Perhaps the first thing you should know about preventing the appearance of bed bugs in an apartment is that without elementary measures to protect the premises, even the minimal threat of infestation with bed bugs very often leads to this very infection. Simply put: if your neighbors have bedbugs, and you do not take preventive measures at the same time, parasites are almost 100% likely to appear in you, it's just a matter of time. If your relatives have bedbugs, and you go to visit them (or they visit you) and, again, do not take protective measures - well, get ready for regular night bites.
Surprisingly, many people seriously believe that bedbugs appear, like cockroaches, only in unscrupulous families, in dirt and unsanitary conditions. It is understandable: most people have never seen bed bugs in their lives and are absolutely sure that this attack will definitely pass their apartment.
It is interesting
When the bugs nevertheless securely settle in the apartment, the owners are often embarrassed to tell their neighbors and relatives about this, fearing a squeamish attitude on their part. Sometimes it comes to the fact that all the apartments on the floor are infected, but the neighbors are silent about this to each other. And the situation becomes clearer only during the work of the SES, whose employees assess in detail the degree of infection at home.
Meanwhile, without appropriate preventive measures, bedbugs can appear even in the cleanest family, and it doesn’t matter at all whether you have an elite apartment or a standard Khrushchev apartment. Bloodsuckers are not stopped by either the cleanliness of the premises, or the number of cleanings carried out, or the high cost of decoration. For parasites, only one factor is important - there should be food regularly in the room (that is, people must live, since bedbugs feed exclusively on blood).
About what methods and means of prevention can be used to reliably protect your home from the appearance of bed bugs in it, we will go on and talk in more detail ...
On a note
Bedbugs are now very actively spreading in developed countries. In London, for example, more trips to treat premises from bedbugs are recorded every year than in the previous year. A significant number of old residential apartments and houses in the United States are infested with bedbugs, and in the seemingly prosperous Florida, according to experts, the population of bed bugs has increased almost 10 times over the past 10 years. In Zurich, every second apartment has ever harbored bed bugs.
Do you still think that your apartment is so clean that bed bugs do not threaten it?
Ways for bedbugs to enter the room
To effectively protect the premises from bedbugs, it is necessary, first of all, to reliably block the main ways of penetration of parasites into it.
There are several such ways:
- Electrical outlets - this is especially true for panel apartment buildings. An outlet located on the wall separating your apartment from the next one can serve as an excellent way for parasites to migrate from one room to another (especially if the neighbors start baiting bed bugs).You can close the hole behind the outlet with alabaster, non-combustible mounting foam, or even just hammer it with a piece of glass wool;
- Ventilation shafts. Bed bugs are also able to move between apartments along them, especially when they are poisoned or people move out of housing for a long time (with a long absence of a food source, the parasites begin to creep in search of more suitable living conditions). Instead of a standard grate, it is recommended to put a very fine mesh on the vent;
- Cracks and crevices in the floor, ceiling and walls. The body of the bugs is so flat that even adults easily penetrate through narrow cracks and gaps, not to mention the larvae. Therefore, an important preventive measure, especially in old houses, is the careful repair of such defects (plaster, alabaster, mounting foam);
- Windows and doors. An adult bug crawls 2-4 cm in a second. It will take him less than half an hour to overcome the distance from the window of one apartment to the window of another along the outer wall of the building. The same with doors. Only modern plastic windows reliably protect against bedbugs - thanks to rubber seals. Ordinary wooden frames have gaps, and parasites can also enter through the keyholes in the door;
- Furniture and even household appliances can become breeding grounds for bedbugs if they were brought from an infected room. There are cases when the nests of parasites were in the system units of computers, laptops and TVs. However, the main thing that should be paid attention to in the framework of prevention is precisely the inspection of furniture (sofas, beds, armchairs, etc.);
- Clothes, shoes and accessories that have been in an infected room are one of the most common and underestimated sources of bedbug infestation in an apartment. Sometimes it is enough to visit an apartment infected with bloodsuckers only once in order to bring them back to your home.
When there is an understanding of how the bugs get into the apartment, it becomes well understood what preventive measures should be taken in each appropriate case.
Review
“I have a friend, and she also has a friend who has bed bugs in the hostel. And then one day I saw a couple of red dots on my hands. Thought it was an allergy. Then the brothers began to appear. A friend said that these were bedbug bites, she had already seen this. Nightmare! I somehow woke up at night, turned on the light, and there were bugs crawling on the sheet, two large ones and three more very small ones. I crushed them all with a napkin, there was so much blood, horror. Since then, for two months now, together with my mother, we have been trying to get bedbugs out, but so far somehow it has not worked out ... "
Asel, Kazan
The main rules for the prevention of the appearance of bedbugs
There are a number of universal rules, the observance of which allows in most cases to ensure a fairly reliable prevention of the appearance of bedbugs in an apartment.
