Hi All,
My main question is what is the best way to use active monitors to draw bugs out and eventually determine if the bugs are all gone in a mostly-vacant condo unit. I have been searching the forum but I'm still hoping for some better direction. I'll describe our situation below. Thanks everyone for your comments - I am very thankful I've found this site.
We have a small condo that we rent out as a vacation rental. We also use it for ourselves. Sometime in December someone brought some bugs in and we are still working on getting rid of them. We found out about them mid-Jaunuary. The infestation seems to be localized to only one bedroom and we've only found them on the bed, frame and headboard. We are an upper unit on an end, so only the lower unit below the "ground zero" bedroom could be a possibility for bug transfer - I would think. Our infestation was pretty light and thus far no one in any other units has complained of bugs, so I'm hopeful it is just us.
Since discovering this we've cancelled all our reservations and had the entire condo treated on 1/20. We have been back up to the condo every weekend except President's weekend, but we left the ground zero bedroom vacant until this past weekend. So it went 4 weekends with no one in it. I did have a Bed Bug Beacon actively running in it for 2 weeks and had 2 re-checks from Orkin which turned up nothing. (Yes, I know, in hindsight we should have been staying in that bedroom - we plan to stay in there now.) We were feeling pretty confident the bugs were gone but this weekend my son got some bites so I scoured the headboard and found one adult and then quite a few younger ones in screw holes in the headboard.
We have a retreatment today or tomorrow and then we will be back up there this weekend. We have the mattresses in encasements. We bagged up and threw away the headboard. We have a ZapBug that we've been using as we come back and forth between our main house and the condo so as not to infest our house (so far so good!). We plan to bring the Zap Bug up and heat treat the side tables and possibly the paintings on the walls in that room (basically, whatever will fit).
But - what can we do to draw any remaining bugs out and to be sure they are gone if we are not staying there full time to act as bait? I don't have much faith in the BBB (sorry David, if you read this). There were definitely bugs in there and I ran it for 2 weeks following all the instructions and found nothing. Is the Nightwatch any good? I'm willing to pay the money if it will be an effective tool as well as give us peace of mind. I've read a little bit about Nuvan Prostrips here? Does anyone use those or would you recommend them for this situation? Are there any other active monitors that I'm missing?
We are in a fairly small community and not near any metropolitan areas, so the pest control options are limited.
Thank you everyone for your help!!