Bean leaves don’t let the bedbugs bite by using tiny, impaling spikes (2013)
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It got bad before I realized. I did my research— bought the bed covers, put everything near the bed in clear plastic bags, and bought a steam cleaner.
The bugs infest your bed, reproduce, and spread out. To get rid of them you do the reverse—kill them on the bed with steam. Wait a day or two for the commuters to repopulate the bedding, repeat.
Most important thing is don’t panic. If you panic, throw out your bed, then you will prolly end up dragging your bed through your home and spread the bugs everywhere.
A year later I was volunteering at a community program teaching adults to use computers. The topic of bed bugs came up. A person said the Cedarcide product was absolutely the best product. I’m adverse to using any poison on or near my bed, so I gave it a try—it’s just cedar oil.
Well, I tried it and shared the product with my neighbors. I didn’t see any direct effect on the bugs. What I did realize was the smell of the product is distinct (and pleasant). Living in an apartment building, when you smell the product, you know someone has the problem and you can catch an infestation early. This is key.
Also, once you find and deal with the issue, best to continue to check your bedding twice a week. I found spring through to early summer is the worst. If you can get past that time, and you know your neighbors are clear, then you’re good. But as long as your neighbors have a problem, then you too have a problem.
There is a lot of irrational shame when people have the bugs. They deny and deny, so communication is key—even if it’s coded communication as the smell of whatever spray people use to treat and kill the bugs, or empty bug spray cans.
Fly paper on bed posts and pull the bed away from the wall. This’ll let you get a good nights sleep while you engage all the additional preemptive measures you point out.
Comparing to the toilet is a fallacy because of this and the fact that no one I know defecates on their laptop.
We won't get cleaner buses by magically wishing all the passengers to have better hygiene. The answer is to cover all internal surfaces with non-porous, corrosion-resistant, easily cleanable materials and to eliminate nooks and crannies where dirt can accumulate. Ideally, you should be able to hose down all the seats of a bus after a day's service.
Actually seamless welding and assembly, for large objects like busses, is only used by very high end manufacturing like rockets.
Isn't wearing different clothes indoor and outdoor the actual solution? We can't expect public spaces leave alone the public transport to be sterile or sparkling clean even in paragons of hygiene such as Singapore. Getting changed into something that one wears at home and at home only and putting outdoor clothes away seems like a simple thing to do and eradicates a whole class of hygiene related issues.
All it takes to start a bedbug infestation is for a female bedbug to crawl on someone, in their clothes or bag, and then fall off in a new place and start laying eggs. It can happen in the cleanest spaces in the world. They're highly resistant to insecticides and they hide in cracks barely wide enough to slide a strip of paper, so even a thorough washing and vacuuming won't remove them.
I try not to complain about the content because much of it is genuinely pretty impressive from a technical perspective. I would be unsurprised to see technical leaders ten years from now citing him as an inspiration though
I think you’re on to something, MIT chose him as their commencement speaker…
https://news.mit.edu/2022/mark-rober-2023-commencement-addre...
I do make time to watch his anti porch pirate videos though. Those are really interesting, despite all of the insecure shouting energy.
Definitely worth a watch if you're interested in seeing scammers who ruin people's lives getting tracked across continents for a bold counteroffensive campaign.
It was like a real life version of the movie Taken, but with believable action.
And with that information in mind, do you think it is desirable to be popular, that something being popular is a good endorsement of it?
There many axes to quality. Technical detail is just one.
The fact he gets bugs hiding in his shoe soles was pretty interesting.
And look - steal a package off a porch, you deserve the ultimately harmless annoyance for sure. But even with that in mind, there's something kind of cruel about the level of effort that's put into the package traps. Once you've found a target that no one will defend, it's just fine to douse them in fart spray and glitter. People cheer because, well, fuck thieves, right?
I get it - I really do. But ultimately, it's fun at the expense of other humans and those videos have always left me feeling a bit gross.
Still, as I said - it's the level of effort put into the punishment machines, and the extraction of entertainment value from the punishments, that gives me the odd feeling that something about these videos might cross a moral line.
