There is documentation to show that bed bugs have pestered us since ancient times. For most of us, bed bugs were extinct pests that our great-grandparents battled. In the early 1900s , it was a rare American indeed who had never been bitten by or at least seen a bed bug. Bed bugs were pretty much gone from the U.S. by about 1950, but began reappearing 50 years later and are now very much with us again,To keep bed bugs from climbing into their beds, folks set the legs of their beds into shallow cans of kerosene, coal oil, or axle grease. They also sprayed their bed frames with kerosene or benzene to kill bed bugs hiding there. Periodically, beds were cleared of their bed bug residents by stripping off the mattress (straw mattresses were burned) and using a candle or plumber’s torch to burn bugs hiding in the springs and the frame. A similar process called for filling cracks in the bed frame with gunpowder and lighting it. Some old timers still remember the acrid stench of roasted bed bugs during spring cleaning. Local druggists supplied arsenic or mercury compounds that were then mixed with water or turpentine and applied to areas of the bed with a feather or brush.
TODAY’S INTEGRATED METHODS ARE A BETTER CHOICE Some would say bed bug control isn’t much more effective today. It’s true that bed bugs are resistant to many of the insecticides that we use against them and controlling them is definitely a challenge. For this reason, experts developed Heat Treatments for Bed Bugs
