Two days ago I was called to a job site and found a relatively small infestation of bed bugs.    The tenant had been away house sitting for 11 days and had recently returned and spent 4 nights sleeping in the small infestation.   I started clearing a few bugs just to make the tenant feel […]

My wife and I bought an inner city apartment block and moved in beside it in 2002. I figured that my recently attained degrees in International Development and Conflict Resolution would help me make a difference. Indeed I poured my soul into renovating that apartment block making it a nice place to live with dirt […]

We began testing the Collectabed in the field several years ago in public housing where the infestations were intractable. The following are examples of their use: Example 1. A “pocket suite” (tiny room with integrated bathroom and “kitchenette” designed to replace rooming house suites) had been treated for many years unsuccessfully by others with chemicals […]

The Collectabed’s prime feature (inspectable cardboard) offers bed bugs no place to hide except for excellent disposable harbourage just under the mattress. The disposable harbourage consists of corrugated single face cardboard covered by a thin raw wood panel. The panel opens like a book cover to reveal whatever bugs are hiding in the cardboard. An […]

  Back in 2016 I blogged about Richard Naylor’s comparison of the modified glue board and the climb up interceptor. That experiment showed the modified glue board caught 24 out of 30 bugs in a two week period while the Interceptor, under identical conditions, caught 3 out of 30 bugs – an 8 to 1 […]

One of the reasons it is difficult to poison bed bugs is because they walk around like they are on tip toes with hard claws for feet. This makes it difficult to impart a lethal dose to the bug. I have found that it is entirely possible to get rid of all bed bugs in […]

Before the Collectabed study was ready for testing Richard gave me a very interesting piece of information and it spurred me to send Richard ten individual sections of one foot long collectabed cardboard/panel sections. The construction was slightly different than the Collectabed proper but the materials, overall design, and function were identical. I called these […]

The Collectabed has a number of features based on several years of bed bug field observations. For a full description you can find it here: www.freepatentsonline.com/y2017/0065095.html I have noticed over the years that bed bugs have very specific likes and dislikes for harbourage substrates. A bed with very little suitable harbourage will disperse bugs much […]

When experimenting with bed bugs in an experimental arena it is sometimes important to discern where the bugs go first. When using climb up interceptors the repellency inherent in the device will mask any information on where bugs go first. As such I highly recommend the experimenters use modified glue boards as they have far […]

Having noted bed bugs have gained considerable resistance to common pyrethroids that exterminators used it is clear that legal applications will have less and less usefulness. If an exterminator, using old school methods, is to have any success at all it would necessitate either increasing the concentration of legal chemicals, using legal chemicals inappropriately, mixing […]