To each their own, I'm not trying to discourage anyone from watching and enjoying the videos. For me personally, they give me more heartache than joy, so I stick to his other videos - despite the rampant exploitation of innocent squirrels ;)
However, I am somewhat skeptical that this is the case. The odds of encountering a stunningly well engineered annoyance device when stealing are still pretty low, and while thieves aren't known for their competence with statistics, I think that logic is fairly low-hanging fruit.
With sadness, I have to imagine that for every case of a kid or thief being converted to the path of goodness by these boxes, there are just as many who will angrily continue what they're doing as a "fuck you" to those who would impose punishment on them - which seems to be a large part of the ethos that drives these kinds of thefts in the first place.
Borax is also effective, though it may need to be wet first and may take longer to work. Diatomaceous earth doesn't work if wet.
From[1]:
> A very small amount of crystalline diatomaceous earth may be found in pesticide products. Long-term inhalation of the crystalline form is associated with silicosis, chronic bronchitis, and other respiratory problems. The bulk of diatomaceous earth is amorphous, not crystalline. The amorphous form is only associated with mild, reversible lung inflammation.
Once you have a bed bug infestation, your mattress is pretty much gone anyway. You have to replace it, or risk living through the nightmare in only weeks after this.
The funny thing is Ed Sheeran was at the same place a few weeks after our visit.
"Now my bedsheet are stained of you!
I ended up marrying the girl I was dating, finished my PhD that was going nowhere, etc.
I attribute it to seeing how bad mediocrity, and just letting things be can get.
If you leave, the bugs will stay safe wherever they are since there won't be any host to attract them. And the eggs are most likely in tiny hole and won't be affected by the diatomaceous earth. Maybe it'll help to reduce the colony, but I'm skeptical it'll solve the problem.
I moved to an apt in NYC that had bedbugs. Probably not that many because I cleaned the place inside out so many times and I could rarely spot one. Eventually, I called an exterminator but the bugs were back a couple of months later. I eventually left this place. I'm super paranoid since then.
We only found the nest when moving out though.
Bed bugs are the absolute worst of the lot. Mosquitoes feel like welcome guests compared to them.
Short of nothing less than setting everything you know on fire, there are 0 ways to get rid of them.
A few months later I was outside my house and felt something on my neck. After slapping it I came to the conclusion it was most likely a lone bed bug.
Not everyone reacts to the bites severely so some just write it off as mosquito bites or a rash like me. Also in order to get an infestation from a hitch hiking bedbug one of the following conditions must be met:
1. A male and female bedbug must both hitch a ride together and later successfully reproduce. OR
2. A pregnant female must hitch a ride. OR
3. There must already be a single bedbug present at your address and the hitchhiking bedbug must be of the opposite sex. These two bedbugs must go on to successfully reproduce.
Keep in mind also that the hitchhiker must make it all the way home to the residence and not wander off somewhere before hand.
Hotels and people who travel to decent hotels are quite aware of bedbugs too so the chance of encountering bedbugs and taking them home from there is quite low. e.g doing simple stuff like not leaving your luggage on or near your bed mitigates a lot of risk.
Some people don't react to the bites at all. Which is one reason why it can be hard to get rid of them. It's hard to even tell if they're there if you don't react to the bites.
You probably have to not just get some passengers in your luggage but also park the luggage in a place in the infected location where they actual fester, sleep, and lay eggs.
It's somewhat reassuring.
The $500 or so he saved didn't come close to the cost of full apartment treatments, the headaches, and being basically outcast by the family for a month.
Protip: Unless you're really hard up, don't buy a used couch or mattress. And if you have to, figure out a way to deep cleanse it first.
More like wrap it in black garbage bags and leave it out in a sunny day in Arizona or something.
The situation you had in your apartment would never have gotten better. Without treating the whole building, spraying insecticide will just push them into adjacent apartments. Many jurisdictions distinguish between infestations local to one dwelling to be handled by the tenant and infestations that are building-wide which landlords have to treat. If they just keep pushing them around, they never have to shell out for a building-wide treatment and they always look like a hero because technically they didn't even have to pay to get your apartment treated.
