The rise in bedbugs and other household pests!!!!

Hi holisticheaven,

bedbugs thrive on damp/warm conditions so leaving your matress to get air to all sides of it esp of your beds underside doesnt normally get air to it...you could try standing your matress up to air...also cotton sheets and bedding not synthetic...

also a really good thing for cleaning and freshening matresses is bicarb of soda you can sprinkle it all over the matress leave it for a couple of hours and then hoover it off thoughroughly...(bicarbs good for loads of things like sofas that need freshening and carpets etc- only prob can be it sometimes leaves slight white marks, or maybe my hoover is a bit crap!its also good for stains and smelly shoes-leave overnight!)

love

anna

Eewww! 😮 that is awful! I have a serious phobia against spiders and so far this week have had two bigguns in the house. I am always fearful of the fact that a big one might crawl over me in the night.

People are always telling me about the facts that they have read somewhere that we are supposed to swallow goodness knows how many of the blighters whilst we are sleeping.

Oh no - I do not like bugs or creepy crawlies of any kind! Scary isn't it?!:speechless-smiley-0

I opened a packet of oats today to find tiny insects crawling around inside.

Yuk!!

Oh that is gross...I hope your going to send them back to the manufacturer!

I spent last night creating various aromatherapy bug sprays, sprinkled my mattress with bi-carb and then hoovered it, and cleaned the house from top to toe! Just the thought that there is a chance of bugs was enough to send me on a mad cleaning spree! x

i remember bugs crawling out of the walls when i was in bed as a child,we had aman come to spray ev erything

Stop! It's making me feel itchy!! I too hoovered my entire house last night. I'm now going to do the bicarb thing (my husband's slippers might get it too). At least the adult bed-bug is the size of an apple pip - I'd have seen that if we had them.

My sister has slugs (yuck) and I keep catching their slimy trails out of the corner of my eye. Imagine sitting down for the evening and there's one of those eyeballing you from the sofa!

Catherine x

There was definitely no bed bugs in my house as I checked the entire bed and I felt kinda reassured that if we did have any they were big enough to see!!!

As for slugs we seem to have some as we have a rug in our front room, which has trails on every morning...but I just can't find where they are coming from as can't see any trails on the wooden floor!!! If I was to see one eyeballing me my boyfriend would be taking outside straight away.

I really hate SPIDERS but my partner makes me let them stay in the house as long as there are none in the bedroom as I have enough nightmares without encouraging them. he says they are a natural pest control which is probably true as we have had no flies or anything in the house this summer!

Laura x

Thought I'd add to your paranoa by telling about our mega itchy bites! 🙁
My husband and I got loads (100+ each) of itchy bites when we were in our caravan in June - mostly on areas covered by clothing - tummies, around axillae, chest, inner thighs - all the soft delicate bits - and were MEGA itchy and have left little pale purple scars!
We were sure we were getting them in our bed - particularly because of their distribution + we'd wake in the night with crawly feelings. I'm paranoid about keeping mozzies out, so was pretty sure they weren't the culprits. I checked the bedding, mattress and bed for signs of bed bugs but could find no evidence - absolutely NOTHING TO BE SEEN! We got a new mattress, changed all the bedding and sprayed everything else in the room - better but several nights later and we had more new bites again!! 😮 We felt very intimidated by something that we couldn't even see and had no idea what they were :confused:.
When I got home I spent days / weeks searching on the web and after considering caterpillar dermatitis (there were lots of hairy caterpillars on the decking) I eventually came to the conclusion that we had BIRD MITES. Our caravan is under a large overhanging oak tree with wood-pigeon nests in - apparently the microscopic mites live in the nest, bitting the birds during the night when they're roosting. Once the nest is vacated - the mites will look for alternative dinner ingredients and are happy to add people to their menu!:dft005:
I think we'd picked them up on our clothes from the chairs outside and/ or they'd got through the mozzy screen on the window and taken them to bed where they had a riot of a party.
When we returned to the 'van in August, I took mite specific sprays (used in pigeon lofts etc) and blitzed the table and chairs outside and all but the bed inside. I also took something called Kleenzyme - an eco-friendly cleaning product that also just happens to kill insects by causing them to shed their exo-skeletons prematurely. They can't develop resistance to this and it's safe to use on people - so we sprayed the bedding every evening with this and ourselves if we felt creepy + washed everything washable in borax which kills 'em too. I'm pretty sure we got the better of 'em - we got a few bites 1st couple of nights but then were ok for the rest of the hol.
Going over for a couple of days tomorrow actually and I'll be continuing my campaign just in case 1 escaped my summer blitz and is bringing up a family in my bed! :012:

Apparently bed bugs were in about 30% of UK households up to the 1930s, when DDT starting killing them off. People alive then must have learned how to deal with them, since the recent staggering rise of UK cases seems to be true enough - I know a couple of elderly people who've had them in the last 24 months. But one lady, I assume, recalled the 30s and knew what they were and what to do. She did an incredibly thorough vac of the bed, mattress, and whole room. This dealt with it on that occasion, but TBH I'm really surprised it did. Normally the problem does require the use of anti-insect sprays, powders, smoking gadgets, and so forth.

If only it were true that bed bugs as adults get to the size of an apple pip. (Prepare to get scratching.) I've encountered them a couple of times in the Middle East. The first time was many years ago. I had to hang around in Egypt for a few days for someone else to arrive I was due to meet. This was before tourism really happened in Egypt so there were no real tourist hotels. I spent ages looking around Cairo and couldn't find a single free room, so when I eventually did I took it. I didn't know of another free room in all of the city so that was it. Well, suffice it to say that it was my introduction to bb's. There wasn't another room to move into so I had to face it for a couple of nights. Though I since learned they can come out in the light, on that occasion they all disappeared within seconds if a light went on. But if you put the light off, they'd be out within a few minutes too. I had no products to deal with it, so all I could think of was to use my own body as 'bait' in the dark. (You see, I'd put the light on to find about 100 of them all over me, and they then ran away.) After a few minutes in the dark, I leapt up to put the light on, and managed to splat at least half before they got away in the light. Horrible of course, but the only thing I could do. I repeated this several times over until just about all were splatted. (After sucking your blood they are kind of like little balloons on legs, so easily pop if you slap on them.)

The rotten thing is that they come in all sizes, from tiny dots to about a third of an inch (much bigger than an apple pip!), which must be the older ones.

This may seem like a horrible subject, but I'll never forget those 2-3 nights in Cairo, and if people are increasingly getting this in the UK now, we may as well be frank and give real pointers to practical solutions?

But I wonder why the increase? Foreign travel, climate change, and chemical resistance have all been cited, but I'm not sure how just one of those, alone, could account for such a huge increase in a short time. Dare I write it? I've also wondered about the increase of immigrants? - since they'll come in in suitcases or in clothing (the bugs, that is!).

Sorry this is such a long post, but I was also talking to world travellers last night who seemed quite assured that mosquitos in the UK now do occasionally carry malaria and dengue fever, but to stop panic the authorities put cases down to having been caught abroad.

V

I remember a little verse my granny used to chant to me whenever I was staying with her,something like this:-
Nighty-night
Sleep tight
Watch the bed bugs
Don't bite!
:eek::)

I grew up with that one too from a grandmother, ending, "Don't let / The bed bugs bite". So they were used to them.

Re my post above, just to add that if anyone has this problem, don't just vac and leave the vac cleaner in the home. Empty the bag straight away outside and clean the bag. Vacuuming them up won't harm them at all.

Also, tell-tale signs of having this is that people who react get sometimes an overnight pattern of 3-4 bites in a line within an inch or so. Our grandparents called this "Breakfast, lunch, and dinner" 😮

What about another little pest? The 'Mossies' 🙁