* Shelley 

                     Jules! Let me first say, as many, many others have already–you are a wonderful person to help all of us get rid of this nasty pest. Here’s my story: Two years ago, at the end of 2012, my husband came home and told me that one of his friends had bedbugs in his house and was getting the house sprayed. I thought at the time, “uh, oh. . .it might be only a matter of time before they get over here!” Sure enough, my husband continued to go over to his friend’s house (his friend was convinced that the spraying worked and he critters were gone) and starting at the end of *this* past summer, August 2013, I started noticing that I was getting bug bites. Given that it was summertime, and the bites were itchy, I just chalked it up to mosquitoes, but I was really concerned because I was getting bit on a regular basis, which had never happened before. My husband, however, was not getting bit. Anyway, I continued to experience bites all the way up into early November–it was at that point that I knew this had to be more than mosquitoes, because the weather was getting cold and I’ve never received mosquito bites that late in the year. So, I began to research about bed bugs, and sure enough, that’s what it was. We saw two of their droppings in the folds of our mattress, and we actually caught about 8 of them once we really looked around the mattress. We didn’t see very many at all, and we looked all over the box spring. Boy, was I freaked out–and I was still getting bites. So, I really started to look for ways to eradicate them and was very discouraged because I was reading how everything had to be thrown out and I had to pay big money to an exterminator. We even tried a spray that we bought at a hardware store (we used it frequently on the mattress and boxspring). AND THEN I FOUND YOU—THANK GOD!!!!!!!!! I read as much as I could from your websites and studied your YouTube videos. My husband and I went out and spent a total of $25 to get all of the suggested tools for the bedbug barrier and the traps and carefully followed all your instructions. LO AND BEHOLD–THE BITES STOPPED IMMEDIATELY!!!! And I have not been bitten since (it is now the end of January!)

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I do have a question: we never caught any bugs in the traps. I used the big two liter bottles, which did not fit under the bed, so I put the four of them next to each leg of the bed. I’m thinking I may need to switch up and use smaller traps. However, it’s been two months since I’ve been bitten. Do you think we still need traps? I used one set of traps for three weeks, and emptied them out, but haven’t replaced them yet. How much longer should we sleep on the plastic? Do you think those nasty bugs are dead yet?

ISN’T IT NICE TO SLEEP SOUNDLY WITHOUT WORRYING ABOUT BEDBUG BITES?

Thank you for sharing your story. For three months you were stuck with bedbugs, you even saw them coming and there was nothing you could do about it. If the insect is disgusting, the way they use it for marketing is even worse, the bedbug is a cash cow.

In your own words: “Boy, was I freaked out–and I was still getting bites. So, I really started to look for ways to eradicate them and was very discouraged because I was reading how everything had to be thrown out and I had to pay big money to an exterminator.” “Professionals”, they call themselves professionals and they do not even know how to catch a bug that has only one source of food. Bedbugs are the most vulerable insects because of that! Take their food away and they have nothing to feed on, bedbugs are not invincible and do die of starvation.  The undefeatable bedug! Give me a break, everybody squishes them as soon as they see them. Bedbugs are stupid and no match with someone who can think. Unfortunately, poison pushers are driven by greed and will never eradicate the bedbug.  All by yourself, you did better than any of them can do, when this is going to be over, there will not be a single bedbug left behind. Poison repels them (bedbugs are resistant to poison) and pushes them deep into the walls and to the neighbors and these so-called “professionals” thrive on that. Imagine, making money with bedbugs… by using a repellent on them and putting our health in danger.

I hate poison pushers just as much as I hate bedbugs. 

Isn’t this ironic, the right way to get rid of a parasite is to take their food away from them, right? What will happen to these guys when we will all get rid of bedbugs all by ourselves?

Your story is very typical, that’s exactly how a bedbug infestation starts from day one and that’s exactly how to stop bedbugs, by starving them to death.

Stop feeding the bedbug!

And you did  Shelley, excellent. You used your wits and it paid off. 

