Bed Bugs- What You've Been Told is Totally False

This is me subjecting

my body to Oh my gosh.

By letting a bed bug eat me. That's my blood.

Because for 4 years now, I've been wanting to make this exact

video taking a deep dive

into the fascinating world of bed bugs.

There's a lot of fear and myths out there regarding dealing with bed bugs

and today we're going to debunk nearly all of them heading out in the

field with the experts

and running some experiments.

So if you can power through your squeamishness

and spend the next few minutes here with me, I promise not only will

I blow your mind with some facts about bed bugs you definitely

don't know, but I'll make you a bed bugs expert

knowing exactly what they look like, how not to get them, but most importantly

what to do if you do get them.

Because the punchline is it's actually not that hard to get rid of them

as long as you ignore all the bad advice out there and follow the

surprisingly simple steps I'll demonstrate in this video.

So let's get right to it.

And head across the country

all the way to Rutgers University

to visit their urban entomology

lab, which basically means bugs you don't want in your house

to meet with Dr.

Wang, the world's foremost bed bug expert.

And the main reason for visiting his lab was to run a bunch of

experiments to test all the things you read online

that people swear will get rid of bed bugs.

But before we got to that,

I wanted to meet some of the little guys myself.

We have thousands of bed bugs here. It's a incubator.

Probably more than 20,000. Oh my gosh.

This is like the Fort Knox of bed bugs. Okay.

Can I pick up one of these? Sure.

Okay, I cannot drop this I feel This one probably has 4 500.

4 500 in Do you want to open it or you want me to open it? I'll open it.

This is my first time ever seeing a real bed bug. Here we go.

Do you want to use gloves?

Should I use gloves?

Uh we always use

I should use gloves then.

I just got to go for it.

It's like ripping off a band-aid. Oh, gross. Wow. Oh, man.

There's so many of them.

So this is what bed bugs look like.

I just never knew. All right.

So let me just cover some bed bug basics.

It takes a few months for them to mature from egg all the way

to full grown male and female.

And in those few months they pass through these five stages of growth.

You can see the relative size here compared to a credit card.

And as humans we have five senses,

but their super human antenna give them two extra

senses allowing them to detect both body heat

and carbon dioxide being breathed out by a potential host.

Then once they get close they use their sense of smell also on their

antenna to lock down the exact

final position of the person.

Which is all to say if you exhale

your smelly warm breath on them

they get real excited. That is crazy.

They're so stoked right now to eat. Sorry guys.

Their lifespan is anywhere from 3 months to a year and ideally

they like to feed about once a week,

but there's this unsettling fact.

Without a feeding they can live 3 to 6 months. What?

Cuz they just don't move very much?

Cuz the blood is highly nutritious

They can stay in a resting state

for 3 to 6 months.

And the professor says 3 to 6 months here, but for my first of

five super wild bed bug facts,

if their environment is relatively

cold they can survive up to 300

days without eating anything. They're really flat.

Cuz they are hungry.

So when they're hungry and they haven't fed they're going to be more flat. Right.

I'd love to get a shot of it going from flat and brown

to Oh, if you want to do that put it on the arm. You can see.

Which meant I had a decision to make.

Okay, I'll do it. For science.

We're going to make a brown bed bug red.

So average feeding time is about 5 to 10 minutes.

Feel like I'm at the Red Cross here. Let's do this. Oh my gosh. Oh.

Now it's starting to feed.

It's already Yeah, it's just feeding.

So right now I feel nothing.

So you're not very

reactive to the bites.

The butt's sticking up in the air now.

Wow, yeah it's getting bigger.

And there's just something about seeing another organism

steal your blood that sharpens

the focus and leaves one to start pondering some questions

that probably should have been pre-pondered.

And they don't carry diseases, right?

I should have asked that No, they don't. 10 minutes ago.

And this is my second

super wild bed bug fact.

They don't actually carry or transmit

any diseases, which sort of serves as an evolutionary

advantage in the world of coexisting

with humans because the government doesn't really support research to eradicate

them since they don't really pose a widespread health threat.

When it's done will it start running real

I will run slowly

cuz it's a bigger faster.

They're easily crawling the walls of this dish by the way. Right.

