BILLINGS -- The Montana Rescue Mission is waging a long-term battle against bedbugs at the men's shelter on Minnesota Avenue.

"We are attacking it with everything we've got," said mission Executive Director Gary Drake.

Two shelter residents, who asked that their names not be used, said the problem has been particularly bad lately, with some people refusing even to use the shelter and sleeping on the streets instead.

Tracy Hansen, manager of the men's shelter, said that on the contrary, the problem seems to have peaked this summer and has been steadily improving ever since.

"It has been a battle, but we've got a pretty good handle on it now," he said.

Hansen has been at the men's shelter for nine years and said there was never a problem with bedbugs until about two years ago. The shelter has been dealing with them ever since, changing policies, replacing furnishings and treating areas of the mission with chemicals.

"I've become quite an expert on them," Hansen said. "They're extremely hardy and quite prolific."

He said a female can lay 15 to 20 eggs a day, and one bedbug might feed four or five times a night, sucking blood from its host. Newborn bedbugs look like tiny red dots, Hansen said, but full-grown bugs are about the size of a tick. They are not known to carry diseases, Hansen said, but they leave a nasty welt that can be infected if the victim scratches it with dirty fingernails.

More than a year ago, the mission spent $5,500 replacing all 27 wooden bunk beds in the men's shelter dormitory with steel bunks that give the bugs no openings to hole up in or to build nests. All the wooden beds at the mission's Women's and Family Shelter on First Avenue North were replaced at the same time, Hansen said.

Ecolab Pest Elimination Services has been coming at least once a month to do treatments at the shelter, and shelter workers also use a nontoxic powder to treat areas in which bedbugs are found. All the mattresses were replaced at one point, and sheets are now washed daily.

Blankets are also washed regularly, Hansen said, and soon they will be dried in a large commercial dryer, which will kill any bedbugs.

After initially making good progress against the bedbugs, there was another outbreak over the summer. As Drake explained, "We have so many people bringing in so many things on their persons."

Hansen said the problem this summer and fall has been concentrated in the chapel, which handles overflow sleepers. Although the dormitory sleeps 54 people and 20 more men involved in "change-of-life programs" sleep in several common rooms, as many as 40 men a night will stretch out on mats on the floor of the chapel. People are asked not to bring in bags or their own blankets, but they still end up bringing in bedbugs in their clothes.

Over the summer, mission workers ripped out the baseboard all around the chapel, where they found several nests in decaying wood and plaster. Those areas were treated, but there are still occasional finds, Hansen said. Over the summer, he might find 10 to 15 live bugs a day. On Thursday, he said, he found two.

Barbara Schneeman, the communications and advocacy manager at the Yellowstone City-County Health Department, said the department hasn't heard of any problems with bedbugs anywhere else in Billings. In a given year, she said, there might be one or two calls about bedbugs.

The Montana Rescue Mission is in the midst of an $8.4 million fund drive to build a facility that will consolidate its services for homeless men, women and children on a campus two blocks east of Deering Clinic.