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 limited 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 Armor & Shield 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 Armor & Shield 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.

Armor & Shield 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 Armor & Shield 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 Armor & Shield bed bug heat treatment.

Who benefits from a Armor & Shield 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 Armor & Shield 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 405-698-6090 safely kill all your bed bugs with heat today.

Don’t take our word for it

Armor and Shield Pest Control is truly the best pest control company in Oklahoma. I used their services to free our mattresses from bed bugs.

Mia Jacton
5 Stars: ★ ★ ★ ★ ★
April 19, 2019