Step 1 is to clean every tiny little crevice of your bed frame, bedding, box spring, and mattress and if possible, get a mattress bag. Step 2 is to put bed bug traps under each leg of your bed-- they can't jump or fly, only climb. Step 3 is to make sure no part of your bed or bedding is touching the wall or floor. Step 4 sprinkle diatomaceous earth around the base of your bed and the edges of your room.
That's actually enough to stop you from getting bit right there and if your infestation is really minor, is probably enough to entirely eradicate it. Unfortunately, they can go 70 days without feeding, so you'd need to keep that diligence up for quite some time. That's why a proper extermination will be building-wide and happen at least twice with the second treatment being after the eggs should have hatched. The best method, IMO, is tenting the building and heating it to 115 degrees for a few days. Not cheap, though, and obviously very disruptive.
During an infestation about five years ago, I was curious if what I'd bought and sprinkled everywhere was any use at all, so I captured a bug in a glass and absolutely covered it.
It continued wandering around in there for 4 more days.
But I agree with a lot of the rest of what you're saying :)
Also: - double sided carpet tape is difficult, if not impossible for them to cross, so wrapping it around the leg of a chair or bed in addition to a trap can be a big help - you can measure the heat of a dryer with an instant thermometer by putting a few towels in the dryer and pulling them out right at the peak, before the cool cycle at the end, and tossing the thermometer right into the middle of them. Most dryers are suitably hot, but you should check before relying on it -- you should look up the temperature needed to ensure the eggs are destroyed, and always do a dryer run without washing first, so the heat applies directly and isn't just evaporating water! But after all that: lots and lots of stuff can be put in the dryer, and tied off safely afterwards in bags / taken away from a place it can be reinfested. - putting books or electronics in an oven, even set very low, is usually a bad idea.
For a bedbug, dying in 4 days is quick! They can live for up to a year or more normally. I think you'd normally want to combine a steam treatment to kill the bulk of them with diatomaceous earth to mop up the stragglers
I can confirm this through personal experience. I had a bad bedbug infestation two years ago, did the first three steps and haven't had a problem since (I didn't use the diatomaceous earth in Step 4).
You basically turn your bed into a castle. No bedbugs currently in your bed + defenses so they can't get onto your bed = no future bedbug problem in bed.
One good trick I used is that you can make "bed bug traps under each leg of your bed" yourself by putting little plastic containers under each leg that you fill with an inch of baby oil. The bedbugs can't get passed it.
I am very glad that the exterminator I called was honest with me despite my desperation and told me bluntly that no one could permanently solve the issue without treating the whole structure.
What worked for me and was quite radical was steam cleaning. It takes a lot of time to be thorough, but it kills them very quickly, includes the eggs, and can safely go almost anywhere (except on my poor books)
Wasps and hornets, on the other hand, bring out my darkest urges.
One day our daughter had some small bites on her arms, and then we found small creatures in her bed... my brain went straight to "*k we have bedbugs, burn the house down and start again, but fortunately* my friend is an entomologist and his partner was visiting and she took one back for him to look at.
The answer came back that it was a definitely a carpet beetle and not to worry (simpler to get rid of, which we did).
I recommend having a friend who's an entomologist. Definite life hack ;)
Surprisingly, I've never found a bedbug or hidden camera.
I did once find a 6-inch centipede in my kids' bathroom on the 10th floor of a hotel property on Maui.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4244901/
"Bites from centipedes can cause extreme pain, edema, erythema and other localized symptoms as well as anxiety and panic."
I can’t help thinking that the housing crisis may have contributed to this. I can’t speak for the US, but in the UK rental apartments are not maintained and people are systematically evicted for asking repairs. Mattresses are used by tenant after tenant, with some Airbnb in the middle. People often are not allowed to replace mattresses and landlords can’t bother. Carpet stays there for generations, usually covered with another carpet when it becomes a health hazard.
Really? That sounds insane. And totally illegal where I live (Germany). Got any source on that?
https://england.shelter.org.uk/media/press_release/private_r...
