Bedbugs

In My Humble Opinion
1

Bedbugs. I have them.

I have been relying on my landlord’s exterminator, but I’m increasingly coming to the conclusion that he doesn’t have a clue. What I’m doing so far:

Two weeks ago the exterminator sprayed down all the surfaces of the bed with something. Today, he did it again, and also sprayed the walls.

While that was happening, I had all of the blankets in the drier on high heat for an hour, a process I’ve repeated several times since.

After the spray dried the first time, I vacuumed up all of the dead bugs, and emptied the vacuum outside. Once that was done, I closed the bedroom door, taped up the edges, and haven’t been back in since then, until today, with the second spraying.

Before sealing the bedroom, I took out enough clothes to get me through, put them through a drier cycle (or, for those things for which that seemed iffy, a few days in the freezer), and now have them stacked on a table in the living room.

For the past two weeks, I’ve been sleeping on a mattress (that came from my mom’s house, clean) on my living room floor.

On advice from a friend, I got a big plastic bag to encase the mattress in.

I also got some diatomaceous earth, and used it to draw an outline around the mattress on the carpet, and also applied it liberally on the bases of walls where I’ve seen live bugs. Both the bag and the diatomaceous earth came after I’d been sleeping on the temporary bed for a few days.

And, of course, whenever I see live bugs, I’m squishing them.

Is there anything I’m doing wrong? The exterminator said that the diatomaceous earth would only make things worse, but that’s contrary to everything I’ve seen online, and he couldn’t explain how it would make things worse. He also thought that the clothes sitting out were a problem, but couldn’t offer any advice on what to do instead.

And is there anything else I should be doing?

2

Drawing a line is the wrong way to apply the DE.

Get a squeeze bottle like you see for ketchup, put a quarter cup of DE in the bottom. Now cover the top and shake, then squeeze the bottle so an almost invisible dust comes out. Apply it to cracks and anything or area you think is affected. This works, I’ve used this technique with great success.

Alternatively drag your mattress out into the freezing temps for a couple of days!

Wishing you Good Luck!

3

We had a lot of success with Cedarcide.

4

Seems like you have done everything wrong. In short the best advice is do nothing different till you research your foe. Most of what you did makes them go deeper into hiding and establish new colonies. It may delay biting a bit but that means they are winning.

1: Don’t change your place of sleeping, that will encourage splinter colonies as they seek blood out (actually CO2 to lead them to blood). Sleep and get bitten, wear a bug net over your head to prevent bites to your face.
2: Spraying insecticide drives them deeper, hardening their defenses.
3: Just a point of interest they can be dormant for about 6 months making one think they are gone.
4: Food grade DE is ok to use (non- food grade may be carcinogenic IIRC), but you should use a puffer to apply it. It can help but multiple methods normally are better. Apply on any approach to the bed sleeping surface.

5: The thing that did them in for me is a fungus - Beauveria bassiana, which takes some time but the bites get ‘weaker’ and then they were gone.

5

The DE I bought came in a squeeze bottle already. But while the individual grains are invisibly small, the total of what came out of the bottle definitely formed a line.

And from what I’ve read, merely freezing temperatures aren’t good enough-- It needs to be in the vicinity of 0 F. Which we actually did have at about the time the infestation started, but it took a couple of weeks for me to realize why I was seeing little bloodstains on the sheets. By now, it’s not nearly cold enough.

6

About freezing temps, I tried that, I put everything in the bedroom outside in -5F nighttime low temp for about 3 days, put it back and everything seemed good till about 3 months later. :mad:

7

Y’all making me itchy. Where do you buy the DE strong enough to kill the buggers?

8

They have to walk through the DE, it’s mechanical as I’m sure you know.

It takes about three or four sprays over three months to clear them. It’s not the bugs, those are easily killed with one part alcohol to one part water, it’s the eggs. You can take an iron to your mattress to kill the eggs or just get a new mattress and a cover for it.

More importantly figure out where they came from and are they getting back in? Are you bringing them in again or are you getting them from your neighbors.

