How to Deal with Bed Bugs

A source of the night terrors!

How to Deal with Bed Bugs

by Owen Jones

Copyright Owen Jones 2022© Third Edition

Published by Megan Publishing Services

http://meganpublishingservices.com

Hello and thank you for buying this ebook called ‘How to Deal with Bed Bugs’.

Bed bugs have been making a valiant comeback in the West since the end of the Second World War, and are now firmly entrenched in our cities. So much so, that every Western hotel has to take special precautions costing an aggregated sum of billions of dollars a year, which is passed on to us, the paying guest.

It is long past the time when everyone should take this subject seriously, so, in that vein, I hope that you will find the information below helpful, useful and profitable.

The advice in this ebook on how to deal with bed bugs and related subjects is organised into 18 chapters of about 500-600 words each. I have also included the scientific classification for clarity and the lyrics of two popular songs for the sake of levity.

As an added bonus, I am granting you permission to use the content on your own website or in your own blogs and newsletter, although it is better if you rewrite them in your own words first.

You may also split the book up and resell the articles. In fact, the only right that you do not have is to resell or give away the book as it was delivered to you.

If you have any feedback, please leave it with the company you bought this book from.

Thanks again for purchasing this ebook.

Regards,

Owen Jones

Table of Contents

Scientific Classification

Bed Bugs in the Home

Native Solutions For Bed Bugs

Bitten By The Bug

How to Recognise Bed Bugs

Don’t Let the Bed Bugs Bite

Good Night Sleep Tight Don’t Let the Bed Bugs Bite

Bed Bugs - Unwelcome Bed Fellows

Exterminating Bed Bugs

Where Do Bed Bugs Come From?

Hotels Can Have Bed Bugs Too

How to Know if You Have Bed Bugs

How to Get Bed Bugs Out of Your Clothes

Just What Do Bed Bugs Do?

What are Bed Bugs?

How to Control Bed Bugs

Killing Bed Bugs

How to Get Rid of Bed Bugs

Beware Bed Bugs When Travelling

Bed Bug Songs

Scientific Classification

Kingdom:            Animalia

Phylum:            Arthropoda

Class:                  Insecta

Order:                  Hemiptera

Family:            Cimicidae

Genus:                  Cimex

Species:            C. lectularius

Binomial name:       Cimex lectularius (see cover image)

(Linnaeus, 1758)

Bed Bugs in the Home

Bed bugs were everywhere before the Second World War, but billions of them were eradicated due to slum clearance plans in Europe, America and Asia. There was so much progress achieved in eradicating bed bugs that from, say 1945, until the early 1990’s, few people ever saw a bed bug.

However, since the Nineties, bed bugs have been coming back big time. They are now a huge problem in every city in the world from Toronto to New York to London, Paris and elsewhere. Bed bugs are happy to live in clean or dirty properties, they do not discriminate.

Bed bugs are sometimes said to be minute, some people even say invisible to the naked eye, but this is total rubbish. In fact, bed bugs are about the same size and colour as apple pips. Although the colour can vary, particularly depending on whether they have fed recently.

The difficulty for this generation, which has almost certainly never seen a bed bug, is the resurgence of these blood suckers. The health authorities in the United States of America and Canada are very worried about the recent explosion in the number of bed bugs.

Bed bugs are notoriously difficult to get rid of and notoriously easy to acquire. Bed bugs are impervious to most insect killers because they have a heavy waxy coat which is meant to stop them dehydrating, but it is also very good at defending them against insecticides.

The best way to kill these particular insects is with steam. So, if you have an infestation of bed bugs in your home, you have two alternatives. By far the best choice is to call in a professional to clean them out for you; otherwise you will have to hire a steam cleaner.

Clearing your place of bed bugs is not an easy job at all. However, if you want to go down that route, the first thing to do is clean up. Make certain that you reduce the number of places for them to conceal themselves under. Things like piles of ironing, books and newspapers must all be put away or thrown out.

Next, you should wash all your clothes and bedding in the hottest water they can stand, dry and iron them and then seal them in plastic bags. Block up all the holes in your walls especially where the pipes come through. They are bugs’ super-highways from one dwelling to another.

Strip off all your wall paper and plug any holes or cracks in the wall or ceiling beneath. Take up and inspect your carpets and the flooring beneath them.

Seal all the architraves and skirting boards in your home with silicone or mastic. Bed bugs love hiding behind these lengths of wood

Now you are ready for the steam cleaner. Steam the whole house from top to bottom. Steam your curtains, bed, mattress and furniture too and inside your cupboards and shelves. You could also purchase a waterproof mattress pad to retain any bed bugs in the mattress.

Now you can relax and hope for the best. Wait a week and keep your eyes peeled. If you do not see one, you can redecorate and get on with your life

Native Solutions For Bed Bugs

There are many historical solutions for things, including insect pests, that society in general has forgotten. The funny thing is that lots of the chemicals used in these circumstances are derivatives of the original native or historical remedies. For example, permethrin, one of the best insect killers, is manufactured from chrysanthemums

Bed bugs have been in the Americas since the Eighteenth Century at least, but before that they had ticks, fleas and other insect pests and. natural remedies were found to control the numbers of these insects and they were found to work on bed bugs too.

Most people forgot about these old solutions with the widespread use of DDT during and after the Second World War. DDT was so good at eradicating insects that there appeared to be no requirement to use the old treatments, because the old remedies frequently require constant use to become effective, whereas chemical insecticides are far more powerful.

Although bed bugs were virtually eradicated from the West, the same was not a fact in Africa and most of Asia, where DDT was not used much. It is supposed that the resurgence of bedbugs in 1995 came from Africa and Asia, due to increased long-haul travel and migration.