We do have somewhat decent renter protection laws. The UK does not.
> The fabricated leaves did snag the bugs, but they didn’t hinder the insects’ movements quite as effectively as the living plants. But the researchers are not deterred by these initial results. They plan to continue working on the problem and improving their product by more precisely incorporating the mechanical properties of the living trichomes.
Why not grow leaves and use those? Why do we need to make artificial replicas of the real thing, when we could grow the plant and A) get rid of bugs, B) Enjoy the beans and C) benefit from the nitrogen-fixing properties of the plant.
This obsession with creating artificial replicas of things that we know, because we want to have perfect, lab-conditions control of everything, is just crazy.
b) Artificial leaves can be "painted" on continuous surfaces anywhere. E.g. on the foots of beds, inside the walls, doorstep, perhaps even luggage…
c) Artificial leaves require less care and maintenance than bean plants.
Come to think of it I don't understand at all how would you use actual live bean plants to protect a home from bedbugs.
Mmmmhmmm.
It's basically like flypaper and they get stuck and die. Who would want products with the ability to kill bugs in a manner such that now they are permanently covered in dead bugs?
E.g. people who use flypaper.
That's fundamentally different from "your bed or luggage now works like flypaper."
Bedbugpaper can be just as disposable.
Anyway, my only point is that there might be possible applications where this technology fits better than the bean plants suggested by seu.
I would happily have this stuff permanently painted on bed feet. If you have bed bugs to get attached id much rather have them impaled even if I had to refinish my beds legs (in reality you would just clean them off or replace the temporary flypaper)
The pheromone traps for them do work, but I've gradually come to realize that their numbers can be reduced just by exploiting their stupidity: those traps kill by being sticky, and this is something you can add to by adding double-sided tape over anything you've seen them crawl on - like many bugs, they love to fly near lights and this can be made deadly even with low power LEDs. The larvae in particular HAVE to crawl and they usually fall down to the floor at some point. So if you add barriers all around and keep vacuuming the floor, they lose a lot of traction.
This is something I've also seen recommended with bedbugs, even getting the ceiling "airdrop" bugs. I think the long term apartment infestations are a matter of the building as a whole not really pulling itself together to combat the problem, and not so much the existing techniques failing.
What happened in the ensuing decade? Where did this promising path go? That's the article I want to read.
> In this paper, I briefly summarize some of what I have learned over the last 10 years about commercialization from a variety of different sources, related to a bioinspired project in which I am involved.
Perspectives On Bioinspired Product Development: Entrapping Surfaces Based On Leaf Microstructures - https://doi.org/10.1093/icb/icac051
The technology/invention uses a microfabricated surface to entrap insect pests, inspired by the action of microstructures on leaves of plants. The first pest to be targeted is bed bugs, because of their commercial importance and proof of concept using this method.
Earlier, we were able to generate synthetic (plastic) materials that exactly matched the natural leaf surface geometry including the sharp microscopic hooks, using a double molding fabrication technique (Szyndler et al. 2013). However, those synthetics did not permanently entrap bed bugs. We have recently had very promising results using a variety of different materials and alternative microfabrication methods. We have been able to generate arrays of microscopic hooks, producing modifications of shapes beyond those found in nature (Fig. 1). This exciting result means that we have a greater ability to vary the material and mechanical properties of these new surfaces, thereby increasing the probability of better performance in entrapment by these synthetic materials. We are currently at the stage of generation of prototypes and evaluation, and characterization of these different microfabricated surfaces.
it took 3 years between the submission of our first patent application and the granting of the patent. Two additional related patents have been granted subsequently.
Apart from that there is no concrete info on when a product might be avaiable.
I'm not sure how well it did in our infestation because we caught it very early, possibly with only a single bug. But I was impressed by the research.
https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&url=https:/...
I'm currently fighting bed bugs and am using diatomaceous earth spray to make my bedroom toxic to the bugs. It seems to be working but I'm worried about the effects of the spray on me.
