Once rare in North America, bedbugs are on the rise.  Bedbugs are most often found in hotels, motels, hostels, shelters, apartment complexes and any overnight facility where large numbers of people come and go. That includes summer camps.

Because bedbugs hide in small crevices, they can sneak into camp on luggage, furniture, clothing, pillows, boxes, and other objects. The bugs can hide in beds, floors, furniture, wood, and paper trash during the day.

Last summer, a camp in Maryland became infested with bedbugs. All parents had to be notified so that they could have their homes inspected and treated if necessary.

People who run camps (like hotel and hospital managers) need to devise a system for inspecting for signs of bed bugs. Visitors will bring bed bugs to camp, and other campers will bring them home.

And parents need to take a little extra precautions these days. Put your child’s pillow in a zippered Protect-A-Bed encasement. Also include a mattress encasement and encourage the child to put it on their bunk. Pack your child’s gear in BugZip luggage encasements and advise to keep their stuff zipped up. Kids loathe creepy crawly bugs that bite and make them itch. This will not be a hard sell.

It’s also worth taking precautions when kids come home after the summer.  Duffel bags, soft backpacks, and clothing can be washed and dried, sleeping bags can be carefully treated, and other items can be inspected in an attempt to avoid bringing home any hitchhiking bed bugs. If you suspect bedbugs, call a professional NJ, NYC pest control company that knows how to eliminate those little buggers.

One Long Island resident stated the worst mosquitoes are the Asian Tiger variety. These mosquitoes have distinctive black and white stripes. The resident claims they don’t back off and you feel them when they bite. Going outside is not as much fun as it used to be.

Stagnant water areas are great places for insect breeding so try and eliminate them. Apparently water left on top of pool covers from the recent rains are major locations for mosquito breeding.

Mosquitoes are most active from June through October so enjoy the critters why you can. Oops, I mean try to endure them until the mosquito season is over. I wonder if there are any mosquito repellent containers left on the shelves in Long Island stores. It’s amazing how such a little creature can cause so much havoc.

During the past decade as bedbugs bounced back with a vengeance, media reports about bedbugs invading even the Magic Kingdom periodically surface. This time it happened to a family from the Chicago area a few weeks ago, according to a CBS news report.

The Pecina family says that they stayed at Disney’s All-Star Resort early last month and on the last day Steve Pecina woke up feeling as if something was biting him.

“I pulled the sheet off the bed that I was sleeping under and they were just crawling around on that sheet,” Steve said. “So they were between the sheet that was on top of me and the sheet that was underneath me.”  Pecina’s wife, who says her body was dotted with bites, counted over 200 bedbugs in their room.

Does this mean that Disney resort hotels are dirty?  No. Not at all. A lot of people assume that if a place has bedbugs it’s kind of a fleabag hotel, or not very clean, but cleanliness doesn’t really have anything to do with it. I’ve received calls about bedbugs at four-star hotels. There was a couple from Farmingdale who brought bedbugs back with them from a really ritzy resort in Florida. The person who was in that room before probably just happened to pick them up from somewhere else, and it had nothing to do with hygiene.

Moral of the story here?  Your best defense is a good offense. Take along your Protect-A-Bed bug bite proof mattress covers and use BugZip luggage and drawer liner bags. If you suspect you’ve brought home bedbugs as a travel souvenir, don’t hesitate to call a professional NJ, NYC pest control company.