Bed bugs in Michigan

Bed bugs travel. They ride home in luggage, backpacks, used furniture and secondhand mattresses. In Michigan, the common sources are hotel stays, college dorms in places like Ann Arbor, East Lansing and Kalamazoo, apartments with shared walls, and furniture picked up from the curb or bought online. Summer travel season often leads to more calls in late summer and early fall.

Cleanliness has nothing to do with it. A spotless house can get bed bugs from one suitcase. What matters is catching them early, before they spread from the bed to couches, other bedrooms or the unit next door. A small infestation in one mattress is far easier and cheaper to treat than bugs spread through a whole house.

Michigan's health department has published bed bug guidance for residents, landlords, schools and shelters. Your local health department is a good first call if you rent and want to know how your building should handle a report, or if you work in a setting like a school or care facility where bed bugs have been found.

Professional heat treatment raises the whole room or unit to a temperature that kills bed bugs and their eggs, usually in a single day. It works well but costs more and requires careful prep. Chemical treatment uses several products applied to cracks, seams and furniture over two or three visits, about two weeks apart, so newly hatched bugs get hit before they can breed.

Many companies combine the two: heat for the main rooms, plus residual products and mattress encasements to catch survivors. Follow-up inspections matter. A treatment is not finished until a follow-up visit, or monitors placed under the bed legs, show no new activity for several weeks. Ask how many follow-up visits are included in the price.

Do not use bug bombs or total release foggers for bed bugs. They do not reach bugs hiding in seams and cracks, they can scatter bugs into other rooms and neighboring units, and they create a fire and health hazard when misused. Rubbing alcohol sprayed on furniture is also a fire risk and should be avoided.

In multi-unit buildings, bed bugs move through wall voids, outlets and shared laundry areas. Treating one unit while the neighbors stay infested often fails. Tell your landlord or property manager in writing as soon as you find signs, so adjoining units above, below and beside yours can be inspected at the same time.

Before treatment, the company will give you a prep list. Usually that means bagging and drying clothes and bedding on high heat, decluttering around beds, and not moving items to other rooms or a friend's place. Skipping prep is one of the most common reasons treatments need to be repeated, so follow the list closely.