Is tansy really effective against bed bugs?

Along with wormwood, tansy from bedbugs is considered one of the most effective herbs. This small and widespread plant, which fills wastelands, meadows and roadsides with its small bright yellow flowers, has long been known for its poisonousness and ability to cause a bitter taste of milk in a cow that grazed on its thickets.

In agriculture, even in ancient times, a decoction and infusion of tansy was used to treat plants in vegetable gardens from pests. And today, in many eco-friendly and organic farms, tansy is still used to protect potatoes from the Colorado potato beetle, and trees from leaf-eating caterpillars.

Review

“In the village, it’s just a tradition - a decoction is prepared on tansy, which is sprayed with potatoes and apple trees. And the remains are simply applied with a broom to the joints of the floor and walls, skirting boards and furniture. Even when I was little, I walked like this with a broom around the house and sprinkled - my grandmother told me that tansy protects against bedbugs very well.

Julia, Ulyanovsk

Against bedbugs, tansy is used by analogy with using it from insects in gardens and orchards.But there is an important nuance here: if against the same Colorado potato beetle or potato moth the remedy works like a poison that poisons the insect that has eaten it, then bed bugs in the room, in principle, cannot eat tansy or something that can be treated with it. After all, the only food for bedbugs is human blood.

How and due to what then does tansy work against bed bugs? Let's try to understand this issue in more detail.

 

How does tansy work on bedbugs?

First of all, tansy is an effective repellant: its smell repels a variety of insects, including mosquitoes. Bed bugs are also afraid of this smell.

However, if these parasites have already started up in the apartment and settled their nests here relatively long ago, it is almost impossible to destroy them with the help of tansy. In order for the bug to die, it must be literally dipped in a decoction of tansy, so that the agent in liquid concentrated form enters the body of the insect through the respiratory tract (spiracles).

If some surface is simply treated with a decoction, then the bug can run around such places in the house without any harm to itself.

Review

“We also tried tansy. Does not help. Bedbugs run away from her, but do not die. It’s lazy to crush them with a slipper, and so pour this broth so that they die - it’s necessary to flood the neighbors from below. And they put branches under the bed, it didn’t help either. Probably because some of them lived in the bed itself.

Ilya, Saratov

It is effective to use tansy from bedbugs in order to temporarily weaken their activity. Having felt the smell of this substance in the room, insects for some time (usually up to 3-4 days) will avoid appearing in places where this smell is the strongest. However, later they will still get to the person.

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This does not mean that tansy from bedbugs does not work at all, it’s just that hunger for parasites is always stronger than “fear” of the smell of grass.

 

Tansy: instructions for use against parasites

The use of tansy against bedbugs is quite identical to the use of wormwood for the same purpose. In the simplest version, freshly picked or already dry twigs of the plant are laid out under the bed mattress, in sofas and armchairs, in the corners of the room and under linen closets and bedside tables.

If such a damper from a plant is located between the shelter of bedbugs and a place of rest for people, then until the parasites are very hungry, they will not cross it. However, later they still decide to break through such a "cordon".

A little more difficult is the use of tansy in the form of a decoction. In this case, a glass of dry grass is boiled for a minute in five liters of water, then cooled.

The broth is sprayed with baseboards in the house, parquet, linoleum corners and cracks. Usually, after such treatment, the bugs try to leave the cracks, and already in the open space they can simply be crushed or destroyed by other means.

Of course, tansy does not work on bedbug eggs at all.

Review

“The bugs appeared last year in the spring. I don’t know where, but there were few of them and only in the child’s room. We did this: we took the crib to the loggia. Luckily, the weather allowed. They took off the carpet in the room and took it to the sink. After that, the whole room was literally flooded with a decoction of tansy with wormwood. They bought a kilogram of wormwood and half a kilo of tansy at the market, boiled it in an enameled bucket, poured all over the baseboards, the drawers in the closet, the radiator. The bed itself was also processed, the mattress was thrown out of it, all the diapers were washed in a washing machine at the maximum temperature. It was necessary to see how the bugs ran away from under the baseboards. The outcome of bedbugs is just some. We immediately crushed them all, both large and small. And so - three weekends in a row. And that's it, they took everyone out. But we were lucky that they were only in one room.”

Pavel, Nazarovo

Much more effective is the use of tansy in conjunction with industrial insecticides. As the second component, you can use any aerosol or concentrate from insects.

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On a note

Another folk remedy for bedbugs is tansy tincture with alcohol.The remedy turns out to be both repellent and deadly for bedbugs: alcohol burns the parasites and leads to their death upon direct contact with the insect. This infusion was previously recommended to process found nests and clusters of bedbugs.

 

Tansy to prevent bedbugs from entering the house

Tansy is more effective as a prophylactic against bedbugs: with its help, it is quite possible to protect the room from the penetration of single parasites, for example, from neighbors.

For this, it is usually recommended:

• lay out the plant under the mattresses of the bed and in the internal cavities of the sofas
• add a decoction of tansy to the water with which the floors are washed
• process ventilation ducts in apartments, external slopes of windows and walls around entrance doors with a decoction.

With this treatment, cases of penetration of bedbugs from neighboring rooms and simply from the street are almost excluded.

 

Can tansy be dangerous?

Generally speaking, tansy is a poisonous plant, and some care must be taken when working with it. So, for example, preparations from it should be kept away from children, and the plant should not be allowed to enter cages with domestic rodents.

It is possible to treat the places on the body bitten by bugs with a decoction or infusion of tansy only in accordance with the instructions for using these products.

Review

“The first thing that came to my mind when the bugs appeared was tansy, but it was somehow scary to process the whole apartment with it. This is a poisonous plant, even cattle are poisoned by it. But then she decided, brewed a decoction, sprinkled everything. For some time they did not bother after that, and then reappeared. Probably, she needs to constantly process the apartment, but I don’t have time for this. Therefore, we planned ourselves three days off and called the SES.They processed everything, we cleaned the house and went to the country. After that, there were no more bedbugs.”

Hope, Fominsky

In general, you can not be afraid to use tansy: take it with your hands, smell it and use its decoction indoors is quite safe.

Once again, we note that if the bugs in the room are wound up, it will not work to get them out with tansy alone - it simply will not work on them like an insecticide. Therefore, initially it is worth focusing on special modern remedies for parasitic insects.

 

A useful video on choosing an effective remedy for bedbugs

 

This is what bed bugs and their larvae actually look like.