I have that stuff everywhere, but apparently it takes a week or two to really kick in. The demon circle might just get me some sleep, though!
Bed bugs are goddamned evil little fuckers, because they’re able to shrug off so much of the common remedies. And if you're in an apartment this may be a kipple situation. Impossible to win, only able to hold it at bay.
Unfortunately diatomaceous earth isn’t very effective against bed bugs. They’re an order of magnitude larger than fleas, and they hatch directly into shelled nymphs rather than soft-bodied larva, so the diatomaceous earth has a much harder time abrading away enough of their exoskeleton.
Borax powder is also unfortunately quite ineffective, as bedbugs directly feed from the host for their entire lifecycle, and are unlikely to ingest enough to poison them.
Most spray pesticides require direct contact to kill, have increasing immunity issues, and are unlikely to hit every egg, sometimes requiring months of reapplication.
You best best at this point is heat, and manual culling.
It’s expensive as hell, upwards of ~$500 USD per room, but heat treatments consisting of portable industrial units what pump your entire home up to +65°C(150°F) for ~4hrs are the gold standard. It’s very effective, takes less than a day, and doesn’t leave poison on everything.(Instead it melts all the soft plastics that you forgot to take out) Get an exterminator with at least a month warranty on the treatment, if any eggs survive, they take that long to hatch.
Manual culling is exactly what it sould like. Kill every one you see, vacuum daily, wash your sheets daily, run every bit of linen you own through a high-heat cycle, and hang up instead of putting them in drawers. Get a bedframe if you don’t own one, don’t let it touch the wall or let your bedsheets hit the floor, put glue traps or some form of blockage around the legs. Vacuum & scrub your mattress/boxspring to remove any bugs & eggs, pay special attention to creases. Get a zippered mattress/box spring cover that completely envelopes them, and never take it off. They can survive upward of a year without a bloodmeal. Try not to go insane.
my cats have had flea infestations twice
I had that too once. It was absolute hell, but managed to get rid of them relatively fast (2 weeks or so).
Bedbugs, from all the testimonies I read I'm absolutely terrified of. They sound like they could genuinely push someone to suicide.
If you want to get rid of them you're going to have to move and get rid of most of your stuff. Those little guys are really hard to kill.
Your landlord will have to kick everyone how for a few days to heat treat the place, but that will take a few days and probably won't kill them all. Even if it does kill all of them whoever brought them to your building will probably do it again.
I had bed bugs this year and it was honestly traumatic. I still wake up itchy and paranoid I have bugs all over me. I feel for you
Come my child, tell Uncle Mao your problems. :mao-shining:
-7DeadlyFetishes
Landlords are such fuckers about bedbugs. The next step is them claiming that actually you brought them in with you, so you have to pay for the treatment. Not sure how Canadian law works but at least in a lot of American states the landlord still has to pay for the treatment. Might be worth looking up a statute to back your point up if they try to put the bill on you.
YOU SHOULDN'T HAVE TO GIVE 6 MONTH NOTICE TO VACATING AT THE END OF YOUR LEASE! Seriously, there are some really bad faith contracts out there. I had to pay an extra month of rent because I didn't know that I had to inform management that I was leaving at the end of my lease. Read your rental contract comrades.
