Thousands of People Line Up for Bed Bug Webinar

Over 3,000 people registered for a recent webinar on bed bugs hosted by the StopPests in Housing Program of the Northeastern IPM Center. WebEx, the webinar hosting provider, enabled the first 1,000 users to sign in, as promised in contractual agreements. The number of people who actually watched the session may have been much higher, since many people may have gathered around one computer or viewed the recording. The event took place on September 10.

The webinar is called “Lowering Costs with an In-House Bed Bug Prevention and Management Plan.”

The recorded webinar is available at http://www.stoppests.org/vtechbedbug.

Dr. Dini Miller and Molly Stedfast from Virginia Tech shared their extensive knowledge on what works in bed bug prevention and management in multifamily housing. The audience was mainly from the affordable housing community including property managers, maintenance staff, contract officers, and service coordinators. Professor Miller is Virginia’s Urban Pest Management Specialist and heads up Virginia Tech’s Dodson Urban Pest Management Lab. She’s an internationally recognized expert on bed bug biology, behavior, and control. Molly Stedfast is the director of the new Bed Bug and Urban Pest Information Center at Virginia Tech.

Dr. Miller’s stressed “bed bugs aren’t going away” and developing a plan for prevention, monitoring and management is vital for all who work in housing. Attendees learned about the importance of inspection, monitoring devices, staff education, and working with pest management companies. The pros and cons of treatment options including heat, diatomaceous earth, and chemicals were discussed but all who attended now know there is no silver bullet in bed bug control. Success depends on an integrated pest management (IPM) approach combining varied methods of monitoring, prevention and treatment.

The interest in this webinar shows there is much demand for information on bed bug prevention and management.

“To my knowledge, this is the first time this has happened and is the biggest WebEx webinar we’ve had,” said, M. Scott Walters, Instructional Technology Specialist, CIT, who successfully supported the event and its massive server load.

More information about StopPests in housing can be found at StopPests.org including information about future webinars, training and consulting opportunities. You can connect with StopPests through subscribing to StopPests blog, liking the StopPests in Housing Facebook page, or following @StopPests on Twitter and YouTube.

StopPests’ goal is to improve pest control in affordable housing by teaching everyone who works, lives, and plays in housing how to use integrated pest management. Since 2007 StopPests has worked with affordable housing agencies across the country to improve pest control through integrated pest management with funding from the US Department of Housing and Urban Development’s Office of Healthy Homes and Lead Hazard Control through the US Department of Agriculture, NIFA.