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Researchers Develop New Trap To Capture Bloodsucking Bed Bugs
Hugh Pickens DOT Com writes "Bedbugs (Cimex lectularius) are small blood-sucking insects that can live in cracks and crevices in and around your bed and crawl out at night to bite your exposed skin and feed on your blood, just as mosquitoes do. Now BBC reports that researchers from the Rutgers University Department of Entomology have developed a new trap that has a 77% probability of capturing bed bugs, nearly three times as many bed bugs over 28 days (PDF), as the the Climbup insect interceptor trap, which the authors cite as the best monitor on the market. A better trap design can allow people to detect bed bugs while they are still in small numbers. 'If you have only 10 or 20 bugs in your apartment, it's very hard to see with your eyes,' says Lead author Narinderpal Singh. 'When people realize they have bed bugs they are often already in their thousands, or hundred thousands. It's relatively easy to eradicate the bed bugs when they are in small numbers, but when they are everywhere, it's very hard to eradicate them.' The device can be created at home very cheaply and consists of a plastic dog bowl that's been inverted, with the outer wall covered with a layer of dyed-black surgical tape. The researchers contend that higher walls make their trap more effective than the interceptor trap because it's harder for bugs to escape."
You mean, yeast, sugar and water? Any supermarket. The article proves that CO2 cylinders are not better.
Fascinating setup (the building they chose, how they collected and nurtured the bed bugs, that they kept someone living in the apartment in the 4 weeks the experiment was run).
NB: The message above might reflect my opinion right now, but not necessarily tomorrow or next year.
The problem was solved hundreds of years ago. Spreading bay leaves or kidney bean leaves in the infested rooms traps all the bedbugs.
Interesting point. Unfortunately you framed it in a bigoted rant and will subsequently be ignored.
-Izrun
Not really a good point at all. Bedbugs don't hide in the sheets. They hide in the crevices of the mattress, box-springs, bed frame, and surrounding areas. You might find a few bugs crawling the bedsheets, but it's not where they lay their eggs.
> Maybe they should figure out how to prevent them from reproducing instead of trapping a few
> examples of a menace that, as the summary notes, numbers in the hundreds of thousands.
I have occasionally wondered about using some variation on "phage therapy" for this. As I understand the protocols, the basic outline is:
1. Breed target organism (originally bacteria infecting a patient)
2. Sample natural water, and filter it with a ceramic filter to leave behind only phages as biological material.
3. Apply samples of phage water to target organisms, watch for signs of infection and death
4. If reliable agent is found, use dead targets to make more and isolate a workable phage
5. if reliable agent not found, goto step 2.
There are a lot of viruses out there.... I would bet something infects bedbugs and kills them effectively, and just needs a little help finding them.
"I opened my eyes, and everything went dark again"
Mathematically speaking I would think that it's impossible that all bugs will get caught eventually, no ?
Night 0 : 100 bedbugs run around
Night 1 : 100 * .77 bugs get caught, 100 * .23 remain .23 ) * .77 bugs get caught, (100 * .23) *.23 remain ...
Night 2 : (100 *
Night n : 100 * (.23 ^ n) bugs remain...
So you'll get an asymptote that borders on catching them all, but not ever really... Especially as we're not taking into account that the remaining bugs will probably multiply...
But I agree that for 'whole numbers of bedbugs' n should be smallish... might make a nice spreadsheet/graph to figure out, especially if you add variables like how long it takes for them to reproduce etc ...
If there is one thing to be learned on slashdot, it has to be sarcasm.
I'm just glad they didn't spend $15 million in tax payer money to invent a $10,000 trap that no one would use. (No one who isn't buying traps with tax payer money, anyway.)
I wonder if the same design works for fleas. I understand fleas are also attracted to CO2, so the yeast + sugar water thing would likely improve results with fleas as well.
I'd been baiting my traps with an an aerosol can of CO2 produced by emissions from an SUV belching C02 into a Styrofoam container full of dry ice kept cool by an R-22 refrigeration system powered by my diesel generator.
> I have read there has been a dramatic increase in bed bugs over the last decade in major urban centers. There is a very good reason why it has.
