I worked pest control for a few years until 2021. We all knew that pesticides basically don’t work on bed bugs—it was old news.
The article glosses over heat treatments, which is odd, because it really does work, and usually in a single session. It’s a very labor-intensive and invasive procedure, though. The residents must leave the house for 8 hours while the techs bake each room and throw everything around. By the time it’s over, it looks like a tornado went through the house. And our prices started at $5k.
But it did work. The only two scenarios I was aware of where it didn’t were the result of operator error (laziness) or the customer unknowingly taking bed bugs out of the house with them when they left (we found the bed bugs were living in a baseball cap).
This. My wife had grabbed a couch off the side of the road. Perfect condition, even advertised on Facebook as free!
After a couple days we saw these bugs crawling out of the couch. After a quick reverse image search, it came back as a bed bug.
Lo and behold we noticed these buggers were all over our house after a month.
We didn't use anything but diatomaceous earth. Sprinkled it all over the house around the base boards and furniture. After about two months, they were all gone.
Yup. It’s a fine powder that will get into the air if walked on or near, and causes nasal and lung irritation if breathed in short term - and silicosis if breathed in long term.
Unlikely this length of exposure would result in silicosis probably though.
Not really, there are different forms and OSHA recommendations for how much of a safer form should be in the air if you are possibly breathing it your whole working life..
Pets and very small children might get much higher doses being curious and near the floor though.
Is it safe to use this to avoid any possible bed bug outbreaks? or are there any risks that outweigh the benefit of it defending against possible bed bugs?
I've been thinking about spreading it around every so often under my bed (plus around my bedroom) just in case.
You want “food grade” diatomaceous, which is reasonably safe. Personally I wouldn’t use it preemptively, only when there’s a suspected problem. I would wear a mask when applying.
“Pool grade” diatomaceous earth should not be used, it is hazardous to be around as it’s structure was changed by heating.
It's generally considered safe. It's sold as an additive to livestock feed, though I don't know what the purpose there is.
It's very finely ground volcanic rock. The particulates have very sharp edges which shred insect exoskeletons. It doesn't hurt your skin though.
It might cause a problem if inhaled, similar to silicosis but that's mostly a guess.
Some people leave a line of it on windowsills or door thresholds to keep bugs out, but it's a fine powder that gets everywhere and makes a mess. Personally I wouldn't leave it around but that's up to you
No. "Diatomaceous earth is made from the fossilized remains of tiny, aquatic organisms called diatoms. Their skeletons are made of a natural substance called silica." http://npic.orst.edu/factsheets/degen.html
Wikipedia is pretty clear that it's finely ground fossils. (It also says that it's sedimentary rock, as is necessary for fossils. Fossils can't be volcanic rock; their structure would be destroyed by melting.)
I'm going to go ahead and suggest you don't make a proclamation of safety (about a product associated with severe lung disease) followed immediately by "mostly a guess".
The problem here is that their lifecycle is unimaginably long and punctuated. They happily hibernate for 6 months at a time between feedings, so waiting them out means waiting a very very very long time.
They can survive 6 months without eating, but they'll also feed off of each other last-man-standing style, which is why you have to go a whole lot longer.
Yeah I've read all of the facts about them, but I've also read posts by many people who have simply done any ONE of the myriad of suggestions, and claim that it worked. So there's more to the story here.
I believe that not only the bed bugs but most or all bugs related to them (Hemiptera) are more resistant to insecticides than most other insects.
Where I live, in Europe, when I was young there were abundant insects of many kinds, butterflies, dragonflies, lacewings, flies, bumblebees, wasps, beetles, crickets and many others.
Now all have disappeared, but various kinds of bugs (Hemiptera) are still abundant, actually more abundant than before, when many other kinds of insects existed.
Can't be that old. I had bed bugs in 2012 I believe. I bought some of the recommended insecticide and sprayed a small perimeter and released a couple that I had captured into the middle. They then crawled outward and I was shocked how quickly after they crossed the perimeter they died.