Bed bugs hide in clutter and love wood as a refuge. So having wood furniture or bed frame is their friend. Basically you want to keep the area as clean as possible and vacuum and wipe surfaces down with alcohol/water solution daily.

Bed bug eggs can be dormant for up to 2 years in long term storage facilities which is why you need to air seal anything in them, because they can move from neighboring long term units to yours.

Personally I would pitch the mattress, but I’ve known people that have had them and didn’t need to do that. Also there are various kinds of bed bug spray so your exterminator should be rotating them, with one type for first spray, second type for second spray and so forth.

My mother swears by sulfur candles for any incest infestation, though I would assume they could be quite problematic in an apartment dwelling, if indeed they work.

9

No-pest strips. Use them.

10

Heat is the ONLY thing that kills them for good. Is your rental a house or an apartment? Ask your landlord if they’d consider a whole house heat treatment. It’s not cheap (but neither is having a pest control guy spray repeatedly), but it kills them at all stages of their development.

https://www.bedbugs.org/heat/

11

I still stand by Beauveria bassiana, people have burnt their house down using heat.

12

Just in case–where does one get that?

13

We found bed bugs in the children’s room a few years ago. Here’s how I solved the problem:

  1. The bed frames were made of wood. Wood frames are bad, because bed bugs can live in the cracks & crevices. I removed the beds and mattresses, took them out back, and burned them.

  2. I purchased new beds (and new mattresses) with steel frames.

  3. I made some bed bug traps and placed them under each bed leg. (You can also purchase commercial versions. Some even claim talcum powder is not required.)

No more bed bugs.

14

Amazon . https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B007ROV0BU/ref=ppx_od_dt_b_asin_title_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1

15

Not seeing how this works, but who knows…

16

I was going to say this. My husband is a health inspector. He gets called out for bedbugs complaint all the time. One owner of a fleabag …a hum…bedbug hotel bought a heating device to kill the bastards.

17

My place is an apartment, with one thermostat for the entire building, so they couldn’t heat just one unit unless they brought in self-contained heaters (and even then, there’d be a lot of bleed-off heat into other units).

I’m aware that DE works mechanically: I’ve only put it in places where expect them to go. Hence the outline around my temporary bed, to keep them out of it.

The wood bed was definitely an issue, especially since it was laminated wood, and the lamination was starting to separate. The first time the exterminator came in, his exact words were “you might want to get rid of that.”. The second time, he asked me why I hadn’t, because he’d said that it was absolutely necessary to get rid of it. Would have helped if you’d phrased it that way the first time, bud. Anyway, I’ve now gotten rid of it.

My original mattress, I don’t think is a problem. When I bought it, it was sealed in plastic, and I never saw any reason to take the plastic off.

The exterminator only seems to be using one substance, which appears to also be the same stuff he uses for roaches. He says that it’s Onslaught, but that’s supposed to be odorless, which this definitely isn’t, so who knows what it is. He also recommended alcohol spray, and was very emphatically clear that it had to be at least 99% pure, which is one of the hints I have that he doesn’t have any clue what he’s talking about.

18

We’ve had bedbugs in the past. They’ve not been a problem since dumping the old mattresses and box springs in favor of memory foam mattresses on metal frames. The biggest source of bugs were the sheets of plywood that I had been using for mattress support.

We still see a bug once every several months, likely from one of the neighboring buildings and looking for new territory. They don’t last long.

19

I have no experience with bedbugs & no sage advice to offer, but just wanted to say that I’m sorry you are dealing with this. My mom got bedbugs in her house & she said they were the worst thing ever to get rid of. Good luck!

20

My condolences, Chronos. Bedbugs are the worst. Roaches, ants, termites are all comparatively easy to deal with - and yes, I’ve had to deal with all of them.

Hadn’t heard of using diatomaceous* earth to guard against the little buggers. I’ll have to remember that one.
*Chrome’s spell-checker wants to turn this into “semiautomatics.” Um, no.