So we tend to put a talcum powder

in the interior walls so they cannot escape.

I think we have some talcum powder. You think?

That the think is the part I'm concerned about. Oh gosh. He's moving. Moving. Okay, finished.

What do I do now? 9 minutes. Finished. Don't worry.

I'll put it in the dish. So 9 minutes?

Normally after I give blood I get juice and cookies.

And when we put my new blood buddy next to an unfed bed bug,

gross, the difference was astounding.

Which made me really curious what it would look like under the microscope

that was just sitting there begging to be used. Oh my gosh. Wow.

Those are my red blood cells.

What are those bubbles even? No way. Life is amazing.

I don't think I reacted, right? That's good.

So you're not as reactive as me.

So I could put even more on my arm then. You can try.

I'm taking one in the name of science

and we're going to load up 10 bed bugs on my arm. That's one. Two.

We've also put some DEET which they don't like to kind of make a

barrier so they stay in the middle. Yeah.

This is like Thanksgiving.

There's one down there.

Can you get that one? Six. Please.

Oh, I can feel them bite.

Like if I don't look. 10. Okay.

I said 10, Professor. One bonus.

Oh, that one's turning red already.

Could you imagine just

some people have a bad infestation

just every night like this is what their life looks like.

They can get thousands of bites. A night? Yeah, a night.

They're getting bigger and bigger by the second.

Oh, you better not start mating on me. This one finished.

Okay, I don't like your attitude.

Let's get rid of this guy. Professor. Professor.

As they finish I vote them off the island.

I don't want them crawling up my arm.

He's full and you're off the island.

Oh and you're off the island. And he's done. Peace. Down to two.

This is like a Mr. Beast challenge.

Last to leave the arm wins a gallon of rabbit

Oh, we have a winner.

I think it's dead.

Oh, there he goes.

And so once again by way of comparison,

here are the 11 bed bugs that just spent some quality time with me

versus 11 unfed bed bugs of similar ages. All right.

So they're all done feeding.

There was 11 total.

It took about 10 minutes,

but I would have no idea

they just made a meal out of me.

Like I felt a tiny

prick on one of the 11,

but other than that like

It's tricky little parasite.

And I'm not alone.

Half of all people have no reaction

to a bed bug bite, whereas the other 50%

of the population will have some kind of reaction to their saliva

that will look something like this in the morning.

So having survived the blood letting it was time to run our experiments

and head into the vault sealed by the huge wooden door. All right.

So we're here in the bed bug test chamber.

We've set up a bunch of tests in here.

So for example in these two

we have these dishes.

Basically they can climb up the wall

then they get stuck in this trough.

It's too slippery to climb out.

Inside each of these troughs there's a little vial of this good smelling

stuff that to the bed bugs smells like a human.

So they're going to go to either one of these.

So this one in this corner is a control.

Whereas in this corner

we have an ultrasonic pest repeller.

So we want to see if this actually

does anything or not.

So at the end of 24 hours we'll come back.

We'll count the number of bed bugs in this dish versus this one.

There's way more in the control

and this is actually doing something.

But if there's the same number of each

then this is nothing more

than a gimmick to steal your money.

In addition to testing the ultrasonic

bed bug repeller, we used an identical

test setup to investigate

some of the other supposed

remedies to bed bugs commonly found online

including dryer sheets, mothballs,

baking soda, and essential oils.

And just for the sake of my curiosity,

we also placed this vertical post in a dish.

For my super wild bed bug fact number three out of five,

the professor told me that bed bugs are attracted

to vertical objects because if you think about it humans generally sleep at the

highest elevation in any given room.

So their logic is just crawl up any vertical object you see

until you eventually find a warm blooded meal at the top.

So this is to mimic a bed post

and we do have an attractant in both trays.

The hypothesis is that there will actually be more bed bugs in this tray

because you have that vertical post.

And if that turns out to be true that's pretty wild.

And in addition to those six tests, we set up some residual

effects tests where we treated a surface with each of these three products you

can buy at the local hardware store specifically

marketed to kill bed bugs.

And then finally we tested this fogger spray also specifically

designed for killing bed bugs.

God speed little fellows.