And further: Proven methods for the destruction of bedbugs, which have shown high efficiency
So, to protect the premises from bed bugs, you must:
- Eliminate the maximum possible shelters in which bedbugs can hide. To do this, it is worth replacing the parquet with a laminate, removing or replacing it with new skirting boards, sealing the gaps between them and the floor, as well as between the skirting board and the wall. It is advisable to change the wallpaper if the old ones have a lot of gaps and delaminations from the wall. It is recommended to remove the carpets from the walls, replace the old sockets that do not fit snugly against the wall with new ones, closing them with a special plug. With the threat of infestation of the apartment with bedbugs, books can also be a problem, often literally stored on the shelves;
On a note
According to the observations of specialists who are engaged in the professional removal of bedbugs, in almost 80% of the infected premises there is parquet on the floor. Only about two out of ten infected apartments have other flooring.
- As part of the prevention of infection of the apartment with bedbugs, it is necessary to carefully check the furniture brought in. The same applies to clothes, shoes, household appliances, suitcases and bags.There are cases when the nest of bedbugs was in a seemingly new, just bought in a furniture store;
- If a person from a knowingly infected apartment visits you (for example, a relative came to visit), then it is advisable to place his shoes and outerwear in bags, and then tie them up. If you yourself visit a bedbug-infested room, then upon arrival home, it is advisable to treat shoes and outerwear with an aerosol insecticide (Raptor, Combat, Dichlorvos, etc.), and wash the rest of the clothes at a temperature not lower than 60 ° C;
- In no case do not use upholstered furniture and mattresses thrown out by someone. Even sitting on them just to try can be fraught with larvae and bedbug eggs on clothes. According to statistics, in every fifth case, old sofas and armchairs are thrown away precisely because bedbugs live in them;
- It is useful to know your neighbors in apartments on the side, above and below, maintaining contact with them. If bedbugs start up in several apartments, then solving the problem together can be easier and more effective than fighting alone, while suspecting that the neighbors have a breeding ground for parasites.
And another important point: it is easy to bring bedbugs into an apartment on clothes or shoes from hotels during travel and business trips. In general, cheap hotels are classic incubators of parasites in megacities (especially when the owners do not really care about pest control). As a rule, these are hotels of the level of 1-2 stars, but sometimes quite respectable hotels can “please” guests with various parasitic animals.
Particularly dangerous in this regard are apartments and houses in the resort area, illegally rented to tourists.If bed bugs crawl into a bag or suitcase in such a vacation spot, then there is a big risk of bringing them to your own home. Therefore, during the rest, you need to carefully check the rented premises upon check-in, and at the slightest suspicion of infestation with bedbugs, demand a replacement room or (better) look for another hotel.
Checking the apartment for bed bugs
If there is an increased threat of bedbugs in the room (for example, when you recently successfully got rid of them; when neighbors or your relatives have bedbugs; or when you arrived from a bedbug-infested hotel), prevention should be comprehensive and also consist of simple, but systematic measures.
With each general cleaning of the apartment (but at least once a week), it will be useful to carefully examine:
- mattresses and internal cavities of sofas and beds;
- carpets - both on the floor and on the walls;
- floor under the bed
- bookshelves;
- skirting boards.
During such checks, it is worth looking for both the bugs themselves and their chitinous covers that remain during molting, as well as excrement - tiny black dots, usually found in abundance at the entry points of parasites into the shelter and in general near the nests.
The appearance of small traces of blood on a white sheet may also indicate the presence of bed bugs nearby. And, of course, the presence of bloodsuckers gives marks on the body from their bites, although many of them are often attributed to mosquito bites or an allergic reaction.
Means for protection against bedbugs
Here, perhaps, it makes sense to once again emphasize the following important idea: before using any prophylactic against bedbugs, it is necessary to concentrate precisely on blocking the paths for the possible penetration of parasites into the room.A simple example: if only one individual of the parasite enters an apartment every month, there is every chance to prevent the apartment from turning into a bedbug. And it’s a completely different matter when 5-10 individuals enter the apartment every day - in this case, very soon you will not be up to prevention, but you will need a total pest control of the entire room.
And further: We catch bedbugs and put deadly experiments on them - this is a must see!
So, for the effective prevention of the penetration of bedbugs into the room, in most cases, the same means are used that are used for the destruction of parasites. Everything is simple here - if you locally process the ways of possible penetration of parasites into the apartment, then single individuals will be successfully exposed to the insecticide while still “on the approaches”. It is only important to use a means of prolonged action.
