Assessment-based pest management to treat bed bugs

Tommy Powell

Assessment-based pest management, or APM, was created for the pest management industry and works well with public health pests like bed bugs. When treating bed bugs, I think we all tend to make an assessment about the level of infestation or population before doing any control measures. With APM, we can use our assessment and inspection to treat each infestation differently because they are all unique.

Treating every bed bug infestation with a single protocol can lead to failure. With APM, you can create a treatment protocol to address each level of infestation: heavy, medium and low. Each protocol addresses the amount of prep needed before treatment and the types of treatment needed. Treatment types can include mechanical control, treatment locations and the number of follow-up treatments performed. During your follow-up inspections, you can make new assessments and adjust your protocol based on what you see.