What To Do About Bed Bugs

So you think you might have bed bugs. I'm terribly sorry. I had them, and they are a major pain. The good part of it is that through my experience and my very motivated reading, I can offer some advice to get you started. I'm putting forth a program I call EPL, for Education, Pest Control Operative, and Laundry. I'll expand on each of those, but first some immediate Don'ts:

DON'Ts
- Don't throw away all your furniture, in particular your bed. It almost certainly won't solve the problem (bedbugs can be in places other than the bed), it's not necessary, and it risks dropping them on the way or having them come back in. Beds can be treated with enclosures, and upholstery can be treated by steaming.
- Don't stop sleeping in the bed, if you can possibly stand it. Bedbugs will eventually travel to other rooms if they don't have anything to feed on. But the good news is that they like to live together in one location as close to the food source as possible. If you can make them think they've found a wonderful home, it will be much easier to wipe the majority of them out at once.
- Don't go by word-of-mouth treatment ideas until you've researched them. My dad said the thing for the job, he'd heard somewhere, was diatomaceous earth, and that it was entirely safe and effective. I learned from the sources I list below that both of those claims have been strongly questioned.
- Don't, *under any circumstances*, try to fight them with store-bought pesticides (especially not "bug bombs"). They are known to be entirely ineffective at killing bedbugs, they can be harmful to your health, and worst of all, they can make the bugs scatter around the room and the rest of the house. The very next day after I sprayed a thick layer of something nasty my landlord gave me called Black Jack the tenants in the apartment directly above started getting massively bitten. That was probably the worst mistake of all the mistakes I made.
- Don't remove anything from the room. Especially fabric and wood might be current hiding places, and you could spread them. Even worse is sealing them off somewhere away from the treatment, whatever it is, meaning that they will be released some day and reinfest.
- Don't worry about who's to blame, and don't panic. They are not a health hazard whatsoever, just an annoyance. And with education and some forbearance, you will get rid of them.

EDUCATION
Before you do anything else, include reading the rest of this post, you should watch this video series:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pHux9IHDaVQ
and read this:
http://bedbugger.com/faqs/

The Bedbugger.com forums will be your friend throughout this time. I'm a little uncomfortable about the presence of paid sponsors for particular products, but it is a genuine grassroots community website, on which many pest control operatives and even academics post. You can find answers to pretty much any question you might have by searching the forum, and if you don't find it you can post and people are very nice about answering. There are some scary worst-case-scenario stories on here that you might want to stay away from for now, but there are also plenty of stories from people who successfully beat their infestations.

One of the things you will learn from these sources is that it's impossible to diagnose bed bugs from bites alone. Any rules people tell you for what are and aren't bites are probably not very useful, given the different life stages and the differences in individual reactions. They can be confused with a number of other causes, such as:

mosquitoes
fleas
mites
scabies
carpet beetles
chiggers
zits and ingrown hairs
other kinds of allergens

There's also recent evidence that bed bugs might be nowhere near as easy to transmit as publicity would suggest, particularly from public places.
http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/medical_examiner/2011/10/bedbugs_how_contagious_are_they_really_.single.html

So it's a good idea to get some kind of confirmation, by looking for physical evidence, before going into full-on warfare mode. (I was lucky enough to spot one crawling away from my bed on the very first day) On the other hand, if you are noticing new big red welts every morning, especially if they occur in lines of 2 or 3 close together, that could be a good reason to call someone in for an inspection at least. There are also trained dogs that can locate bed bugs, which could help with this stage, but be sure to check the bedbugger FAQ on this before calling.

PCO
If you have a non-trivial problem, there is no substitute for calling in a pest control operative. If you are renting, in most parts of north america it is the landlord's responsibility to pay for it. This might mean that you don't get to choose who it is, but try to have a say in it if you can. *Insist* on a professional exterminator, not the landlord's uncle or buddy. This is non-negotiable. If you have trouble getting the landlord to act, there is a government agency you can go to. Where I am now it's the Department of Health; here's some information for Ontario:
http://bedbugsinfo.ca/tools/bed-bugs-tenants-download

I put education before this step, because having some knowledge will help you to hire the right company. Since the bedbug reemergence is relatively new, some PCOs that advertise bed bugs as one of their services are not really experienced or knowledgeable. If you're lucky, there are recommendations for PCOs in your city on bedbugger.com. If not, here are some things you might look for:
- They should conduct an inspection first, not just spray everywhere automatically. A good PCO will look everywhere very, very carefully, and tailor their solution to the specific situation.
- As another facet of that, they should probably advertise an Integrated Pest Management approach, which basically means the same thing as the previous point.
- The plan will include multiple treatments, spaced at least a week apart.
- A guarantee is nice (though it will always come with a time limit), although not offering one shouldn't rule out a company.
- They insist on spraying adjacent rooms as well.

A very important criteria is that they seem willing communicate with you and tell you about the plan. This discussion would be a good time to try to suss out their knowledge of bed bug life cycles and other facts, and see if it matches up to your reading.

If they decide to go ahead with treatment, my experience was that the PCO asked us to buy enclosures for our mattresses and launder and bag all our clothes (more about those later), as well as to move furniture away from the walls. All the rooms in the house were sprayed with a residual pesticide, and we had to be out of the house for several hours but we were able to come back the same day. You have a right to know the names of the chemicals they are spraying, so make sure to write those down. At the same time, you should follow every one of the instructions they give you, even if you believe it to be useless based on your reading - it could void the guarantee if you don't. You shouldn't put all your hopes in one company either. It's awful to contemplate, but you might have to go to a second company before you find one that will solve your problem permanently.

