Table of contents
- About bugs and bed bugs and bug bites
- Why the bed bugs are back
- holiday trap
- Detect bed bug infestations
- fight bed bugs
- Do bed bugs transmit pathogens?
- Prevention of a bed bug infestation
Many people are not familiar with bugs anyway; when they sit in bed sucking on sleepers, the fun is over even for big nature lovers. Even if the stings are mostly harmless and the bed bugs primarily bother frequent travelers - the bed bugs are on the rise, combating them is not easy and hiring a pest controller can quickly lead to impoverishment in the case of bed bugs to lead; Being informed can therefore do no harm:
About bugs and bed bugs and bug bites
Bedbugs are a separate order of insects with a mere 40,000 species; 3,000 of them live in Europe, 800+ of them use proboscis and scent glands in Germany. But the bugs in this country only have one species to thank for their bad reputation – the house bug or Bed bug with scientific name Cimex lectularius, which is the only one that bites humans and that's what this is about goes.
Three other native species of bugs damage crops in good years for them, in the American tropics some bugs are considered vectors for pathogens, but most bugs make themselves useful by destroying other insects such as aphids, sucking on fungi and plants, and, most importantly, feeding on the next larger creatures (mostly in tropical areas). Incidentally, this also explains the meaning of the existence of a bug: the next larger creature is followed by a larger one up to the human being; we too would starve if all parasites were eradicated.
The bed bug, on the other hand, is a real nuisance, although the flat red-brown insect is just 5 millimeters long when fully grown. Because the nocturnal bug is a bloodsucker that is attracted by body heat, smell and carbon dioxide and as a culture follower usually finds all of this in human beds. Sucking takes place on sleeping people for an impressive 3 to 10 minutes, after which the house bug is no longer paper-thin, but has become 9 millimeters fat.
Humans react angrily to the mini-vampire, not only with curses, but also with skin rashes. Usually parts of the body outside the bed covers are bitten, arms, shoulders, legs. Because the bug has a bit of anesthetic in its saliva (no joke, just very clever evolution), it can man does not flatten the bug (again) in bed straight away, as he will not notice the bites until the next morning noticed. Or not noticed, about a fifth of the population shows no skin reactions Bed bug bites, the rest itchy spots like in the photo, which are not usually medical need to be treated.
Stings can be cooled and treated with all the tricks against itching: drying soap paste or soda paste on the stains leave, lemon juice, St. John's wort ointment, witch hazel ointment, aloe vera gel and what other skin care products against insect bites or smallest wounds in the house is; but there are no medical studies of any kind on the use of over-the-counter cortisone cream from the medicine cabinet on bug bites.
As with all insect bites, there are isolated and rarely more serious symptoms that should be brought to a doctor's attention. In the case of severe chronic infestation, new itchy areas of skin repeatedly increase the risk of individual areas becoming inflamed through scratching and the germs that have been introduced (according to Repeated bed bug bites are said to develop tolerance with a reduced reaction to the bites, but you probably don't want that try out). It is therefore important that the bed bugs do not become permanent guests in the bed.
Why the bed bugs are back
Actually, in the countries of the civilized world we live nowadays rather too hygienically than too dirty (because frequent contact with a bit of dirt is important training for our immune system is). In the globalized world, however, there is a lively exchange of microorganisms and small animals that travel the world with trade in goods and in luggage. And the hygiene standards are very different today; from the slum in the immediate vicinity of the Hotel-Bettenburg (where hygiene is of secondary importance compared to the procurement of food and the care of the sick problem is) to the household of the "victim of the detergent industry" with high levels of exposure to critical chemicals is everything represent.
