Can an average temp of twenty two degrees low and thirty five degrees high kill bed bugs on items placed outdoors from January to March?

Answer 1

No I am sorry that is not the way to get rid of a bedbug infestation. That outside temperature is just not going to kill your bedbugs! The reason is firstly studies have found the thermal point that kills bedbugs is much higher than that i.e. 47.8 degrees Celsius and also a constant exposure of 20 minutes or more is needed to kill them with heat, while unhatched bedbug eggs need to be exposed to that temperature constantly for 90 minutes to destroy them all.

In other words when you bring your stuff back inside there will almost definitely still be an uncertain number of surviving live adult bedbugs and perhaps many more unhatched eggs so you are likely to get further visits from increasing numbers of them.

But also bear in mind that if you think you are getting bitten by bedbugs at night in your bed, that means after each bedbug has enjoyed its meal of your blood, after finishing its meal each bedbug now engorged with your blood will then crawl back to its daytime base to sleep, and worse still each female bedbug will probably lay another batch of about half a dozen eggs somewhere.

The point is there are also a wide variety of places the bedbugs may reside in during the day other than in your mattress or your bed's structure or in bedside furniture. They commonly for example go through a tiny gap in the wall or floorboards or even ceiling or in your fixed furniture like wardrobe, so will not be accessible in the day time. More and more eggs may well be getting laid down at such an inaccessible place you can not get at each day. Which means when these eggs hatch and in time become adult bedbugs your infestation will just get worse and worse.

No - to get rid of a bedbug infestation you will probably need to call in a ptofessional pest exterminator and they may need to use their specially trained dogs to sniff out and locate where the bedbug nests and unhatched eggs are before commencing the extermination, and they usually need several visits to complete the job.

It is possible to do it yourself if you cannot afford to call in a professional exterminator. If so you can try steam heating inside the house but doing it that way is very slow as you do need to concentrate the heat at every crack and crevice anywhere in the bedroom ideally with equipment radiating at a concentrated temperature of at least 70 degrees Celsius, and you need to do steaming into every inch of surface. All experiences suggest even then heat treatment with a steamer can substantially reduce numbers but will not on its own get rid of an infestation. Freezing is a better method but that too is not a simple job either.