Bed bugs - desperate for help

[goldengoddess]

I am at my wits end. I have had a problem with bed bugs for nearly two years now and am so stressed about it.
We have been using a professional company who claim to be world experts in the problem, and rather than using harsh chemicals, they use a deep cleaning strategy combined with that white earth stuff which slowly kills the bugs. However, I have spent thousands of pounds on treatment and the problem just doesn't go away. I cannot now sleep with the stress of it, and just as I am drifting off wake with a start imagining that I can feel bed bugs crawling on me. I am sorely tempted to get another company in who will blitz the place with some hard core chemicals, which the first company stress is not the best strategy as apparently that just drives the buggers underground/deep into the skirting boards/floorboards, and only kills those bugs immediately in the vicinity.

I feel like burning all the beds and moving house to get away from them, but then would be terrified of taking the bugs with me. HELP!! If anyone has managed to succesfully eradicate them I would love to know how they did it as I am now really desperate

Hi, I'm currently dealing with them I've had 3 chemical sprays and they're still going although very sparse and unfed, we aren't being bit as we have interceptors traps on beds that work and are using vigilance and cimexa alone right now due to cost of pest control, can I ask how you beat them? I've been at it since October and it's really not doing my mental health any good 😫

Hi @Gamingmum89 that's a long time to be battling these fuckers. You have my commiserations, I know from experience how this can destroy your mental health

Are you absolutely sure you have bedbugs / still have bedbugs? You say you are not being bitten, so what signs are you seeing? Are you finding bugs in the interceptors?

Hi @LLangClegsInSpace yes we definitely still have them, we've never found the harbourage and im not sure how long we had them before or where they came from (we suspect in our luggage) we catch them in the interceptors, and every now and again we see one on the hunt for food I assume they're desperate cause they can't feed on us at night, my anxeity has risen to boiling point this evening as I found a dead one in my room this dried up thanks to the cimexa, pest control spray the not so successful chemicals in the UK we need crossfire to be made legal here it works wonders in the US, its a awful thing to deal with

Stop using the sprays, they're immune to anything you can buy yourself. At best they do nothing, at worst they just irritate them and make them scatter.

Keep using the cimexa but you don't need to keep reapplying it. One fine application will keep working until you hoover it up.

Do you have a photo of the dead bug you found?

Also, you say you sometimes see one on the hunt for food - where are you finding them and what time of day or night?

@LangClegsInSpace I don't buy any products we can get for them in the UK I've never sprayed anything myself, I use cimexa only with interceptors however the pest control guys in the UK sprayed Pyrethroids which bed bugs are potentially resistant too, I found 2 adult males in the day in my bedroom on 2 separate occasions, I don't take pictures anymore because I just like them to be gone quick 😔

If the harbourage is in the bed somewhere then the interceptors will only catch the wanderers. I had success by dusting a very light, but continuous ring of cimexa all around the edge of the sheet where it tucks under the mattress / where it meets the headboard and foot board so they HAD to walk through it to reach us, even from a harbourage in the bed. They were (finally) gone in less than a week after that.

What's the timescale? When was the last pest control treatment and when did you start using the cimexa? Are you using it anywhere else or just in the interceptors?

@LangClegsInSpace no the harbourage isn't on our bed at all we have inspected and its been sprayed, our last and 3rd professional spray was 3rd May and that's the day we put interceptors and mattress encasement on too, I've used Cimexa since 20th May we are getting results from that slowly I dust lightly with it around edges of the carpet and on my bed frame

Be very careful once you have sprayed/had treated and don't sleep in your bed the same night. I read a report in the news that one child died after bed bug treatment.

You should provide a link to where you read that @Deathraystare otherwise you are just needlessly creating anxiety.

https://bpca.org.uk/news-and-blog/woman-charged-with-manslaughter-over-aluminium-phosphide-death

presumably this? Where someone used far too much of a regulated substance that they had illegally imported.
so sod all to do with regular bed bug treatments. Not that you wouldn’t want to be careful, but it’s not the same.

@Gabbysdollhouse

Nope. Nothing sinister. Was just a mum and young daughter living in a council flat I believe. Either the council or a company came round and used chemicals and I am not sure if they wenttobedtheretht night or the next night. I cannot remember where I read it.DAily Fail, Metro or I.

Of course ot was not my intension to scare people shitless just to be careful. Those chemicals are strong.

I see them on my mattress and surrounding res just before I went away for a couple of days.

That is completely against the advice. You HAVE to sleep in the bed the same night in order to ensure they move towards you and expose themselves to the pesticide

They don't treat rooms with children under 2 staying in. So either the pest controller wasn't registered or the client didn't tell them the truth. Or the story isn't true in the first place.

Just adding my experience of pesticides. After pest control sprayed a few times (maybe 3) we still had a few so started steaming everything in the room (bed, skirting boards and anything we thought might provide harbourage). It worked. Can't remember how many times we steamed but probably once a week for 6 weeks or so. Thos was over 20 years ago and I still remember how it felt.

Can i ask for a rough idea of how much pest controllers charge to get rid of bed bugs pls.