Proof for this theory is partially based on the fact that hotels are hit more than normal with bed bug infestations if compared to the average Western home. Most people in the West will still pick up bugs from hotels and public transport such as trains, planes, taxis and buses.

Any pesticide that you use to kill bedbugs has the same problem to contend with. Bedbugs have a ‘thick’ waxy coat which stops the insecticide from contacting the insects’ skin, soaking into it and killing it by one means or another. 

If you could wash or scrape this wax off, your problem is a lot easier. Diatomaceous Earth or rough sand will do this, if the bugs are made to crawl through it to squeeze into their dwellings.

These coarse substances will scratch the wax off over time - a few days to a week - so that natural insect control agents like chrysanthemum, neem, thyme and some other oils can get at them to do their work.

I do not know what the indigenous people used in your country because I do not know where you live, but you are able to find out easily. Pine oil, cedar oil and teak oil are other natural substances derived from trees that deter or kill insects, because the trees use these oils to ward off insect colonies boring into  themselves.

Bitten By The Bug

Bed bugs are not a new problem by any means. People have been moaning about them for centuries, although they were not lively in each country at the same time. There were bed bugs near the Mediterranean Sea thousands of years ago, but they didn’t arrive in Britain until the Seventeenth Century and to America until just after that.

Bed bugs were virtually cleared out in Europe and America after the Second World War, but they flourished elsewhere. Now we have them back again all over the world, but it took them nearly 50 years for them to come back. People are inclined to be more appalled by bed bugs than by mosquitoes, although they do the same sort of thing.

Bed bug bites may or may not itch and are very unlikely to spread disease, unlike mosquito bites. Yet still we loathe them and still we are ashamed of having them in our homes. This is a bizarre phenomenon, because bed bugs are not able to consume rubbish, because they do not have a real mouth. However, the rumour was created a hundred years ago that only poor people living in ghettos had bed bugs.

It was a lie, but it stuck. In fact, people with money tend to travel more than poorer people, so they are more likely to pick up bed bugs and take them home to make their very own infestation. An infestation might cause some anaemia, but the real concerns are psychological, because people might not sleep for fear of being bitten and this can lead to paranoia.

Bed bug bites are usually in a line, but not always in a straight one. They can appear like red spots a quarter of an inch in diameter. People react in various ways: some individuals react right away, others have a postponed reaction. Some marks might last four or five days, some might not show at all. Some might itch or swell up, others will not.

Your first treatment should be to shower as normal and wash with mild soap, but the number one rule is not to scratch the bite as that may cause an infection from dirty finger nails. If you need to treat the bite further, you could try  these herbs and plants:

Plantain: some people claim that they obtained relief from itching by rubbing the leaves of plantain onto the bites.

Wet poultice: time-honoured remedies include covering the bites with wet clay; mashed potato; bread and milk; wet arrow root; pulverised rice and water or ground grain and water. Create a pasty sauce of one of these, slop it onto the bites and tie a bandage around it until it is completely dry. This should draw out any irritants that the bed bug administered to help your blood flow freely.

Fresh herbs can be used too, but you either have to chew them into a mulch (traditional) or you could crush them in a pestle and mortar with some water or spittle. Customary herbs to use are: wild geranium (Geranium maculatum); comfrey (Symphytum uplandica x);  yellow dock (Rumex species); wild mallow (Malva neglecta) or chickweed (Stellaria media).

How to Recognise Bed Bugs

I suppose you already know that bed bugs have made a big come back in the West. Bed bugs were almost totally eliminated in Western Europe, the United States and Canada in the 1950’s, but have been reappearing in ever larger numbers since around 1995. It is supposed that this is due to more numerous foreign vacations and increased immigration.

You see, bedbugs travel about by hitching a lift on people’s clothing and then jumping off when it gets quiet and warm enough again. The poor little creatures are really fairly shy, you know, which is why you could have a growing family of them in your house long before you become bitten… and bedbugs can go for six months without having to feed.

Bedbugs are small, normally brownish beetles that look a bit banded, because of the hairs on their back. They have a long pointy beak for sucking blood and can move surprisingly quickly if disturbed. Some people say that they cannot be seen with the naked eye, but this only applies to those of us with very bad eyesight. A bed bug is around the size, colour and shape or an apple pip on legs.

In fact, you might never see a bed bug in your room, but you may see remains of its activity. If you see brown stains on your sheets, they are bed bug droppings and if you see red streaks, that is your blood. You might also see black spots, which are also droppings and hollow insect cases, which is where they have shed a skin on their way to maturity.

People who have knowledge of bed bugs say that you do not have to see them, you can smell them. Apparently, their smell is very distinctive, but you would have to speak to quite an old person to describe it for you as most people under 60 will not have had much contact with bed bugs, if any at all.

Bed bug bites affect people in different ways. Some people react quite badly to the bites whilst others might scarcely notice them at all. However, most of us notice some red marks that itch. A little like flea bites.

I suppose that you are wondering how you can be rid of these little bugs by now. Well, this is the bad news – bed bugs are notoriously difficult to be rid of. In fact, if you have an infestation of bed bugs, you ought to notify your landlord and the health authorities but if you own the property yourself, you will probably have to pay to get the exterminators in as pesticides and insecticides are practically useless against them.

The best way to handle bed bugs is not to let them acquire a foothold in your premises. Most people who pick up a bed bug do so while on vacation, staying in a hotel at home or whilst using public transport or in public places like cinemas.

So, examine your clothing, especially