When I lived in Las Vegas we unfortunately moved into an apartment for a short time that had them. We just took out all the cushions, couches, mattresses, and bedding, and set them out in the summer heat for a few days. (It was actually very inconvenient, but you know. Worth it.) It worked!
It's not immediate, but my crude understanding was the heaters they use are positioned so the outer edges of the home heat up first. That way the bed bugs can't escape - they'd have to know to go towards the heat first.
Also don't forget it just takes time to heat up a home that much.
Wouldn't that damage stuff? Plastics will go weak and start outgassing. Electronics might break.. and if you move all that stuff out you might take them with you
Among the instructions you get are to put batteries and anything sensitive to heat in the fridge for protection. I didn't notice any damage after I had it done; my laptop, robot vacuum, and smart switches worked fine afterwards.
They die due to dehydration. They live on blood. Dead one are just flat. I have cought some and left in a sun in a cup. They died in a day or two.
If they are not hungry, they will stay at one location. When they are hungry, they will travel.
Typically they like to live near their food sources. In hotel, they are found in Mattress bedframe etc. High heat has high fan running too. As long as air reaches their, it will heat up. We had 100% success rate with heat as long as you setup properly
I read once they get into beds by crawling up the bedposts and by putting something smooth like aluminum cups around the posts, the bugs cannot crawl up. What do you think of that?
My grandfather was in the German army in WW2 and he said they called them Fallschirmjäger - paratroopers - for exactly this reason, they would climb tent walls to drop onto beds that had their legs placed in tins of water to try and keep them off.
Ceilings can be tougher for them. One assumes with enough bed bugs, the numbers are such that one of them is going to inevitably hold onto the ceiling long enough to get position. However it's recommended to move beds away from walls because they can easily climb walls and fall from there.
There are caveats to using diatomaceous earth. If inhaled, it'll do to your airways what it does to insects. You'd want to avoid disturbing it or placing any where airflow from heating ducts, fans, etc. might blow across it to prevent it from floating around in the air.
The reason to use fossilized diatoms instead of something synthesized is specifically so that you won't get silicosis from too much crystallized silica. But I agree, just sprinkling it liberally around your house as some kind of preventative measure sounds like way more exposure than I'd be comfortable with.
I can confirm, DE works. Just don't breathe the stuff, which you're supposed to puff onto surfaces. Once it's there, the bugs have to crawl across it so it'll cut them up like little razor blades, or a thousand paper cuts. So satisfying.
Basically anything microscopic is increasingly found to be just horrible to inhale, but this blurb from Wikipedia says there are probably significantly worse things to handle for a one-time treatment.
...In a 1978 study of workers, those exposed to natural diatomaceous earth for over five years had no significant lung changes while 40% of those exposed to the calcined form had developed pneumoconiosis.[46] Today's common diatomaceous earth formulations are safer to use, as they are predominantly made up of amorphous silica and contain little or no crystalline silica.[47]
The crystalline silica content of diatomaceous earth is regulated in the United States by the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) and there are guidelines from the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health that set maximum amounts allowable in the product (1%) and in the air near the breathing zone of workers, with a recommended exposure limit at 6 mg/m3 over an 8-hour workday.[47] OSHA has set a permissible exposure limit for diatomaceous earth as 20 mppcf (80 mg/m3/%SiO2). At levels of 3,000 mg/m3, diatomaceous earth is immediately dangerous to life and health.
In the 1930s, long-term occupational exposure among workers in the cristobalite diatomaceous earth industry who were exposed to high levels of airborne crystalline silica over decades were found to have an increased risk of silicosis.[49]
Yes I'm not saying it's going to cause long term damage to your lungs, it's probably pretty safe, but it doesn't feel great if you inhale it, and it's easy to avoid if you just put on a mask or spray and move away.