LAUNDRY
Laundering clothes in hot water, and then drying it on hot, is known to be one of the few extremely effective ways a non-PCO can kill bedbugs and their eggs (squishing might be the only other one). See:

http://www.pctonline.com/Article.aspx?article_id=38047

Since bedbugs like to live in bedding and folds in fabric, if you launder it all carefully you should be able to kill at least some of them. It got to the point where whenever a new bite appeared I would wash my sheets again, just in case I could get one of the fuckers clinging onto my fitted sheet. It felt good to have some action I could take. I would very gently untuck all four corners and collect it into a ball in the middle of the bed the bed, and transfer it into a clear plastic bag I got at U-Haul, after first making sure the bag was airtight. I sealed it with this kind of clip:


http://www.amazon.com/Ikea-Bevara-Sealing-Clip-Set/dp/B004HHATDU

Then I carefully emptied the bag into the washing machine, and checked the bottom of it through the clear plastic. That's how I did all my laundry to prevent them jumping off on the way. Even better might be dissolvable laundry bags. There's a lesser, but still large non-zero chance that they might be in clothes somewhere in the vicinity of the bed, so again, it's worthwhile to do combat laundry (as I started thinking of it) on a regular basis. Things that can't be washed might be able to be dried, like slippers and duffelbags. The report says 30 minutes in the hot dryer will kill all the bedbugs.

Since bedbugs can travel on clothes, e.g. to your workplace or other people's houses, it might be a good idea to save your washed clothing in sealed plastic bags, only to take out when you're getting dressed. But this is stressful to keep up after awhile, especially if you're a tidy person (or like non-wrinkled clothes), so my intuition is that clothes stored in a dresser far from the bed are probably relatively low risk. But I don't know for sure.


NON-LAUNDRY THINGS TO DO WHILE WAITING FOR YOUR PCO
Here are some ideas for things to try to fight the bedbugs at home, while waiting for your PCO - or for evidence to convince your landlord to get a PCO - that *probably* won't make things worse (of course don't do any of these things if they would interfere with your PCOs treatment plan)

* BB Alert passive monitor
This is an interesting, relatively new idea, which is designing something that seems like the perfect home to bed bugs so that they will move into it. Once they do, their feedings will be marked by black spots on the edge of the thing, and you might even be able to kill a bunch by grabbing their home while they are hiding in it.
http://www.usbedbugs.com/BB-Alert-Passive-Bed-Bug-Monitor_p_45.html
I'm a little skeptical of whether these would really be effective, particularly as an all-clear sign - for one thing it just looks like a piece of corrugated cardboard. But it is not a big investment, and, importantly, it seems almost impossible to get false positives. Here are some experiments showing the monitors' effectiveness (though these are reported by the PCO who developed them):
http://www.bed-bugs.co.uk/passivemonitorresults.html

* Climbup Insect Interceptors
These are plastic dishes that the legs of your bed fit into. As the bed bugs come after you, they fall into a little moat and are unable to climb out because of slippery walls. Note that this is a better idea for treating the legs of your bed than say placing them on a circle of sticky tape, because even if the bugs are dumb enough to permanently stick themselves, apparently when they get stuck they send out an alarm pheromone which warns others away. I read that the climbups don't have the same problem. Again, I can't comment personally on how well they work, but they are fairly inexpensive ($3-4 each). Here's a thread with some different opinions:
http://bedbugger.com/forum/topic/climb-up-success

* Mattress enclosures
It's important to understand that enclosures play only a limited, if perhaps important, role in fighting an infestation. Their purpose is to seal in any bugs living inside or on the surface of the mattress, and to create a surface that is inhospitable for them to hide in. However bed bugs living elsewhere in the room or the bed frame can still easily walk across it to get to you, and in some cases may be able to live in folds of the enclosure. Of course if the PCO tells you to get them you definitely should. Be sure to buy the pricier one that specifically mention bed bugs and feel like fabric: we bought the $15 vinyl ones, and they tore almost immediately.

* Your own inspection.
This one is a little higher risk, since if you disturb their hiding places they might spread out and find better hiding places. So if you decide to try this you should at least be armed with something that can kill them on contact, if you discover a whole hive and they run for it. I put some 90% rubbing alcohol into a squirt bottle. You will also need a flashlight, and ideally a magnifying glass. Here's a video of how to go about inspecting a hotel room, which you can also apply to your own room:
http://vimeo.com/15551763
and here are some more images to help you to know what to look for (warning, grossness):
http://www.bed-bugs.co.uk/gallery.html

If you have a very minor infestation, laundry plus some combination of these maybe, possibly, conceivably, might be able to wipe them all out. But I definitely wouldn't count on it. Get those PCO wheels in motion.

It can be a long process getting every last one of them, and it is stressful when you are getting munched on regularly. But take heart and know that it won't ever be as bad as the pre-bedbug post-bedbug transition, and that you will emerge from this a seasoned warrior who will be able to help others. I'm going to finish up with two quotes I found on the forum that helped me put it into perspective:

"bb's don't really hate you they depend upon you for thier own survival). So I try to keep in mind that they are more like fairly mindless 'bug-germs' rather than beasts out to drain you of all of your blood."

"The bedbug has nothing against you. It's a simple creature that needs to eat, and does so relatively quietly and conservatively. It takes only what it needs, when it needs it, then goes home. Perhaps one day, humankind might even find that bedbugs hold the secret to some medical or other benefit."

and if they're *really* giving you a hard time, try this thread that begins, "I have a live bed bug in a jar. How can I best torture it without killing it?"
http://bedbugger.com/forum/topic/i-have-a-live-bed-bug-in-a-jar
You might even end up feeling some sympathy!