As a PMP handling bed bugs, does your prep sheet require customers to empty drawers and closets and launder all items of clothing? Do you require customers to clear items from the surfaces of furniture and store personal belongings in plastic bins? Do you find that customers frequently fail to follow and achieve the prep sheet instructions?
If you have answered “Yes” to any or all the above questions, you may want to look at how Aprehend® can improve this situation for both you and your customers. The Aprehend® prep sheet outlines a minimum bed bug protocol for the prep phase.
This is simple for customers to follow and ensures a favorable environment for technicians to conduct service. This protocol is made possible by the reliable long-term residual efficacy (up to 3 months) provided by Aprehend®’s bed bug treatment.
Where Other Protocols Go Long
Do a bit of online research, and you’ll find plenty of resources describing the typical bed bug protocol that many PMPs follow when treating a customer’s bed bugs.
The research done on bed bug treatments over the years shows that customer cooperation is a vital part of the process. That means that if the customer fails to complete the room preparation as requested, more work is created for the PMPs, which increases costs.
It is reasonable for a bed bug protocol to ask customers to clean up clothes from the floor and bag the loose items that form clutter. However, problems may arise when a PMP wants a customer to remove clothes from drawers and other items from cabinets and storage pieces.
This extra work presents a quandary: if customers do it (especially if they fail to follow PMP specifications while doing it), any bed bugs in these areas will be disturbed and move somewhere else. That can make the PMP’s job more difficult and increase treatment costs.
On the other hand, a PMP using traditional bed bug treatments could offer to move these items for the customer in an effort to keep costs low, since PMPs already know how to do what they need. But the argument against this is that customers do not want PMPs essentially rummaging through their possessions.
You can see how such requirements in bed bug protocols can eat up a great deal of time and money, neither of which customers typically have to waste.
What is the solution for these kinds of messy situations, then?
How Aprehend®’s Bed Bug Protocol Works
The trick with Aprehend®’s preparation protocol is that it is thorough without requiring your customers to disrupt their lifestyles too rigorously, such as by emptying drawers, closets, etc. Our product makes it so complete upending of a room’s layout is not necessary.
However, there are still certain steps customers should take to allow Aprehend® to do its job. The closer your customers adhere to our home preparation protocol, the faster they can expect Aprehend® to produce results for them.
For instance, our prep sheet asks that your customers take the time to clean up all clothes that are sitting on the floor and hanging on chairs, wash and dry them in hot temperatures, and then store all the laundry in a sealed garbage bag until after our treatment is finished. We recommend the same intense cleaning method for all bedding.
Our bed bug protocol prep sheet also asks pest management customers to move their furniture away from the walls. Then, they should clean and vacuum the baseboards to remove dust. Once this is finished, we suggest that customers empty the vacuum canister into a plastic bag and throw it away in an outside garbage can. This will remove any presence of bed bugs from those areas of the house.
To ensure Aprehend® works as intended, PMPs should have their customers avoid treated areas for several hours afterward and not use any pesticides around the Aprehend® barriers. Doing this will ruin the fungal spores and render the treatment ineffectual.
Why Aprehend® Bed Bug Treatment Is Simpler
Unlike chemicals, the formulation of Aprehend®’s bed bug home treatment contains millions of fungal spores that readily attach to the insect cuticle. Long-term contact with the spray residue is not required since the particles stick to the bed bugs immediately on contact. Furthermore, bed bugs carry the spores back to their harborages, where they are spread among the population by direct contact.
In this way, Aprehend® targets the bed bugs in inaccessible places, without the need to empty dressers and closets to access them. A simple 2” spray band applied around the base perimeter of furniture items ensures that bed bugs harboring within have to cross the spray bands when they emerge in search of a blood meal.
Direct spray contact is not necessary, and with up to 3 months’ residual efficacy, even the worst bed bug infestations can be eradicated without the disruption of traditional full-prep bed bug protocol for home health.