Yeah, that's where the most people are and where people move around the most. If you live in the boonies you never see people in on business trips, and you're more likely to own a house with no close neighbors instead of live in an apartment with a constantly-shifting set of neighbors. Less vectors.
> People have been told to save energy (and the environment) by using cold water to wash their laundry.
And they aren't people in the country? Got news for you: When you have your own water heater instead of a coin-op laundry, you look for ways to save hot water.
> While your laundry comes out smelling and looking clean just the same, you STILL need to use high temp wash under certain situations, like washing your bed sheets.
Wow. You're an entomologist like Rosie O'Donnell is a metallurgist. First off, the bugs don't live en masse in the sheets, so that won't halt an infestation. Second, when you're trying to kill bedbugs in fabric, it's usually recommended to DRY it on high heat and not even bother tossing it in a wash cycle unless you were going to anyway.
> I mean this is why I hate stupid green alarmists because they can't apply rational common sense to anything.
Try not to look in any mirrors. Learning the concept of self-awareness might destroy you.
Bed Bugs are known for crawling up the wall, onto the ceiling, and then dropping right onto the bed from above. Yes, they do that!!! This things are attracted to heat and C02 from your breath. So it's best to leave a ceiling fan on to disrupt the air and throw them off. But once they've air-dropped onto your bed, I'm not sure if they've already left a pheromone trail for others to follow rendering the fan useless.
Life is not for the lazy.
The Paiutech Department of Verminology has developed a new trap that has a 100% probability of capturing MBAs, nearly three times as many MBAs over 28 days (one fiscal month), as the classic hooker with blow trap, which the authors cite as the best monitor on the market. A better trap design can allow people to detect MBAs while they are still in small numbers. 'If you have only 10 or 20 MBAs in your corporation, it's very hard to see with your eyes,' says inventor and Paiutech COO Marion Sam. 'When people realize they have MBAs they are often already in their thousands, or hundred thousands. It's relatively easy to eradicate the MBAs when they are in small numbers, but when they are everywhere, it's very hard to eradicate them.' The device can be created at home very cheaply and consists of an empty bottle of Chivas Regal filled with bleach to which is affixed the label: "Six Sigma Smart Juice".
If Slashdot were chemistry it would look like this:Cadaverine
They might catch some, but bed bugs are attracted to CO2, heat, and various other chemicals. One of the linked articles actually mentions a story about a guy with an infestation who had put the legs of his bed in buckets of water to keep the bed bugs from crawling up the legs of the bed, as well as surrounding his bed with diatomaceous earth (which bed bugs typically won't cross, since it can clog the holes they breathe through), only to have the bed bugs crawl up onto the ceiling and then drop down on his bed from above, with the fecal trail going up the wall to prove that's what they were doing.
Really, the traps that they're creating are not designed to deal with an infestation. They're designed to alert you with a higher certainty to the presence of an infestation, since everything I've read seems to indicate that a bed bug infestation is not something that the typical consumer is capable of handling on their own.
Just give us the same thing that got rid of them the last time around. DDT works.
Bedbugs were apparently resistant to DDT by the 1950s.
Having stayed in the Hilton (Union Square San Francisco) and coming home with bed bug welts and bites, I can I think I can explain a few things. First, once you see the (clustered) bites, it's too late. Those bites take days to show sometimes. Second, The hotel denies everything. Having been denied satisfaction I left the hotel, but did NOT return home right away fearing for the little fuckers are in my luggage.
I stopped at a coffee shop to internet surf. I found this guy's blog about his battle with bedbugs and how he had to remove ALL furniture from his house in his losing battle against the little bugs. This guy had traps setup, tracking migrations from room to room, sticky side up tape being the most effective. The other side note about the bugs, all sorts of chemicals may or may not work, and HEAT over TIME was the ONLY way to kill these things dead.
I stopped at a dry-cleaner and walked in with NO LUGGAGE and explained the situation I thought I was in. The cleaner said they could take most of my luggage, but not all. They brought out a bio-hazard bin and took my clothes for "special" treatment. I had to take my shoes, suitcase and a few other items home. I threw everything in a 170 degree electric oven for 4 hours each until clean. The car I drove home in, went out to the central valley and sat in the summer sun for 5 hours while I watched movies and drank coffee.
