Cleaning your bedding, vacuuming, and protecting your mattress with a cover are important steps to take to prevent bedbug bites. If you're not able to avoid bites or have trouble controlling bedbugs, it may be time to hire a qualified pest control professional.
Lavender oil works pretty well and so does peppermint oil. Take a small atomizer(perfume spray bottle) and fill it with water and about half a teaspoon of essential oil and shake it up before spraying. Mist yourself every 30 minutes or so and no bugs will bother you.
Oils like tea tree oil, neem oil, lavender oil, cedar oil, and orange oil are effective to repel bed bugs. Mix with water and lightly spray at the area where the chances are high.
Bed bugs hate certain components, such as allicin and sulfur. These ingredients don't kill bed bugs, but they can help you drive them away. Foods like garlic, onion, banana, and lemongrass are rich in these components and will help you to repel bed bugs.
While some people believe that the strong smell of VapoRub might repel bed bugs, there is no reliable data to support this claim. Simple home remedies like VapoRub are unlikely to control an infestation effectively.
Wash and dry all sheets, blankets, and pillow cases at least once or twice a week. Place bed legs in ClimbUp® Interceptors to prevent bed bugs from climbing up bed legs. These can be purchased on the internet. Placing bed legs in plastic containers filled with water with a drop of dish detergent or oil may also work.
If bed bugs have one weakness, it's that they're intolerant of extremely high or low temperatures. Washing clothes and bedding at the highest possible setting followed by drying for at least 30 minutes at high heat should do the trick. You can also freeze clothing or other objects you suspect of being infested.
Vacuum and Encase the Mattress
Once you vacuum your mattress, apply a mattress encasement. This is a mattress-sized zip-up bag that fits snugly around your entire mattress. Using a mattress encasement is one of the best ways to keep the bedbugs from nibbling you in the night.
Use Environmental Protection Agency (EPA)-registered insect repellents containing DEET, picaridin, IR3535, Oil of Lemon Eucalyptus (OLE), para-menthane-diol (PMD), or 2-undecanone. EPA's helpful search tool can help you find the product that best suits your needs. Always follow product instructions.
Clothing to wear at work
Choose pants without cuffs and shoes that are smooth with no trim that bed bugs can hide under. Hang your coat or jacket on a wire hanger and hang it from a shower curtain rod. Make sure it doesn't touch anything else.
Insect Shield's EPA registered permethrin spray can help repel bed bugs.
The main insects that may be biting you as you sleep are bed bugs, mosquitos, fleas, gnats and midges. If you would like to know which of these insects are biting you as you sleep, you'll need to look at the type of bite you have.
Rubbing Alcohol
Bed bugs can be kept at bay using rubbing alcohol. Not just the smell, but the touch of rubbing alcohol can kill bed bugs and also prevent them from laying eggs.
Some bed bug populations have become resistant to pyrethrins and pyrethroids. Sometimes using a combination product (either multiple pyrethroid or pyrethrin active ingredients, or one that combines different chemical classes into the same product) can improve bed bug control.
To lure bed bugs out of their hiding spots, you can use a steamer or a hairdryer to heat areas such as mattresses. Neither of these is hot enough to kill the bed bugs, but it can trick them into thinking a human host is near. You can also keep an eye out at night to locate their nests when they are most active.
Cockroaches. When it comes to bed bug predators cockroaches are at the top of our list. They not only eat adult and nymph bed bugs they also feed on bed bug eggs.
In 2009, EPA and CDC collaborated on a joint statement to highlight the public health impacts of bed bugs . Myth: Bed bugs won't come out if the room is brightly lit. Reality: While bed bugs prefer darkness, keeping the light on at night won't deter these pests from biting you.
Baby Powder or Alcohol: Two other common substances will kill bed bugs. Baby powder can be used to smother and suffocate bed bugs. A 70% isoprophyl solution will also kill bed bugs and their eggs on contact. Both of these methods, however, may require multiple applications to fully eliminate an infestation.