You lured them under an impenetrable shield and you ketp them from feeding,

and most important, you broke this cycle:

Shelley ___ “I do have a question: we never caught any bugs in the traps.” Traps are made to lure and catch bedbugs on the floor. Any and all bedbug anywhere in the room will come out of hiding driven by hunger. To bedbugs, the traps are a place to feed, it is a powerful lure that uses Heat and CO2 to attract bedbugs on the move. The CO2 traps are sentinels on the job 24/7, directly in the pathway bedbugs use to climb into the bed. The traps are monitors meant to catch bedbugs when they come out of hiding. Your traps never caught one? There were no bedbugs in the room. Here is what you had:

• A typical bedbug infestation starts with a single bedbug. You got yours in August of this year.
• The first weeks, you noticed a a rash and a swell. Being on the look out for bedbugs but without evidence, those seemingly harmless irritations being spaced apart, you prefered to think that it could be mosquitoes, a perfectly normal reaction.

Look at the graph again, those are the first stages of a bedbug infestation where only the [breakfast-dinner-lunch] bite of the adult female bedbug leave an itchy red swell about once a week while the first stage nymphs being small and hardly visible only leave a pinkish rash that does not last long. Up to the the fourth and fifth stage, your bed if a nursery. A very nice place to raise bedbugs and they do, that is why we call them bedbugs! All bedbugs from mother to hatchlings, and all the nymphs in between are in the bed and none of them are in the room. Your bed is a bedbug paradise where the lone single adult bedbug repeatedly lays her eggs after a triple bite full blood meal, while her eggs hatch into nearly transparent replicas of herself, having only to climb up to get fed, from their cozy little corner of the mattress. Bedbugs just do not want and will not leave the bed in the beginning of an infestation. Lucky you covered that single harborage before they spread out. Imagine, at the adult stage, the agressive males appear and attack anything in sight that is blood-filled, including their own mother, but unable to grab the tiniest ones. If there is a hell for bedbugs, that’s when it happens. It causes bedbugs of both genders and of age (except the young ones which are too small  too survive traumatic insemination) to flee and scatter out of the bed. I used the big two liter bottles, which did not fit under the bed, so I put the four of them next to each leg of the bed. I’m thinking I may need to switch up and use smaller traps. However, it’s been two months since I’ve been bitten. Do you think we still need traps? I used one set of traps for three weeks, and emptied them out, but haven’t replaced them yet. The traps work just as well  next to the legs of the bed as underneath it. It is only a matter of convenience  and to put them out of the way that we place them under the bed. If you did not catch bedbugs with the traps in the last two months, you can keep only two traps as monitors and using only half the yeast of the recipe to make them last twice as long as their normal full strenght use of 2-3 weeks. The traps will serve as sentinels  against any new bedbug  and will prevent any re-infestation. Keep the traps running for a few months, they are your defense against bedbugs even if you do not see any. Mine have been running for three and half years now and I never had any new bedbugs since then. I feel so safe with them on that I will probably keep them on forever.

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How much longer should we sleep on the plastic? Do you think those nasty bugs are dead yet? Not all bedbugs are dead yet. The younger ones die faster than the adults but the mother of all bedbugs might still be alive.  

It is a myth that bed bugs can live for a year without feeding, it can only occur in cold temperatures and never in heated human dwellings.  At temperature of 68F,without activity and feeding (dormant), they live about three months. Alvero Romaro, University of Kentucky performed experiments where colonies of bedbugs were placed in an unoccupied building at 68F and recorded their behavior with time lapse cameras. The bedbugs didn’t forage or feed and the study gave a normal mortality rate of 92 days (average)

At the 57th Annual Meeting of the Entomological Society of America in 2009, newer generations of pesticide-resistant bed bugs in Virginia were reported to survive only two months without feeding.

• Ninety-two days is an average, some bedbugs surviving longer than 92 days, and some other bedbugs less than 92.
• Those tests were done at 68°F. All insects are dependent on temperature. The warmer they are and the more active they become, and as the temperature cools down, they become slower and they hardly move.

Bedbugs are not any different and if those tests would have been made at temperatude others than 68°F, Alvero Romaro would have found different mortality rates. The warmer is is, the faster they die and vice-versa, the cooler it is the longer they last. That explains the two month span of the Entomological Society of America based on reports instead of controlled laboratory conditions.

• In a bed at our normal room temperatures of 70-80°F and in proximity of our body heat, dormant bedbugs do not last 92 days but 60-70 days at best and bedbugs that remain active (and that is most of them) last no more than 3-4 feeding cycle or 25-30 days. And of course the young ones die faster than the adults.

To completely get rid of bedbugs, a trap (and shield) must last longer than any bedbug can survive. So it is best to leave the shield on and the traps running for three months.

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