Can bed bugs grow resistant to heat?
by Tommy Underhill, GreenTech Heat
February 22, 2021
“Every living organism has a thermal death point,” says Dr. Mike Linford, founder and CEO of GreenTech Heat. This applies to cockroaches, WDOs, and bed bugs. When lethal temperatures are achieved at the hardest-to-heat locations and held for the requisite duration of time, a 100% mortality is achieved every time.
Compared to strategies such as the use of pesticides or insecticides, bed bug responses to extreme thermal environments has been less studied. A study published in the February 2019 PLoS ONE entitled Bed bugs (Cimex lectularius L.) exhibit limited ability to develop heat resistance by Ashbrook, Scharf, Bennett, and Gondhalekar from Purdue University looks into the perceived phenomenon where live bed bugs can be found within a treatment area following a heat treatment, possibly due to adaptive heat resistance.
By attempting to breed “heat resistant” bed bugs across multiple generations, the team at Purdue found that sublethal heat exposures reduces bed bug feeding and increases life cycle development time. No bed bugs developed “heat resistance” and all bed bugs exhibited limiteds ability to tolerate insecticidal heat. The study concludes: One possible explanation for why bed bugs could remain after a heat treatment is that they were exposed to sublethal heat, escaped from high-temperature locations or were introduced to the domicile at a later time.
The Total Shield Bed Bug Treatments bed bug heat treatment specifies measuring treatment heat at the hardest-to-heat location, and expressly does not assume surface temperatures are representative of cooler locations bed bugs may be harboring.
If bed bugs have found a way into your home, business, restaurant, apartment building, student housing, hotel, church, airplane, or medical facility, we have a solution that kills 100% of all bed bugs in just 1 day with no toxic chemicals and no resistance in the future.
It’s clean, safe heat.
In addition to killing all bed bugs, a Total Shield Bed Bug Treatments one-day heat treatment kills most other insects in the treatment area, including dust mites and cockroaches. Unlike chemicals, heat kills all the bed bug eggs which can keep them from showing up again in another week or so.
Heat is the professional’s choice for killing bed bugs.
Who trusts heat?
Property management companies, homeless shelters, governmental agencies, student housing coordinators, senior housing managers, and multi-unit property managers often ask why people trust heat when combatting bed bug infestations.
Total Shield Bed Bug Treatments has a university-proven methodology that quickly and efficiently kills bed bugs and their eggs: heat. And Purdue proves bed bugs cannot become resistant to a heat treatment.
A Total Shield Bed Bug Treatments heat treatment will kill 100% bed bugs wherever they hide: below baseboards, behind headboards, in electronics, along furniture seams, between a mattress and box spring, in a bedside table. No spraying toxic or irritating chemicals that can require weeks to achieve results. You are bed bug free the same day with a Total Shield Bed Bug Treatments bed bug heat treatment.
Who benefits from a Total Shield Bed Bug Treatments one-day bed bug heat treatment?
- Homeowners
- Retail establishments
- Government facilities
- Hospitals and emergency rooms
- Urgent care facilities
- Medical offices
- Retirement homes
- Ambulances
- Aircraft
- Busses
- Rental car fleets
Heat will make your home or business a better place by killing bed bugs and other insects, dust mites, bacteria and other microbes. Trust Total Shield Bed Bug Treatments to kill all your insect and microbial pests. We do it right and do it safely the first time— in a single one-day treatment that even prevents an immediate reinfestation by killing all the eggs. Call us at 717-478-HEAT safely kill all your bed bugs with heat today.
Don’t take our word for it
It’s been 2-1/2 months of that blissful feeling of getting into bed with all of our uninvited guests. I brought the bed bugs home from working in-home care. It is not any one person’s fault — these guys are the hitchhikers from H _ _ _. We sprayed, bombed, powdered and turned the rooms upside down and picked bugs and put them into soapy water (soapy-otherwise they will swim right out). When we called and talked to Bill, we KNEW this was our solution. Of course it makes sense to heat the entire house. We even had a quote from a “large” corporation that said they would “treat” 4 rooms for a price 1/3 higher than Bill’s. If we had gone with Bill right away, we would have saved so much money in bombs, sprays, laundering, and mattress covers — but also time and aggravation. The house also felt so fresh after the treatment. Bill takes the time with you for you to feel comfortable in your decision. We left for the entire day and felt completely comfortable with Bill having the run of the house. Poor Bill, though. We had our home treated on the day of the first winter storm in November. That man spent longer hours at our place due to the extreme winds and cold. What a trooper. We would say that Bill is the type of person that we now call a friend. He is welcome at our home anytime.
Peggy Showalter
5 Stars: ★ ★ ★ ★ ★
December 18, 2018