First Contact page for Bed Bug Experts and Journalists

To those who have concerns about the dire straits of bed bug control in today’s world:

In 2023, I exterminated a light bed bug infestation in my home all on my own with no chemicals or heat treatments or diatomaceous earth. I wrote a narrative about my extermination experience, called Tilting at Bed Bugs (pdf). (I wrote it because I write, and then in the hopes that what I learned might aid the search for solutions). I am nobody in the science world, or any other world for that matter, just a person whose home was invaded by bed bugs. Their treatmentless extermination constitutes my credentials.

There are three points that I think recommend my narrative to being considered of value in the battle against bed bugs:

My strategy worked. I became nocturnal and, for 6 to 7 hours every night for 2½ months, I lured bed bugs to a trap and killed those that came. No hunting for nests, no vacuuming, no repeated hot laundering, no decluttering, no heat treatments, no chemicals. Bed bug free for over a year.
It's a compelling read. Twenty-three pages of text with pictures and a timeline, it is entertaining, funny, gripping, triumphant and highly educational. It could go viral, bringing the world’s bed bug crisis to the world. (If ‘Fifty Shades of Grey’ can go viral, anything can.)
I've teased out three takeaways on my own. There must be other takeaways within my narrative that researchers and experts can mine out of it and incorporate into current extermination approaches to improve them.

I’m hoping you will consider that my story could be relevant to the bed bug management community, that passing it on to others you know who might be interested would be worthwhile, and that we might even work together to maximize its impact. I'm hoping to send this same basic message specifically to the following writers because I believe my experience shows there are answers to the issues raised by them:

I. Ute Eberle, Getting rid of bed bugs: Trickier than ever published Jan 31/24 Knowable Magazine (aka The ‘Unthinkable’ New Reality About Bedbugs: Another, much stronger species is headed north Feb 10/24 The Atlantic). She wrote:

Bed bugs have grown resistant to many standard pesticides—to the point that some experts say they wouldn’t bother spraying should their own home become infested.
But while effective, nonchemical methods tend to work slowly. “It’s very common that a [heat treatment] elimination takes one to two or even three months,” says Changlu Wang, an entomologist at Rutgers University in New Jersey. Meanwhile, residents must keep living in their infested quarters.
If bed bugs do invade a home, “the biggest mistake is to try and get rid of them on one’s own,” says entomologist Stephen Doggett of the Department of Medical Entomology at Westmead Hospital in Sydney.

My experience: Not only did I TRY to get rid of them on my own, I DID get rid of them on my own. Without pesticides, without heat treatments, without diatomaceous earth. And if residents have to live in their infested quarters anyway for two or even three months, why not use my strategy while they are there? If they do, they might knock off at least a month.

II. William Hentley, Bed bugs are a global problem published Oct 25/23 The Conversation. He wrote:

The future for bed bugs is unclear. Those we see today are resistant to most pesticides, are masters of subterfuge, and are not going anywhere. They have co-evolved with humans—so our best option for reducing their impact on our lives is for researchers and pest control professionals to spend less time trying to kill them [with treatments], and more time trying to understand how they function within our world. Maybe then, we will work out a way to limit or even remove them from our homes for good.

My experience: That's what I did! Using how they function within our world against them, I worked out a treatmentless way to remove them from my home!

III. Heather Lynch, Bed bugs are back—here’s how one neighbourhood is learning to live with them published Dec 11/17 The Conversation. She wrote:

The experience of people in Govanhill, a locality just south of Glasgow, is that once these insects become endemic they are effectively impossible to remove.
One Govanhill resident I interviewed questioned the practices of the council pest controllers who visited her flat—both their thoroughness and the fact that they only appeared to be tackling one residence at a time. As she learned more about bed bugs, she reluctantly accepted that they may be part of the new normal—even if the council did everything perfectly, the problem may be too big to solve.
Many other people, based on their own experience and analysis, have come to terms with the fact that you can’t beat bugs and have resigned themselves to living with them instead.
The Govanhill residents who have learned to live with bed bugs may be ahead of the curve here. They may be the ones who can help everybody else to adapt instead.
We are [all] also victims of having concluded some 60 years ago that we had vanquished bed bugs forever: the average person is nowadays far less knowledgeable about detecting and managing them than previously.

My experience: Maybe, if the people of Govanhill knew what I know and, together, tried what I tried, building by building, relying on themselves and not the questionable practices and faltering agenda of pest controllers, they could get ahead of the curve and adapt in a different way, using my strategy, and find that the problem is not too big to solve. Maybe.

IV. Lynne Peeples Flee, Dry and Die: Is a New Weapon in the Bedbug Battle Ready for Action? published Jun 10/09 Scientific American. She wrote:

Benoit acknowledges the dire current situation in bedbug extermination. "The main problem is nothing is working. Or if it is working, it only works for a while and then the bedbugs become resistant," he says. One of Benoit's colleagues, who is on the Central Ohio Bedbugs Task Force, tells him, "They are pretty much open to anything at this point."

My experience: March 2023? I was pretty much open to anything at that point and I tried it and it worked.

Now, to take this any further, I need help. Yours.

Sincerely,

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