In general, the means of prevention from bedbugs can be divided into three types:
- folk remedies for repelling bedbugs;
- modern insecticidal agents for the destruction of bedbugs;
- as well as traps for bedbugs (including those made independently).
Let's take a closer look at these preventive measures ...
We take care of the apartment with the help of folk remedies
The main problem of folk remedies used to repel bedbugs is their low efficiency.
The main folk remedies for preventing the appearance of bedbugs in the house are infusions, decoctions, as well as fresh and dry bunches of such well-known herbs as wormwood, tansy and wild rosemary.Brooms from these plants are usually placed in ventilation ducts, on balconies and window sills in an apartment - here they are designed to scare away bedbugs trying to enter the room with their smell.
Decoctions of these herbs are sometimes added to the water with which the floors are washed in the apartment, and once a week the decoction is smeared around the entire perimeter of the inner and outer parts of the door frames, ventilation ducts and window frames from the outside.
In the same way, special aromatic sections from moths with the smell of lavender can be applied. It is believed that bedbugs also do not like this aroma.
On a note
Previously, in villages, bunches of fresh wormwood were placed under the bed to protect against bedbugs. Tansy was sometimes used for the same purpose. This technique allowed a person to sleep peacefully even when bed bugs were already firmly established at home.
However, as practice shows, it is not worth relying on folk remedies for the prevention of bedbugs, since they do not always give the desired effect.
The use of insecticidal agents for preventive purposes
To prevent the appearance of bedbugs in an apartment, some modern insecticidal agents can be used quite effectively. At the same time, it is important that they have a contact effect and do not decompose for a long time on the treated surfaces.
For example, for long-term protection of the premises from bedbugs, various powdered products can be used, which should be scattered in places where parasites can move. For these purposes, for example, the following drugs are used:
- dust from insects Clean House;
- Phenaksin;
- pyrethrum powder;
and etc.
If a small population of bedbugs has already been found in the room, then insecticidal powders can be used as shown in the photo below:
In an attempt to get to the sleeping victim, the parasites will inevitably get dirty in the insecticidal powder and die fairly quickly. Such a non-standard preventive measure sometimes makes it possible to reduce the population of bedbugs in the room to zero in a fairly short time (however, in advanced cases, the measure is ineffective).
For preventive purposes, the use of microencapsulated insecticidal preparations, especially those that do not have a strong unpleasant odor, can also be a good option. These include Xulat Micro, Delta Zone, Get, Lambda Zone and some others. Their advantage is that after treatment, microcapsules of the agent remain on the surfaces for a long time, which easily stick to the chitinous covers of the bugs if the parasite runs through them.
Using these microencapsulated preparations, it is possible to realize the so-called barrier effect: the treated surface serves as a kind of insurmountable barrier for parasites (a bug that crosses the “barrier” will be doomed to death).
It is interesting
Insecticide crayons (pencils), the most popular of which is Masha's insect chalk, if used correctly, can also be a good prophylactic against bedbugs in the house. Such pencils do not smell, can be applied to vertical surfaces (which cannot be said about powders) and at the same time are very affordable.And although it is customary to use them mainly against cockroaches, nevertheless, insecticidal pencils are also effective against bedbugs, domestic ants, fleas (more precisely, their larvae), silverfish and other crawling insects.
Bed bug traps
Industrially produced sticky traps for cockroaches, with standard use, are ineffective as a prophylactic against bedbugs - the baits used in them do not attract bloodsuckers at all. However, you can make your own sticky bug trap by adapting a cockroach trap.
The trick is to place all four legs of the bed in the center of the sticky trap. Then, if a bed bug suddenly enters the room (for example, from neighbors), then at the first attempt to feast on the blood of a sleeping person, the bloodsucker will fall on an adhesive base, from which it will no longer be able to get out.
An example of using such a trap, in which any viscous liquid can be used as an adhesive base, is shown in the photo below:
If your neighbors are actively fighting bed bugs, sticky traps under the legs of the bed can give you an idea if your home is securely isolated from the next one (from which some parasites are sure to try to escape).
On a note
There is a whole set of tools that will be absolutely useless in protecting the premises from bedbugs. For example, poison gels - they work great against ants and cockroaches, but they do not give any result against bedbugs. Ultrasonic and electromagnetic bedbug repellers are also ineffective - as practice shows, their effectiveness is close to zero.
In conclusion, it is worth noting that the prevention of the appearance of bedbugs in the room will only be as effective as possible when it is comprehensive. With the correct implementation of all stages of protection, your apartment will remain free from parasites, even if the rest of the multi-storey building is infested with bedbugs.
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Useful video: how to deal with bedbugs in an apartment
