before us and his bed bug sniffing dog (Starsky)  will inspect the home and wherever the dog hits the handler (Phil) will mark each spot with a red dot sticker making it easy for us to treat these hot spots. We also go beyond and treat preventative around the rest of the home. Some of the time consuming things we do that help in ensuring we don’t have to go back on retreats are dusting under carpet tack strips, treating outlets, removing all dresser draws, hitting every crack & crevice in a effected area. Now we have had great results in doing the traditional pesticide treatments but have been monitoring other treatment methods. We are members of many pest control forums and are watching and learning everyday to see what really works the best with these alternative methods ? Heat treatments are one we are looking at but the jury is not in yet on them and until we are 100% sure about it’s effectiveness on bed bugs then we are hesitant on investing in the equipment. So with that said we are still going the route of what’s been working for us and are pretty happy and so are our prior customers with what we are working with now. Just be aware that this is a national (world) problem and you need to be mindful of this bed bug problem and take care in what you do when you visit a motel, hotel or where your kids are sitting on the couch of a friends house playing video games that they are not picking up bed bug hitchhikers and taking them home.

On August 28, 2011   /   Ants, Bed Bugs, Fleas, Pest Control, Roaches, Spiders, Termites