It's pretty great as a crack and crevice treatment and lasts a long time.
I finally solved it (just before moving the hell out of there) by contracting with a professional, reputable exterminator who did a thorough job, and signed me to a subscription service that promised followup treatments which I did indeed require.
Come to find out that this was a fluke, and reputable exterminators will not enter or deal with apartment tenants because of professional courtesy for the disreputable ones who are contracted with the landlords.
I suffer from C-PTSD and any bugs crawling on me trigger utter trauma and emotional flashbacks. Now I love insects, don't mind them in the wild, but I can't abide pests.
I was sleeping on the kitchen floor, I had to stop volunteering at church so they wouldn't spread, I couldn't move until they were eradicated, my life was in tatters.
Thank god for $EXTERMINATOR who saved my life and my bacon.
Sleepless nights, helpless days. Had it all during those days. I'd rather leave this earth to the heavenly abode as an option than relive those dreadful days.
I hate to admit it, but I agree with your last sentiment. They are a hell like no other.
I'd never really heard of them aside from the old "night night, don't let the bedbugs bite" saying.
It turns out they are a psychological terror! Every night you know that you're going to fall asleep and have your blood sucked out by loads of little bugs. The council pest control guy who came out made us empty all the rooms, heat treat all of our clothes and then keep them double bagged in sealed plastic bags and once a week he would come round and spray the flat in chemicals and then we would need to put the beds back together and go to sleep as the only way to get the bedbugs to come out and encounter the poison was to lure them out to feed on us.
It affected me mentally for months and months and I'm always paranoid now whenever I go anywhere new like a bus, train, cinema, someone elses house, etc that I'm going to bring them back home with me.
They are no joke.
It took me years to recover and I am still a little paranoid every now and then.
I still get the feeling every now and then one of the fuckers are climbing on me.
For months I just didn't sleep under any covers because I couldn't handle the thought of them creeping around under there and I would wake up constantly throughout the night to the fear that I was being bitten... months after we'd seen the last one too.
Whenever I'd vist my parents, I'd have a double bagged load of clothes that I'd keep in the boot of my car and I'd run them through high heat dryer cycles daily and change into them in outside the house after thoroughly checking myself for bedbugs. It took me years after moving out of the flat to get my head back to normal.
Awful. Awful. Awful.
But that might have been a reason, why I prefer my own tent now, instead of hostels when backpacking .. you never know who slept before you in that room and like others said, getting rid of bedbugs is not easy.
Just because you haven’t doesn’t mean the don’t exist.
Google bed bugs London.
You can't always know if the hotel you're staying at has bed bugs. But you could reduce the risk of taking them home with you by always keeping your bags a distance away from the hotel bed, so the bugs won't be likely to hide there. I've never encountered signs of bed bugs when travelling but it is a simple rule I follow, just in case.
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I read somewhere that some bedbugs may be more resilient than others so that may explain.
- Whole building heat treatment, but this is the nuclear option as it involves heating the entire building (including cracks and crevices) to 60c
- Repeated steam treatments. Superheated steam kills them on contact, but doesn’t scare them away. Any remaining bugs will gravitate towards sleeping areas and can be got by repeating the steam treatment within a 2 week window which is how long their reproduction cycle takes.
Source: https://www.bed-bugs.co.uk/educational/about-bed-bugs/ I did a lot of research on this topic after an unfortunate encounter with bed bugs while travelling, and this was the most reliable source I could find.
EDIT: the Mark Rober video linked below (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2JAOTJxYqh8) also contains much of the same advice.
When reading about this I've heard exterminators say that heat treatment alone isn't always effective because there are some areas that don't reach those temperatures, and it might not kill the eggs that tend to be more durable.
After two rounds of standard chemical treatments, my apartment was empty of them -- it can be quite effective.
Despite that, I still constantly found reasons to believe that it might not yet be resolved, and lived a horrible shell of a normal life for months until I had served out my lease and (still amazingly bug free), could move. Even months after moving, I feared having somehow brought them along.