And then we set it off leaving three dishes of exposed bed bugs at

different spots in the same room.

And so as a final step, we placed the bed bugs at the center

of each of the six trays in the bed bug vault

and we were underway.

The experiment's all set up.

We're going to close the wooden vault,

do a final bed bug check,

and let it run.

And now Now the experiments

were running, Professor Wang invited us to join him on a research visit to

an apartment building nearby

that had been receiving

frequent reports of bed bugs.

So, him and his team were going out to collect some samples

and to try out some new treatment approaches.

And after entering the apartment,

it didn't take long to find our first culprit, a bed bug here, which

the professor told me was dead. It's dead, yeah.

When in fact, he was just a good faker.

By the way, this is a bit of a warning that some people might

find the next few minutes a little gross.

So, skip ahead a bit if you just want to see the results of the test.

It turns out one in a thousand houses or apartments

bed bugs in the US today, which might sound bad, but for my super

wild bed bug fact number four, before 1950,

it was one in three houses

that had bed bugs.

Hence the origin of the saying,

sleep tight, don't let the bed bugs bite.

Midnight to 3:00 a.m.

is typically their most active time and it takes a little more than 10

minutes to get to you, a little less than 10 minutes to feed as

you saw with my arm, and a little more than 10 minutes to get

back to their hiding spot.

If you're suspicious you're sleeping on a mattress with bed bugs, just check under

the mattress in the corners

and look for bed bug poop stains like this.

Just remember, this is more of an extreme case, so yours might not look quite this bad.

These two here are actually mating, which we saw quite a bit in the lab, too.

Which actually leads to my final super wild bed bug fact, and buckle up

cuz this one's a doozy.

Typically in nature, in order to make a baby of a thing,

you have a male,

which let's say is represented

by this plug, and a female, which let's say is represented by this outlet.

And if you plug in the cord,

you get an adorable little baby.

And just like it pretty much all the rest of nature,

female bed bugs totally have an outlet.

Except male bed bugs

prefer to take this approach.

The scientific term for this

is called traumatic insemination.

And just like my wall is now damaged,

it actually damages the abdomen of the females,

leading to significantly shorter lifespans.

Researchers aren't exactly sure why they've evolved to use this alternate approach, but it

must offer some kind of overall advantage,

leading females to lay up to five eggs every day, and you can see

their handywork here on that same chair we saw before.

Like all insects, bed bugs have an exoskeleton.

So, what you're seeing here is as they grow bigger from stage to stage,

they molt and leave behind their old exoskeleton.

How bad is this infestation

relative to most you see? Yeah, moderate.

This is a moderate?

Heavy ones, you can see tens of thousands of bugs.

To prove his point, he later sent me a video of this house with

a charming exterior, which they had treated a few months ago.

The truly staggering part about this place though was that only one person lived there.

He just wasn't allergic to their bites

and he just learned to live with them.

Back at our thankfully

moderate infestation, the professor and his team took some samples

for study later and started treating the room.

Now, unsurprisingly, the apartments

both above and below this one also had some minor bed bug issues.

So, if you're working to get rid of bed bugs in your apartment,

just make sure you let your landlord know what's going on in case the

unit next to you happens to be the primary source to prevent you from

getting a second wave.

And as we were wrapping up, the professor dropped a bit of a bombshell

about how it was pretty likely we had at least some bed bugs on

us at this point.

Even if you can see they you may not see Yeah, they can. They can.

Which is why he always plays it safe.

Actually, I have a spare clothing always.

When I'm at home,

I always wash it.

These shoes are only for bed bug shoes. What?

Nobody told us anything.

We, unfortunately, were not told to bring nor did we have a spare change of clothes.

What have I done?

So, we did the next best thing by steaming ourselves,

which instantly kills the bed bugs from the heat.

That is until the professor decided he should check his shoes and found this. Is it alive? Yeah, it's alive. Oh my gosh. No way.

At which point just steaming ourselves

seemed wildly And because apparently

it's illegal in the state of New Jersey to just probably chill in your

underwear, me and my crew hit up the local Goodwill

to wait things out in style.

So, the next day we headed back to the lab to check on our

results in our freshly laundered clothes.