Long story short, use the internet to keep you home safe. HEAT over TIME will KILL the fuckers.
They're working on this. Beauveria bassiana is a parasitic fungus that infests arthropods. It's already used against aphids and termites, and is being investigated for use on mosquitoes and bedbugs.
Everything is better with chainsaws.
If you want the real numbers, read the (free) pdf:
http://esa.publisher.ingentaconnect.com/content/esa/jee/2013/00000106/00000004/art00036
They actually did a pretty thorough job of testing them and various attractants in various levels, and have real numbers in the report.
To attempt to answer you question (which can't be answered 100% accurately because there were many scenarios tested and you and the summary didn't state which was referenced)... not all the bugs got caught; the bugs that did not get caught were generally inactive and lethargic (I'm guessing they were old, or not hungry, etc), so they didn't really count them; the new traps caught about 2.5 fold more bugs given the same lure (or lack thereof); tests were run in a variety of settings, including an arena made from a wooden door and several infested apartments while people were there.
Also, for those wondering, the new trap is:
* inverted plastic dog bowl (600ml volume, 18cm diameter, 6.4cm depth, from IKEA)
* outer wall of bowl was covered with a layer of paper surgical tape (caring international)
* tape was died black with Fiebing's Lether Dye (Tandy Leather Factory)
* Incide of bowls were coated with a light layer of fluoropolymer resin (Bio-Quip products, Rancho Dominguez, CA) to prevent the bugs from crawling out
And the best lure was:
* 150g yeast (Lesaffre Yeast Corp)
* 750g granulated cane sugar (U.S. Sugar Co. Inc)
* 3L water (40degree C)
Fill a plastic tub with the lure mixure, mix it up, put on a lid, and rest it on top of two traps.
Lower amounts of lure stil work (not as well as the above amount, but much better than none - see paper for full details).
Please tell me where I can purchase fresh kidney bean leaves in Iowa, in January, and in large quantities.
Just because a solution exists does not mean it's practical, or even possible to implement.
The same place you get your zucchini from, most likely. Argentina or someplace like that. It's Summer down there.
I used to stay in cheap hostels and in Singapore there was one which was infested with bed bugs. I was getting bit every night until I found that if I sprayed a ring of high powered DEET insect repellent in a ring around the edges of the mattress, the bed bugs wouldn't cross the ring and therefore wouldn't bite me. (I had a DEET spray that was supposed to last 8 hours). Better than spraying yourself with DEET every night.
I have heard they can climb on the ceiling and drop down, but thankfully that didn't happen (maybe it's a rare occurrence?).
*sigh*
Ants, flies, cockroaches, dust mites, etc. are not bedbugs. Bedbugs are not drawn to filth. They might use trash strewn about as a hiding place, but "clean that mess up or you'll get bedbugs!" is just not true. Bedbugs are drawn to you, because you are their food source. They spread by hitchhiking on clothes, luggage, etc. from an infested area to an uninfested area. Hotels are prime breeding and distribution spots. Or, if you live in an apartment complex or building, they'll spread between the walls from apartment to apartment.
If you really want to avoid getting bedbugs, the best thing you can do isn't to keep your room meticulously clean. It's to put your clothes and luggage in the dryer as soon as you return home after spending a night in a hotel.
Everything is better with chainsaws.
So how did we get rid of them? We tried various techniques. Encasing our mattress/boxspring and pillows in bedbug proof cases. Putting the legs of the bed in bowls of water. Spraying multiple times, sweeping constantly. The spraying did reduce the numbers, but didn't eliminate them totally. The final nail in the coffin for them was going out and buying a clothes steamer, and steaming the mattress, boxspring, pillows, baseboards, and any other hiding spots in the bedroom. They have to be heated to a certain temperature (can't recall the exact temp at the moment) in order to kill the adults and eggs. So it was a very slow process to make sure they were cooked by the steam. We repeated this process every other day for over a week. At the same time we washed our bed sheets and clothes... ALL OF THEM, even ones we rarely wore and were still clean.
Of course we were paranoid that there were still eggs, waiting to hatch that we had missed... and we were just waiting for that second outbreak. Lucky for us it never came.