With regard to the growth of house bugs, both extremes are about equally harmful: in the first-mentioned environment, house bugs multiply magnificently, and then in suitcases/goods packaging Travel towards Germany - where they now enter an environment where all natural enemies have been cleaned away, so the bugs continue to multiply undisturbed and happily can. This is why bed bugs have been increasing in Germany for about 15 years, according to observations the pest controller first among better-off sections of the population who travel a lot and a lot buy; once the exterminator has expelled them from there, they visit the households of people with less excessive travel and consumption habits.
holiday trap
Bugs travel in suitcases, bags, parcels and every other imaginable packaging, on cars and trucks, ships, trains and planes. But if you read articles that say bugs are spread by buying used furniture or CDs, those articles were probably originally written by furniture and CD sellers and are then got into the usual we-all-write-off-each-other-round of poorly paying media (which can also include web portals of cities/communities if the copywriting is "outsourced" became). Referenced review articles on house bugs do not mention used furniture; why should they, there can certainly be bed bugs in used furniture, but only in the percentage in which they generally occur in German households.
This percentage is very small; the greatest likelihood of encountering a bug is in travel and goods traffic. So in big hotel chains - who require their cleaning staff to clean a hotel room ready for occupancy every quarter of an hour (you have Ever tried to clean a room with a bathroom in 15 minutes and then also look for tiny, hidden pests?) and in Junk shops that do a busy trading of goods around the world, but the only cleaner in the 100 square meter shop with a fend off starvation wages.
Detect bed bug infestations
The visible and perceptible bites usually do not immediately lead to the house bugs, because most people are not particularly violent react, all sorts of insects cause small reddening of the skin or the small reddened area of skin is mistaken for an allergic reaction becomes. The bugs themselves have already shrunk to “wallpaper flounder” in the morning and hide there or in a small crack.
Discovering them there is seldom successful and only with a targeted search; if you want to tackle this, the best way to help is to sniff the characteristic, sweet smell of bugs, with your own nose or the
a specially trained sniffer dog. You can also keep an eye out for faecal marks, clusters of small black dots that sit close together, e.g. B. on the wallpaper or somewhere on the bed frame.
If you don't find anything, bed bug monitoring can remove the last doubt, which is discussed in more detail below.
fight bed bugs
If you found a bedbug infestation in a rental property, you would normally ask the landlord to have the bugs removed. At his expense, since vermin infestation represents a defect in the rented property; unless the landlord can prove to you that you are at fault for the bugs appearing. This proof is usually provided by experts commissioned by the landlord, whether you want to take this risk is certainly worth considering: a legal dispute could become even more expensive.
In most guides it is strongly recommended to hire a pest controller in the event of a bedbug infestation; but concealed the fact that you may incur costs of several 1000 euros.
As long as the bed bugs don't migrate from your home to the next (which they do e.g. B. usually do when you just spray some insecticide) and the occupants hold them liable for damages, you are not required to hire an exterminator. Instead, you can try to get rid of the bugs using all the tricks presented below. You could e.g. B. be successful if the bug "just crawled out of the suitcase" and their home has smooth walls and furniture with not much hiding space. But you're taking a risk: bed bugs can go hungry for months, so even if you're quiet for a long period of time, there's no guarantee that the nightmare is really over.
With these measures, bug defense could work without pest control in the case of (still manageable) initial infestation; all of these measures are also suitable to support the work of a pest controller:
- Fighting bugs with physical means is currently "in" again, because the bugs quickly develop resistance to insecticides
- Bugs and their eggs do not tolerate very low minus temperatures (above minus 15 °C) or very high temperatures (above 50-60 °C)
- The easiest way would be to bring the affected room to a temperature of 55°C for a few hours using portable heaters
- Appropriate heaters are available for hire
- All potentially infested textiles that tolerate this are bug-free with a hot wash
- Smaller items (books, CDs, bathroom odds and ends) can be wrapped in foil and frozen for a few days
- Or they spend a few days on the cold balcony in winter; in summer too, when the foil is really heated up by the sun
- The same applies to luggage, mattresses and duvets
- What should now be bug-free can ideally be placed in foil in an adjoining room
- While you sleep on a futon under boilable blankets in the possibly still "contaminated area".
