Beauveria bassiana - bed bug treatment advice

[SwagOrLee]

Earlier this week, someone close to me discovered they have bed bugs. The next day, their landlord brought in pest control with bed bug sniffing dogs and treated their apartment with a biopesticide which uses Beauveria bassiana.

The pest control company says that the treatment is most active in the first week, and takes about 3 weeks to completely eradicate the infestation... but leaves a residual for about 3 months to take care of any repeats from other apartments wandering in etc. It's in an oil base that gets sprayed onto/into areas with higher bed bug traffic.

Prior to researching B. bassiana, I initially joked that if this bed bug treatment is so effective that maybe we'll bring home infected bed bugs that will take care of any issue here. Now I've checked into what it is and read a bit on the boards, I'm really wondering whether it is possible to accidentally transport B. bassiana infected bedbugs into my household with tarantulas.

My household typically spends a lot of time with this person and now we are asking:

Is it safe for my household to have contact with the treated household?
When would it be safest?

Any assistance would be appreciated.

Thanks,

Lee

 

[DomGom TheFather]

I wouldn't worry too much about bringing the treatment home but the bedbugs themselves.

 

[Buggylookslikeyou]

I was a bed bug tech at Terminix for almost 4 years and treated thousands of homes they are most active when you sleep the nymphs which are translucent. They can live and hide in walls without feeding for a year thoroughly check your beds head boards frames especially if there’s in treated wood and couches in every seam get a hepa vac as normal Bagless vacs won’t kill they’ll just come out of the vacuum. Wash all your clothes small bit of bleach thrown in and dry small loads for an hour each. I never ever brought any home and I’ve been in places where there’s more bed bugs in the house than in their whole zip code no lie. Bringing home a poisoned one and that then getting to your tarantulas highly unlikely but to be safe when you come from their place before you enter your residence strip naked outside bag up all clothes and throw straight into the wash then dry. Personally I would stay the heck away from that person as the dogs are just a gimmick they are not a hundred percent effective at finding the chemicals if sprayed improperly or mixed improperly also not effective. Also tell your friend and you can as well caulk all cracks and baseboards in residence that keeps almost anything away but there’s always the outlets to worry about. Also ask if they sprayed some type of dust into all the outlets in the house as that was common practice and if it got real bad we would drill holes in the walls in all the bedrooms about 6-12 inches apart and use delta dust. I would also suggest diatomaceous earth which they can make it look like they are doing spells up in there. Bed bugs are no joke your T’s are def safe but everyone else not so much especially if they decided to throw infested furniture Out which alot of people do but it all has to be done like your covering up a murder drop cloths booties and wrap all items before chucking only takes one little bugger to fall off and hide. Also not everyone is allergic to the bites I’ve been to the richest cleanest of homes and flip a mattress and the bottom, the wood slats the head board the carpet would just be crawling with them.

 

[viper69]

Nasty