I fought bed bugs once with DE, heat, and dry ice traps or you can use a co2 fish tank pump to attract them into a trap. We also placed containers filled with oil at the bottom of each bed post.
Dry ice is an interesting idea. I want it to work, because it is just so deliciously different.
However, I assume the harsh reality says that it is nearly impossible to suffocate the entire infestation, and more than a few survivors or eggs would remain after the treatment.
The goal isn't to suffocate them, but to draw them into a trap--they're attracted to CO2 because we exhale it. Over time, the hope is you trap and kill the entire population.
I think it'd work for mild infestations, but for larger ones the heat method is really the only option.
Not much can stop a lone bedbug carried in. What you're trying to do is prevent your mattress from becoming a nest.
The problem with DE is it's so inexpensive and effective, and that makes it difficult to sell as a product. I got a 2kg bag of it for $10, and it's enough to last decades.
I got rid of them in two places just using a bed protector, the things you put under the bed’s legs, fast-acting spray, and a foam spray (residual). I did the bed and edges of the carpet and furniture. It killed them all. We knew cuz I didn’t have bloody holes in my arms and back.
Article indicates some types are immune. That will be a different story. People might still be able to clear them out with sprays, though.
We had a house centipede infestation when I lived in NYC.
It was awesome. No bed bugs. No roaches except in the end of summer, (the giant flying variety and it was really just the month of August when the humidity is out of control they would come out of the drains.)
When we moved into our house we were disturbed by the house centipedes.
I did a quick search online about how to get rid of them, and I mostly found stories of the form "Help, I got rid of all my house centipedes and now my home is infested with other bugs! How do I get the house centipedes back?"
> House centipedes feed on spiders, termites, cockroaches, silverfish and other household pests. They do not cause damage to food or furniture.
> For this reason, house centipedes are considered among the most beneficial creatures that inhabit human dwellings, but because of their alarming appearance few homeowners are willing to share a home with them.
In my neck of the woods it’s the same deal with spiders. You just escort them outside once they get fat and too lazy to not be on your wall in the daytime.
There's a spider size limit in this household and they get big enough that I'm not having them walk around unescorted. They go back to the woodpile their ancestors came from.
I’ve had to kill a couple particularly nasty ones. In particular I’ve found a wolf spider in my living room and a black widow in my garage. If they have no danger to me, which is most of them, they are happy to continue coexisting with me and eating bugs in my house
I had a bunch of hornets once. Great, because there were no flies mosquitos anywhere near the house all summer. Unfortunately, the moved out, the hornets, next summer...
I once awoke to see a large spider running away from me on my bed. I was a bit displeased with that until I learned that they hunt roaches. I figured if it was running away from me, then it figured (perhaps incorrectly) that I was not to be messed with and so the food chain in my house remained as it should be.
They would be 1.7cm long if they were 100 time smaller than the average human. Seems to check out.
I’m glad you weren’t referring to weight. The average human weighs 60-80kg, depending on what region you’re in. The heaviest spider is the Goliath, grows up to 13cm, but only weighs up to 135grams…
Same, had an old house in Michigan that would otherwise have been prone to filling up with orb-weaver type spiders if not for the centipedes. They’d also quickly vacuum up the wolf spiders that would try to invade whenever it rained.
Apparently house centipedes can live for up to about 7 years, and need a few years to reach breeding age.
True, humans reach a maximum size and stop. But they won't get bigger if you feed them more. If they eat too much, they will deform, but they won't just enlarge proportionally.
I just googled the scutigera and they’re somewhat more adorable than the giant centipedes we have in Australia (no they’re not everywhere, but they’re enough to startle you).
IIRC, below freezing also isn't generally good enough -- I forget what the specifics are from when I cared a lot about it 5+ years ago, but it's something like -20C consistently for a few whole days for all the stages of bedbug and their eggs to be destroyed by cold. They're surprisingly resistant to death from cold -- but a good hot dryer at 120F for ~30+ minutes will definitely get 'em.
