Researchers Develop New Trap To Capture Bloodsucking Bed Bugs 141
Hugh Pickens DOT Com writes "Bedbugs (Cimex lectularius) are small blood-sucking insects that can live in cracks and crevices in and around your bed and crawl out at night to bite your exposed skin and feed on your blood, just as mosquitoes do. Now BBC reports that researchers from the Rutgers University Department of Entomology have developed a new trap that has a 77% probability of capturing bed bugs, nearly three times as many bed bugs over 28 days (PDF), as the the Climbup insect interceptor trap, which the authors cite as the best monitor on the market. A better trap design can allow people to detect bed bugs while they are still in small numbers. 'If you have only 10 or 20 bugs in your apartment, it's very hard to see with your eyes,' says Lead author Narinderpal Singh. 'When people realize they have bed bugs they are often already in their thousands, or hundred thousands. It's relatively easy to eradicate the bed bugs when they are in small numbers, but when they are everywhere, it's very hard to eradicate them.' The device can be created at home very cheaply and consists of a plastic dog bowl that's been inverted, with the outer wall covered with a layer of dyed-black surgical tape. The researchers contend that higher walls make their trap more effective than the interceptor trap because it's harder for bugs to escape."
Re:Ya know what also works? (Score:4, Informative)
Not really a good point at all. Bedbugs don't hide in the sheets. They hide in the crevices of the mattress, box-springs, bed frame, and surrounding areas. You might find a few bugs crawling the bedsheets, but it's not where they lay their eggs.
Comment removed (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Quit fucking around. (Score:5, Informative)
Just give us the same thing that got rid of them the last time around. DDT works.
Bedbugs were apparently resistant to DDT by the 1950s [cdc.gov].
Re:Ah bedbugs (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Wait, what? Be careful when you quote stats (Score:5, Informative)
If you want the real numbers, read the (free) pdf:
http://esa.publisher.ingentaconnect.com/content/esa/jee/2013/00000106/00000004/art00036 [ingentaconnect.com]
They actually did a pretty thorough job of testing them and various attractants in various levels, and have real numbers in the report.
To attempt to answer you question (which can't be answered 100% accurately because there were many scenarios tested and you and the summary didn't state which was referenced)... not all the bugs got caught; the bugs that did not get caught were generally inactive and lethargic (I'm guessing they were old, or not hungry, etc), so they didn't really count them; the new traps caught about 2.5 fold more bugs given the same lure (or lack thereof); tests were run in a variety of settings, including an arena made from a wooden door and several infested apartments while people were there.
Also, for those wondering, the new trap is:
* inverted plastic dog bowl (600ml volume, 18cm diameter, 6.4cm depth, from IKEA)
* outer wall of bowl was covered with a layer of paper surgical tape (caring international)
* tape was died black with Fiebing's Lether Dye (Tandy Leather Factory)
* Incide of bowls were coated with a light layer of fluoropolymer resin (Bio-Quip products, Rancho Dominguez, CA) to prevent the bugs from crawling out
And the best lure was:
* 150g yeast (Lesaffre Yeast Corp)
* 750g granulated cane sugar (U.S. Sugar Co. Inc)
* 3L water (40degree C)
Fill a plastic tub with the lure mixure, mix it up, put on a lid, and rest it on top of two traps.
Lower amounts of lure stil work (not as well as the above amount, but much better than none - see paper for full details).
A tip when traveling (Score:4, Informative)
I used to stay in cheap hostels and in Singapore there was one which was infested with bed bugs. I was getting bit every night until I found that if I sprayed a ring of high powered DEET insect repellent in a ring around the edges of the mattress, the bed bugs wouldn't cross the ring and therefore wouldn't bite me. (I had a DEET spray that was supposed to last 8 hours). Better than spraying yourself with DEET every night.
I have heard they can climb on the ceiling and drop down, but thankfully that didn't happen (maybe it's a rare occurrence?).
Re:Ya know what also works? (Score:4, Informative)
*sigh*
Ants, flies, cockroaches, dust mites, etc. are not bedbugs. Bedbugs are not drawn to filth. They might use trash strewn about as a hiding place, but "clean that mess up or you'll get bedbugs!" is just not true. Bedbugs are drawn to you, because you are their food source. They spread by hitchhiking on clothes, luggage, etc. from an infested area to an uninfested area. Hotels are prime breeding and distribution spots. Or, if you live in an apartment complex or building, they'll spread between the walls from apartment to apartment.
If you really want to avoid getting bedbugs, the best thing you can do isn't to keep your room meticulously clean. It's to put your clothes and luggage in the dryer as soon as you return home after spending a night in a hotel.
My experience (Score:3, Informative)
So how did we get rid of them? We tried various techniques. Encasing our mattress/boxspring and pillows in bedbug proof cases. Putting the legs of the bed in bowls of water. Spraying multiple times, sweeping constantly. The spraying did reduce the numbers, but didn't eliminate them totally. The final nail in the coffin for them was going out and buying a clothes steamer, and steaming the mattress, boxspring, pillows, baseboards, and any other hiding spots in the bedroom. They have to be heated to a certain temperature (can't recall the exact temp at the moment) in order to kill the adults and eggs. So it was a very slow process to make sure they were cooked by the steam. We repeated this process every other day for over a week. At the same time we washed our bed sheets and clothes... ALL OF THEM, even ones we rarely wore and were still clean.
Of course we were paranoid that there were still eggs, waiting to hatch that we had missed... and we were just waiting for that second outbreak. Lucky for us it never came.