Bed Bugs

Simply washing and drying normally is not enough.  30-60 minutes on high for dry items, longer if they are washed and wet.

https://www.bedbugs.umn.edu/bed-bug-control-in-residences/laundering

For the down bag and other non-washable items, there is this sort of product: http://www.homedepot.com/p/Hot-Shot-Bed-Bug-Mattress-and-Luggage-Treatment-Kit-HG-96168-1/203271896

Don’t let her bring anything into the house that has not been treated!

This site in general is THE resource for bedbug info: https://www.bedbugs.umn.edu/

Also this:http://www.bedbugs.org/

I went to a bedbug seminar once; it was both utterly fascinating and horrifying.  Lots of experts in the field with amazing anecdotes.

I think you can put all non washable items in a trash bag and twist/rubber band it closed like a pack liner. Keep it sealed for a certain amount of days (sorry, can’t remember). Do this before entering the house.

dk and Don,

Thanks  for the good info.

This won’t be easy.  No one seems to have a clothes dryer where she is hiking .

Grounds for divorce?

Daryl,

Do you really need the messy paper-work to get divorced?? Just tell her she can never come home. Much simpler.

Lethal heat for bed bugs is 117 to 122 F.  Black plastic bag with clothing in full sun or a clothes dryer on high.

Solar oven; black plastic bags inside clear plastic bags

Pyrethrum used to work, have the damned things become immune lately?

My sister did the walk in Spain and every nite she would spray insecticide on and around the legs of the beds she slept on, she does this as a matter of course after being bitten in a 5 star hotel in New York City.

A big tin of bug spray doesn’t weigh much or cost much, when I worked in Nuigini I did my room once a week with a big bomb

Adult bedbugs can live over a year without a meal.  So unless they are treated with heat or the correct insecticide in that garbage bag, it won’t do you a lot of good.

If it were summer, you could leave the bag in a sealed car for several days, but it is not summer.  The site says 140 degrees for 2-3 hours, but it will take longer if clothing is wadded together.  Another option is freezing for a few days.

For prevention in hotels, they have little traps to set bed legs in, but that will not help you if the bugs are already in the bedding, mattress, pillow, etc.  The experts at the seminar recommended putting your luggage in the bathtub upon check-in, and leaving it there.  (Don’t put it on closets, drawers, etc.)  Then check all seams of bedding, drawers, corners, under the rug, etc.  They even travel from room to room along electrical wires, and come out of outlets.  And they are attracted to CO2 and warmth, IIRC.

You can also kill them by freezing.  Suggest she swing through the Swiss Alps before returning home.

I used that trick for a flea-infested hide and gear that touched it.  A little easier here in Alaska where everyone has 3 chest freezers.

It would take a long time for a down sleeping bag to get down to freezing, throughout – I’d estimate 4-6 hours if in a stuff sack.  Maybe 3 hours for our more compact, lighter down quilts.  But only an hour or so if spread out, perhaps in a walk-in freezer.

Could you freeze and gas them at the same time?  Put the items in a styrofoam cooler with several pounds of dry ice.

The UMN site (linked above and here) recommends 5 days at 23 °F!  Maybe wife can find a local with a freezer and who wouldn’t mind if she hung out naked for 5 days.

And I see some references for killing parasites in fish fillets – “freeze for 2 months” or something like that and I wonder:

1) where’s the graph?  Of % killed versus time.  Because most of the mechanisms I can imagine would be 100% during a hard freeze.  Maybe, some critters have evolved to survive a single freeze (Arctic ground squirrels, for instance), but not multiple freezes.  I see some evidence of that in mosquito numbers and dead spots of grass in my lawn if the winter temps swung up and down many times.   But then, the recommendation should be “freeze and thaw for 3 cycles” or whatever it is.

2) like the water boiling time recommendations by different agencies – they seem to have surveyed all other sources, selected the most conservative, doubled it, and published that new number.  Which means the next agency to research it will. . . .   Rather than go to actual data about pasteurizing water which is well-documented in the food industry and doesn’t require even getting to boiling.

Anyway, here’s one data point: freeze a black bear hide to 5F, once, for a few hours, and all the fleas die.

I recall reading about either Napoleon’s Grande Armée or the Nazis when invading Russia having to deal with fleas by burying the clothing in frozen ground except for a corner and then luring the flea to that bit with a burning torch and then burning the fleas to death. However, that was fleas, not bedbugs. And both armies had typhus epidemics, so it couldn’t have worked that well.

In Fifth Grade the teacher read Bullwhip Griffith to us (it was about the California Gold Rush and we were in California).  And a trick is related of placing a candle in the middle of a dish of soapy water.  The fleas jump towards the candle (or maybe just jump around?), land in the soapy water and (because it wets them completely) drown.  I’ve successfully used that a few times, not for a really bad infestation, but for minor flea problems and it eliminated it in a few nights.

Tell your wife to stay in a flea-infested hostel next, then we’ll be able to help her more.

Yeah, fleas are way easier to kill off than bedbugs.

1) where’s the graph?

It took a bit of digging but I think this is the relevant reference:

http://www.bioone.org/doi/abs/10.1603%2FEC13032

Tough little bugs: needed to get below -30°C to kill instantly and survived for more than a week at -12°C.

Your best bet might be to ship her the Hot Shot treatment to somewhere she can use them, but it might be difficult for her to do without all her stuff for a few days while it works.

I’d still do the wash/dry or Hot Shot treatment on EVERYTHING again (including any luggage) when she gets home, just to be on the safe side.  A hassle, but still much easier than getting them out of your home once they are in!

Good detective work, Ben :)

Thanks for the data, Ben.  Yeah, tough little buggers!

What about a hospital Daryl? Public health issue, they have laundry. Just a thought.

sleeping bag in stuff sack isn’t that big to fit into a home freezer.  -12 C is 10 F, freezers are like 0 F.  Stick it in there a couple weeks.

But what does she do now?

Knowingly bringing bedbugs into a hospital seems wrong. They aren’t a laundry or an exterminator and having to deal with a bedbug infestation would likely impede their work and put patients at risk.

I found this advice:
<h2>Debugging on the Road</h2>
Method 1
<div></div>

• Lay out all your possessions on the ground (outside) and spray with Permethrin or other bug insecticide known to be effective against bed bugs.
• Allow the items to dry in the sun
• Next, wash them by hand or a washing machine with hot water and dry in a hot dryer.
• If you are in a bigger town and have the finances, take everything including your clothes, sleeping bag and backpack to the dry cleaners.

Method 2

• If it’s summer, take everything out of your backpack and turn all the pockets inside out.
• Put everything into a black garbage bag (pack loosely)
• Close it tightly
• Leave it boiling in the sun for several hours
• Then, if possible wash everything in hot water and dry in a dryer.

After the process is done thoroughly examine all the seams and pockets of all your items. It’s a hassle, I know, but if you fail to act quickly, you risk spreading the bedbugs to other albergues and even to your home after your return.

Here:

https://www.caminoadventures.com/bed-bugs-camino-de-santiago/

Wow.  Great responses!  I don’t think I’ve ever gotten such a good response to one of my (usually) inane queries.

These postings could be printed and bound as-is and sold as an easy-and-fun to-to-read  primer on dealing with bed bugs (and fleas) on the road.

Thanks again.

Won’t help her sleeping bag or insulated jacket, but add diatomacious earth as another way to kill bed bugs in general. Course, it’s messy, and takes a little while.

It was one of the few things that helped during a scabies outbreak.

MJ H, she could call asking for assistance. Geez. Spreading as she goes now.

Daryl please keep us up to date.