In retrospect, it's hard to believe: but they were gone after those two treatments. The greatest toll was the mental toll and the uncertainty of whether it could ever even be resolved. If anyone reading is going through it, just follow the instructions of a professional, and know that one day, you _will_ be past it.
It might sound preposterous but even within NYC there’s very different lineages where wealthy areas tend to be much harder to deal with because people don’t want the stigma and so don’t tell anyone when they fumigate and they also travel more which means constantly risking exposure in hotels etc.
Beans are very easy to grow (the easiest plant I've grown at least).
> Fipronil is one of the main chemical causes blamed for the spread of colony collapse disorder among bees
But fast forward a few months, I had to go on another trip. When I reached my hotel and unpacked, I saw that I had a lot of slow moving bugs in the bag. Idk if they were eggs initially or what, but they survived an entire winter of very cold weather. Needless to say, I immediately gave the bag a hot bath and there were pretty heavy casualties. I think it was contained bc I think they were still coming out of some sort of dormant state and unable to scurry away.
Unless it's really cold, bedbugs actually live longer in the cold. Up to 18 months has been reported! Heat treatment is much more effective.
I think they can climb the wall and the ceiling then walk over your bed and drop onto it. I can not prove this happens but I have seen bedbugs in the ceiling. Anybody else know if this happens in practice?
(Luckily I don't have to deal with bed bugs any more, but would be good to know)
Tl;dr Eastern Europe had a technique with bean plants that caught bed bugs, scientists are trying to recreate the technique and failing so far
I captured over 300 bed bugs and documented them to the landlord, who had to get exterminators to eliminate them. They sprayed the apartment 11 times from 2021 to early 2022, but nothing reduced the numbers until they attacked the source infestations.
What worked: Buying white box spring and mattress covers that bugs cannot get through and make them easy to see. Steaming and vacuuming the bed.
Putting glass and plastic traps on the floor under the bed legs. Bugs can't climb (some/all?) smooth, vertical metal, plastic and glass surfaces. Test for yourself. Large numbers of bugs could fill the traps so they have to be checked.
Tucking in bedding so that covers and sheets never slide onto the floor during the night.
Vacuuming floors every day to pick up bugs in the carpet or hidden under the baseboards.
Sealing pipes, lights, electrical plugs and switches with clear tape so the bugs cannot enter that way. I found two dead bugs trapped in a hallway light and then two more crawled out while applying the tape.
Completely sealing the vent above the stove after several crawled down, followed by more that were trapped in the clear plastic.
Sealing the bathroom vent with clear plastic packing tape around all edges of the wall, which bugs cannot climb, then sealing the fan cover onto the wall on all sides except the top so air could still escape. Every surface inside the cover and outside had smooth tape.
Some appeared on the floor near the front door into the common hallway, so I covered the first 60 cm / 2 feet of floor in bleach. This seemed to kill smaller bugs but a few larger ones made it through alive. The exterminator said they follow the smell of each other.
My freezer is -20 C. I put every bug in there for at least 2 hours, in a plastic bag, and none came back to life after they were removed and thawed.
Almost everything I have was put in either clear plastic bags or dozens of 60L clear plastic storage bins. I only found one bug in a clear bin that was right under a fire sensor I could not cover. It appeared to have crawled inside through the sideways U shaped top seals on the ends and died.
The plastic traps on the bed were in this form: TTT Window TDT TDT Put these letters in 3 rows with the TTT at the top and window to the right of TTT in your mind.
The darkest traps labeled D had most of the bugs I found in the bedroom (~20 total), which led me to think they avoided light even though I slept head near the window where they would smell CO2. So, I started leaving all the lights on every day. I also turned down the heat but don't know if either helped.
Before I knew they were bed bugs, I killed about 12 in the bathroom over 3 months. Most would burst in a strange gray cloud.
Secure your bed, clothing and furniture. Then it is easier to deal with the stress and sleep in comfort. If you have to move, everything in plastic is safe and can be checked at the new home.
If it is really bad, make sure you and movers have covers on your feet. The first exterminator tracked them back to his house because he didn't cover his feet, but the government inspector always wore them when inspecting the building.