Bed bugs tend to be harder to kill than other insects. Why is this?
Consider termites for a moment. They eat the cellulose in wood and other fibrous materials. To kill a termite, simply treat their food source with pesticides. The termites ingest the poison when they eat and they die.
Many insects are similar in that their food sources can be made poisonous or damaging to them. But bed bugs penetrate our skin to feed on our blood — their food source is us. So there is really no way to poison them that is safe to us.
The other problem is that bed bugs have an extremely tough exoskeleton, much thicker than other insects. Most of the currently available pesticides won’t penetrate this exoskeleton. That means that exterminators have to rely on other methods (steam, diatomaceous earth) which are tricky to implement and have limited effect.
Read more at Ohio’s Section 18 Emergency Exemption Testimony. You can also read more about what is causing the current bed bug resurgence
Tagged: bed bug pesticides, get rid of bed bugs, kill bed bugs
[...] Boric acid is a poison but to be effective it much reach the stomach of a an insect. Since bed bugs only suck blood, there is no way to get them to consume the acid. This goes back to one of the reasons why it is so hard to kill bed bugs. [...]
[...] There is a good chance that “do-it-yourself bed bug elimination” is really more like “do-it-yourself the first time around and then call the exterminator back when that doesn’t work out like you thought it would”. I’m making a little joke here but seriously, DIY bed bug elimination doesn’t have the best track record. Even professionals find it difficult to exterminate bed bugs. Exterminating bed bugs is not the same as dealing with ants, cockroaches or termites. Bed bugs are hard to kill. [...]