[MHGinTN]

Which bean plants do they use for the piercing leaves? My cousin has a bad bedbug problem in his apratment building.

[bgill]

It would have been helpful if the author had stated which variety of bean leaves - lima, green, pinto, fava?

[djf]

Isn’t this similar to what borax?? does to fleas?

A few years back, I had a pretty bad flea infestation. (No pets, but there were tons of feral cats hanging around)
I bought a 3 lb jar of this stuff called “Fleabusters”
Still have almost 3 lbs!

Only used maybe two tablespoons of the stuff spread around and NO FLEAS! The fleas BIT THE DUST!

Orthoboric acid, 64%

Not cheap, $45 for 3 lbs, but genocide for fleas!

[ansel12]

But the commercial availability of pesticides like DDT in the 1940s temporarily halted the legions of biting bugs. As their pesticide-resistant descendants began to multiply from Manhattan to Moscow, though,

I wonder if that is accurate, or if that could have been written with just a little more detail which would have made it accurate?

[Georgia Girl 2]

Whats wrong with spraying Raid? :-)

[chessplayer]

Interesting, but I imagine it would take a LOT of leaves to spread around just one floor in one room.

[Born to Conserve]

Our beds have legs. Peasants sleep on floors and those low things. Our bedding is cleaned regularly. Peasants don’t clean their bedding (or their clothes, or themselves).

If you clean like your American mom did, you won’t have bedbugs.

There is a reason for these cultural habits.

[JoeProBono]

House centipedes have been known to enthusiastically eat bed bugs, a fact which endears them to me. If you see one, you might want to let it live, as it may be feasting on your bed bugs. But keep your distance, a disturbed house centipede can sting you.

[TChad]

How do you convince the bedbugs to crawl onto the leaves?

[martin_fierro]

[metesky]

A study published Wednesday in The Journal of the Royal Society Interface details the scientists’ quest, including their discovery of how the bugs get hooked on the leaves, how the scientists have tried to recreate these hooks synthetically and how their artificial hooks have proved to be less successful than the biological ones.

Sounds as if these "scientists" want to go into business for themselves rather than opening a new market for kidney bean growers to sell their heretofor useless bean leaves.

[deweyfrank]

bfl

[advertising guy]

CedarCide is perfect.....

[Straight Vermonter]

Catherine Loudon, a biologist at the University of California, Irvine, who specializes in bedbug locomotion.

I'll bet she's a hoot at parties.