- The laundry worn during this time should remain in the infested rooms
- Because dirty laundry keeps the bugs in place when people occasionally leave behind "fresh lure scents".
- Furniture is placed in smooth-walled vessels (filled with water) with the feet during the "fight time".
- Matching containers are even sold: a kind of ashtray with a moat that lets bugs in but never out again
- An insider tip from south-eastern European countries plagued by bugs: Bean leaves (from Phaseolus vulgaris) scattered around the bed have been driving away bugs there for centuries
- Microscopic plant hairs grow on the leaves of the bean plant and wrap around the animals' legs with the force of cable ties
- When the bugs migrate towards the bed at night, they get stuck on the leaves; in the morning they will be carefully swept up together with the forest of leaves and immediately disposed of in a bag
- Researchers have been trying to develop an artificial bug catcher based on the bean leaf since 2013; Unfortunately, there are still no reports of success in 2017
- If you live in a "close to nature" household, you might be lucky enough to have a few dust bugs around
- They love to eat bed bugs and are not in the least bit impressed by the unpleasant-smelling alarm pheromones
- Other enemies of bed bugs include book scorpions (millimeter-sized arachnids that live in healthy old houses) and hunting spiders
- There are forum reports from naturalists who got rid of bed bugs with the help of hunting spiders/wolf spiders that they caught while walking in the woods
Tip:
If you are sure that the bed bugs were brought from vacation, the suitcases were unpacked in the bedroom and the bugs you could only get into the adjoining bathroom with the dirty laundry, you should continue these rooms while fighting to use. Safe with a bed whose 4 legs stand in metal bowls with water that bugs cannot climb on, or whose mattress lies on a foil on the floor. Because as long as a potential host appears at regular intervals, the bugs stay where they are and do not spread to other rooms.
KEBman, Bedbug bites on human leg 2, edited by Hausgarten, CC0 1.0.
If you don't succeed, then eventually a pest controller will have to be called in, which is no fun in a number of ways:
- The history of combating bed bugs with synthetic insecticides is long
- The use of DDT in particular led to a massive decline in bed bug infestations in Europe and the USA after the Second World War
- In the meantime, however, it is getting tight with the insecticides, the bugs are already resistant to the DDT and a number of its less toxic successors
- Which is seen as the main cause of the increasing bug populations, alongside the global movement of goods and people
- With the pesticides currently used, the success of the control can therefore no longer be reliably guaranteed
- Today, the health protection of the residents also prohibits the fumigation of entire rooms with insecticides
- Developing new insecticides that kill bugs safely and are humanely and environmentally benign is difficult
- The OECD put this development on its agenda in 2015
- Despite global problems with bugs, there is still no internationally accepted standard method
- If you hire a pest controller, he should be a member of the German Pest Controllers Association or the Association for the Promotion of Ecological Pest Control
- And after a clear diagnosis, he should inform you about the details of the control, the insecticides used and their dangers to humans
An alternative to the use of insecticides could be the use of the following new methods: Detection of infestation using a bed bug monitor (which uses a combination of heat and CO2 to monitor human simulates the body and thus attracts bed bugs), then eliminate the bed bugs with the Cimex Eradicator, the bed bugs and their eggs with 180 C° hot dry steam without the use of poison kills. Both devices are also available for hire.
Do bed bugs transmit pathogens?
"No." Says the Federal Environment Agency, which you can believe more easily than panic-spreading articles, because the Federal Environment Agency only makes such statements after evaluating the available scientific sources (www.umweltbundesamt.de/sites/default/files/medien/364/publikationen/uba156314_flyer_bettwanzenbefall_rz_web.pdf).
Prevention of a bed bug infestation
Once the bed bugs have been dragged into the apartment, it is too late. Measures to prevent bed bug infestations start with consumer behavior and primarily affect behavior when travelling, from choosing a hotel to handling luggage; the numerous conceivable, sensible and necessary options are presented in special articles on bug prevention.
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