But can I just take a moment to say it's the best to hang

out with bug people

cuz they have cool door knockers

and interesting magazine subscriptions.

The only downside being they like to study more than just bed bugs. Ah, smells.

This is where they keep the cockroaches

and as you might recall,

I really, really don't LIKE COCKROACHES.

THIS ONE HAD THOUSANDS OF THOSE.

WOW, that's so disgusting.

Ah, these are the kind I hate.

are the American large ones in the US. They're freaking antenna?

That's the worst sound in the world.

Wait, they have wings?

Yeah, they have wings.

In Florida, they can fly, too.

But here, temperature is cold.

So, if it was a little warmer in this lab, they would fly? They will fly. Oh my god.

Okay, let's get out of here.

So, we made our way back upstairs

where I felt much more comfortable.

Time to check the results.

So, this ultrasonic pest repeller did nothing.

If anything, it attracted them.

We had 120 bed bugs with the ultrasonic sensor.

Over here for the control, we had 101.

Clearly, that does nothing to repel bed bugs.

And of course, that confirms

our hypothesis considering bed bugs don't even have ears.

Not to mention that apartment we visited

had a couple plugged into the wall themselves.

So, definitely save your money on that one.

Next up was the vertical post test. That is wild.

There are so many over here by the vertical post.

Literally none over here on the other side.

And the remaining four tests all had similar results,

so I'll just show the average, which was around four bed bugs trapped in

the dish that was surrounded by either the dryer sheets,

moth balls, baking soda, or essential oils

with around 26 bugs trapped in the control.

These results clearly show

bed bugs prefer to avoid these four items because they all have a really

strong scent and bed bugs have a really good sense of smell.

But they don't do anything

to kill the bed bugs.

According to the professor,

these act more as an annoyance,

but the bed bugs would gladly walk over them if it was between temporarily

having to deal with the smell

and starving to death.

As for the residual effect test with the pesticide

specifically engineered to kill bed bugs,

it was even worse news.

The spray, aerosol, and fogger bed bug killers all killed about 12%

of the bed bugs after 10 days.

And before you go all glass half full and think, well, 12%

is better than nothing,

our control, which was just water,

also had a 12% mortality rate.

So, it's literally not better than nothing.

According to Professor Wong,

part of the reason for these terrible results is that many strains of bed

bugs have developed immunity

to a lot of these chemicals over the years,

and he thinks in 10 years all bed bugs will be immune.

And this sort of makes sense because they're constantly

undergoing localized mass extinction events when people try and spray them.

And only the most hardy minority

survive each time and pass on their increasingly pesticide resistant genes.

There were some chemicals that on average were effective

in killing about 50%

if you sprayed the bed bugs directly.

But if they were just hanging out in the area you sprayed later, it's

once again the same as water.

The problem with this is you only ever see a small portion of the

bed bugs you actually have.

So, direct spray pesticides

are sort of pointless

if your goal is to eradicate the entire population.

That's the bad news.

Now, here's the good news.

There was a superstar

in our test and that

was the diatomaceous earth with a nearly 90%

mortality rate after 10 days.

This stuff is just crushed

fossilized shells from tiny prehistoric

aquatic organisms called diatoms.

The key here is their shells are silica

based and silica is what you see in those packets you see sometimes in

packages that you're not supposed to eat.

Silica is useful because it absorbs moisture incredibly well.

For bed bugs, this is a bummer because when they walk by it, it

sticks to their exoskeleton

as you can see here under the microscope,

and they die from dehydration

in a matter of hours to

We're eating lunch right after this, which is a bad idea in hindsight.

Best part here is they end up transferring

this to each other back in their hiding spots.

And since every organism

needs water to live, they can never develop immunity to it.

There's also one more bit of really good news, and that's bed bugs die

at 122° Fahrenheit, like instantly.

This is also 100%

effective and there's no way to build immunity to it.

And a really easy way to get a bed bug to 120°,

as we demonstrated earlier,

is with the clothes dryer or a steamer.

Or if you want the nuclear

option, you can work with professionals

to heat your entire house to that temperature.

Now that we have a better sense of what does and doesn't work, let's

talk about what to do if you actually get bed bugs.