This exactly. Freezing is useless unless you have something like a lab freezer that gets to -50C. Hot dryer for clothes, and you can put empty luggage in a dark trash bag and leave it in the sun to heat treat.
Having run the bedbug site, what's your advice on long-term travel? I've never gotten bedbugs, but I feel it's only a matter of time. How do you balance prevention with simply living your life?
Fromy my experience, they aren't great at stealth. I once had them in a hotel room, they came crawling towards me as soon as I laid down. I killed the first two and fled. Got a different room at the same place that was not infested (it was late and I was poor then). No bedbugs came home with me though I did put clothes in the freezer just in case.
It really depends on how severe the infestation is, and how long it has been since the bugs had a meal. Very hungry bedbugs will come out in the open, less hungry ones will wait until the middle of the night to feed.
I do wonder how very hungry bedbugs exist in a hotel room. But the evolutionary pressure against gratuitously running over an uncovered bedsheet while the light is on is pretty clear, too.
Hmm that makes sense. I don't have a washing machine so I was worried about getting these from the launderette. Especially since some of their customers seem to be of the no fixed abode type.
But I always wash my stuff at 60C and bedding and towels at 90C (for Fahrenheiters that's nearly boiling). And then dry for 30 minutes at 80C. I guess that does the job.
I'm surprised my clothes don't shrink from those temperatures. I wear pretty much only cotton but it seems unaffected.
I’ve always heard to put your luggage in the bathtub when showing up at a hotel, then check the bed for signs of bedbugs. If it’s all clear than you can move your luggage into the main room. If it’s not, request a new room or go to a different hotel.
Preventing getting them seems preferable to trying to avoid brining them home.
If you ever have bed bugs, do yourself a favor and buy water vapor gun, with a large tank.
Adults and larvae die at 60 degrees so vapor is like the nuclear option to them. Also it's non-toxic to you, it doesn't stain and the vapor can penetrate anything anywhere.
I think this is a funny case of a false cognate. Vapeur is the French word for steam. Vapeur sounds like vapor, and steam is a vapor. So a steam gun is still sort of a vapor gun, but it's definitely a vapeur gun.
Personally I've had great difficulty getting rid of Silverfishes. Despite plugging all crevices with diatomaceous sand, making sure indoor temperature does not exceed 18°C, removing any specimen on sight, I still encounter one every now and then just chilling on the wall or floor. They've eaten my underfloor isolation (the floor sags at those spots now), but other than that they're harmless - I can't imagine the horror if they snuck into my bed and bit me in my sleep. I would seriously consider throwing everything away and starting anew.
But they can process cellulose, starch and even mold, can survive months without any food, so it is next to impossible to starve them. Low room temperature and low humidity might help a bit.
bruce343434 isn’t saying he’s worried the silverfish will sneak into his bed and bite him in his sleep. He’s saying it would be horrifying to live with insects as stealthy and difficult to eradicate as silverfish, but which were also bloodsuckers, like bedbugs. In short, he’s saying bedbugs are horrifying.
Just spray permethrin and be done with it. It's the only thing that works and if you spray in all the right places, one round of spraying fixes it forever.
Source: about 15 years of fighting silverfish, until someone suggested permethrin on Reddit
I was talking a friend in China about bed bugs recently. They said there is a medicine people take which makes our blood poisonous to them. Ironically enough, it's ivermectine... Makes sense I suppose, it targets parasites and bed bugs are a parasite. I read some papers about it, too. Doesn't seem to be a panacea but potentially useful in combination with traditional pest control.
I don’t think ironic is _quite_ right, but it does mean paradoxical, and it’s somewhat paradoxical that ivermectin is being effectively used in humans here for bedbug treatment when you consider the juxtaposition against the far right wing conspiracy theories that it would cure covid in humans but instead only harmed people.
You have to really abuse it to have any troubles unless you have a bad liver.
