Airlines Bugging You ... For Real!

Daleandee

Daleandee

Final Approach
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Dale Andee
Yeah, we received an education in those when we had the apartments. They will hitch a ride on clothing, furniture, bags such as luggage, or any fabric. Once they get into your home they are terribly difficult to eradicate. If not addressed promptly they will spread far and wide. You will have to throw away some belongings. Chemical treatment doesn't tend to work. The entire house will have to be heated to 140+ degrees and held there for a few hours; this desiccates the bugs.

They were eradicated in the USA and much of Europe mid last century by DDT, but DDT is now banned and they have developed resistance. So, steaming or heat is currently the best means of eliminating an infestation. Exterminators will write separate contracts just for bedbugs and it's often a price per square foot; it's not cheap. Far better to take precautions to reduce your chance of acquiring an infestation to begin with.
 
You don't actually have to go to the extreme with heat to get rid of them. An old tried but true method is to use diatomaceous earth. Its often used with livestock and as a bonus it destroys spiders and bed bugs like nobodies business. Something about it absorbs the oils/fats from insects and drys them out while the silica in it creates cracks/scratches that speeds the process thereby killing them. I'll be honest I don't entirely understand how it works but I know it works really really well. If you get the food grade variety we use on the farms around here it's pet safe. All you have to do it dust or spread it out on surfaces and areas you want treated and any pest like that dies. Oh, and an added bonus is it's pretty cheap. I think a 10lb bag/box is like 30 bucks and that's enough to treat my 3 cows for a year to help keep down the fly's.
 
I lived in Fairbanks one winter. A 727 cargo plane with a foreign N number landed there one day. It was parked in buzzards row and all the doors and hatches were left open. After a couple weeks, curiosity got to me so I asked around about it. Turned out it was parked there because of a major insect infestation. A few weeks of -40 must have done the trick.
 
Zeldman said:
I lived in Fairbanks one winter. A 727 cargo plane with a foreign N number landed there one day. It was parked in buzzards row and all the doors and hatches were left open. After a couple weeks, curiosity got to me so I asked around about it. Turned out it was parked there because of a major insect infestation. A few weeks of -40 must have done the trick.
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Yes sir, the cold will do it but heat is the generally accepted treatment as @FORANE mentions above. I had a school bus maintenance guy tell me that concerns with bed bugs was one of the reasons they liked to park the buses out in the open field in the hot, summer sun with all the windows and doors closed ...
 
Oh boy. Had some friends in Brooklyn get an infestation and it wasn't pretty.
 
Hengelo said:
Oh boy. Had some friends in Brooklyn get an infestation and it wasn't pretty.
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We fought an infestation in my dad's room at his retirement home for months. Ended up with an all new couch, mattress and box spring, and maybe his "Archie Bunker" chair too. It was a nightmare.
 
kyleb said:
We fought an infestation in my dad's room at his retirement home for months. Ended up with an all new couch, mattress and box spring, and maybe his "Archie Bunker" chair too. It was a nightmare.
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Yeah, this is what I was referring to regarding having to discard belongings. We would heat til 140 - 150 inside, then go into the unit and rotate furniture, bedding, items such that no sides were insulated from the heat. That allowed us to save some items.

Problem in a place like a retirement home is even if you completely get rid of them in his private space, the bugs are likely still present elsewhere. If all of them aren't gone, they will come back. Same issue with apartments; if a neighbor in a connected unit gets them, then you're at risk. I like @Zeldman technique cited above. Apart from exposure to temperature outside of their range, those suckers are hardy. They can live for up to a year without feeding.

Agree completely, they're a nightmare. Best to educate ourselves on what to look for, and actually look when in risk prone locations such as hotels.
 
FORANE said:
Agree completely, they're a nightmare. Best to educate ourselves on what to look for, and actually look when in risk prone locations such as hotels.
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Bedbugs are why you'll see recommendations to place all of your belongings in the bathtub as soon as you arrive at the hotel. Not particularly practical (kinda hard for me to sleep in the bathtub), but helps keep you from taking an infestation home in your bags. We got into a hotel in Spain that had bedbugs (my son and I both suffered bites). When we got home, we washed everything we could, then put our suitcases in black plastic bags and left them in the sun for days in the late spring/early summer here in Atlanta. I'm sure those bags got well over 140F, and we haven't see any indication of bedbugs.
 
I carry my LED flashlight with me when I travel and inspect any hotel room before I unload anything from the cart into the room. If you know how/where to look you can spot most any pest issue in a matter of minutes. In fact ... you may be surprised at what else you could find:

"On 10 July 2003, a man checked into the Capri Motel, just east of downtown Kansas City, and began complaining about a foul odor in his room. Management told him nothing could be done about the problem, and he spent three nights in his room before checking out because he could no longer stand the smell. When the cleaning staff came in to make up the room on 13 July, they lifted the mattress and underneath found a man's body in an advanced stage of decomposition."

Check under the bed
 
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