The first thing to point out is the best way to get rid of

them is to not get them in the first place.

And the most common way people get bed bugs is through traveling.

So, when you get to your room,

here are three simple tips.

First, pull back the bed sheets and check the corners of the mattress

now that you know what to look for.

Second, don't set your suitcase

on the bed or the floor.

Instead, set it on the luggage rack.

Or if for some reason you feel like you need to be extra cautious, the bathtub.

And third, don't put your clothes

in the hotel drawers

or leave them just lying around.

Whatever you're not wearing should just stay in your luggage

or hanging up on the hangers.

All right, so you were super careful when staying in the hotel on travel,

but then you got back and bought that couch on Craigslist

for a smoking deal, and now you got bed bugs in your home.

In Professor Wong's experience,

you don't actually need to spend $4,000

to hire an exterminator,

as long as you know there's three steps for defense

and three for offense.

First step for defense,

you put your bed in a bag.

You can buy these mattress and box spring encasements off Amazon.

And once you zip them around your bed, basically

seal in any bed bugs currently living inside.

Just remember, they can live up to 300 days, so you can't take it

off for a year.

And they not only trap in any current bed bugs, but they also remove

all the mattress hems

and clever hiding spots they love to use.

Number two, your clothes dryer.

Wash and dry your clothes and sheets at least once a week.

More often doesn't hurt.

Importantly, you want to wash them in hot water and dry them on the

highest heat setting because it's impossible

for them to survive this.

Number three, simplify and declutter.

Simplify the room to take away any hiding spots by putting clutter into plastic bags or totes.

They aren't interested in clean clothes, but dirty clothes smell nice to them.

So, it's good to also store those in a plastic bag or tote until

you're ready to wash them.

Also, move your bed away from the wall so the only way they can

get on the bed is by climbing up the legs.

So, that's the three steps for defense,

now for the offense. Number one, vacuum.

Make sure you vacuum the bedroom floor and the bed area once a week.

Just be sure to empty anything you've collected

into a bag and into the trash.

And number two, we've got diatomaceous

earth which, as you recall,

was the superstar from our tests.

You should definitely apply this around the bed, but it's especially

useful in penetrating the cracks and crevices

close to the bed, including

around and behind power outlets.

The key is applying just a light dusting like this.

If you leave it in clumps, it will actually backfire

and not be as effective

cuz they'll just navigate around it.

And finally, at number three, we've got steam.

A simple clothes steamer like this will do the job.

And I think it's great that with all the years and money spent on

creating all these synthetic

pesticides, the two most effective methods for killing bed bugs are just crushed up

rocks and really hot water, which are by far the two most simple and natural.

Use the steamer all around your bed once a week, but if you find

something you want to treat you can't steam or put in the dryer,

you can put it in a bag and then put it in the freezer

for 3 days and that will also kill them.

Professor Wang said, "If you have a small infestation

and you just noticed them, then using these three defensive

and offensive steps will totally

take care of the problem without needing to spend money on an exterminator.

However, if you've got a lot of bed bugs and you've had them for

a long time, then getting professional

help is probably a good idea.

The entire house heating option takes about 8 hours and it's the most sure

fire way to totally eradicate

every bed bug along with any eggs all at once, but it can cost

up to $4,000 depending on the size of your place.

Now that you're playing both defense and offense and things are looking good, stick

these traps under the bed legs so you can monitor

and have some peace of mind that they are in fact totally gone.

All right, that's it.

You're a bed bug expert now.

I'm hopeful that at least some of you will have a renewed

appreciation for the fascinating

natural world around us, and everyone else can just congratulate

yourself on making it to the end while soaking in a bathtub of Listerine.

This is the world's LARGEST FRISBEE

AND I INVITED MY NEPHEWS OUT to demonstrate

just how much more accurate

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AND THAT FRISBEE LAUNCHER, of course, is just a scaled-up

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version, which also happens to be insanely accurate

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Then there's this coin spinner that also gives you superpowers.

This time to spin a coin better than any mere human. That is awesome.

And then of course, a mega version, which I also used

to dominate MY NEPHEWS.

AND IF YOU WANT TO WATCH BOTH OF THOSE MEGA BUILD VIDEOS, YOU CAN

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