I find your assertion that it only harms people curious given that the studies that I saw showed that it actually helped quite a bit in third world countries. Of course, those people may have been infested with parasites and cleaning that up may have helped them overcome covid as well
The obvious answer is centipedes. If you are going to have to tolerate any kind of bug in your house, Scutigera Coleoptrata, the common house centipede, is the one to have.
These creepy, long-legged brown centipedes were familiar to everyone I knew growing up in the northeastern US. They are shy of people and tend to stay in the basement at night and only come out at night when it's dark, cool, and quiet (increasing their creepiness).
The upside? They eat other bugs, including many pests like termites, cockroaches, and bedbugs.
How is it possible to have a house with no insects? I just don't even see that as feasible, except maybe for a small new house with no shrubbery (and probably in a desert environment?). There ain't no way you're living in a house with zero bugs.
I’m not saying there can be zero bugs. I’m saying if you regularly find centipedes, then there’s enough other bugs to sustain them. They don’t just go outside to hit up a local cafe then come back home after.
Plus, they can live for 5-6 years. The bigger they are, the longer they’ve been there too.
Anecdotally, as a foster kid at one point I lived in a new construction home in the desert outside Reno with no shrubbery (newly poured walkways so no landscaping) and there frequently being scorpions in the natal kid's play area.
This is like saying that the continued existence of Burmese pythons in the Everglades implies that the small mammals (and other python prey) are definitely doing fine and their numbers are just as high as always, of course, because otherwise all the pythons would be dead.
When I had bedbugs in an apartment I was renting, I caulked up all the spaces by the baseboards where they could get in, inspected the bed and wrapped it in a bedbug-proof liner, washed and thoroughly dryered all the linens and pillows, and then spread DE all over. I put lids under the bedposts with DE in them. And I moved the bed away from the wall.
That was the end of them. Didn't get another bite.
Might come a day when a defunct restaurant gets acquired by a pest control company and used to freeze items too expensive or dear to replace. But they’d have to use one truck for pickup and one for drop off to prevent cross contamination.
I had a bedbug problem in a place I rented. The landlord used heat, and it seemed to work. I also just used common sense and got a mattress liner and used Permethrin around the perimeter of my room, and it cleared up.
I saw a company selling bed feet with a trap catching bed bugs. It was using glue IIRC. I remember it looking like this (side view of one foot):
| <- bed lays on top of the feet
| | |
| | |
| | |
| | |
----|---| <- glue here
|
| <- this part touches the ground
The idea was that there was no way up to the bed for the bedbugs without getting stuck in glue. It's not unlike the traps for big wasps, to prevent them from attacking bees.
Now of course it only works if the bed is on feet. It basically prevents them from climbing up to the humans as they get stuck in the feet.
What I noticed is bed bugs hate: zen rooms with no furniture besides the bed (very little place to hide, besides the mattress) and brand new paint.
Had bed bugs once, in room: treated the room with chemicals, moved the bed off the wall for a few days, repainted the room, vaccuum cleaned (with a very strong vaccum cleaner) the mattress... It worked but YMMV.
LA's Totally Awesome carpet cleaner from the dollar tree. I was holding a bottle trying to get a stain out of my daughter's bedding and saw one. I was so mad by then I sprayed at the sucker and it instantly keeled over. No clue what's in the stuff but it saved my sanity.
I'm disappointed that nobody had made a mosquito CIWS yet. Has anyone tried making something based on a grid of speakers and constructive interference?
The article glosses over heat treatments, which is odd, because it really does work, and usually in a single session. It’s a very labor-intensive and invasive procedure, though. The residents must leave the house for 8 hours while the techs bake each room and throw everything around. By the time it’s over, it looks like a tornado went through the house. And our prices started at $5k.
But it did work. The only two scenarios I was aware of where it didn’t were the result of operator error (laziness) or the customer unknowingly taking bed bugs out of the house with them when they left (we found the bed bugs were living in a baseball cap).