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Will heat kill bed bugs

Updated: 10/9/2023
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13y ago

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Yes, heat will kill bed bugs. In a 2002 issue of an industry journal, Pest Management Professional, Dr. Hanif Gulmahamad states, "It has been reported that bed bug eggs have been killed after an exposure of one hour at 113F, and first-instar nymphs died after 15 minutes of exposure to the same temperature. For adult bed bugs, the thermal death point is reported to be 111.2F." There are additional references to similar temeratures (Usinger, 1966) and in Chapter 8 of the Mallis 9th edition, Handbook of Pest Control.

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15y ago
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13y ago

I'm not too sure if it does. Many years ago while I was at university I lived in a house infested with bedbugs, and although I tried various ways of killing them none were successful. Eventually, I was forced to catch some live ones and show them to the owner of the house along with a book on insects to convince her that they were more than just a figment of my imagination. The pest controller who came to get rid of them told me that the only effective way to kill them is fumigation.

There was a special on bed bugs. And from everything I've read, bed bugs can be killed with temperatures above 120F. Fumigation is not a great way to rid yourself of them. Sometimes they get into cracks deep in the walls and the fumes don't reach them. Even if you leave the house in fumes for days, the bed bugs can still find their way back to from the cracks. They can go up to a year without feeding. Diatomaceous earth is one way to keep them under control. If the bed bugs crawl through this powder it coats them and dehydrates them. But it's not instant death.

If you use heat they die quickly and heat kills all stages of the bed bugs including eggs. But a heat treatment can be a couple thousand dollars. And trying to use something like a hair dryer is not very efficient because it only covers so much space at a time giving the bed bugs time to move away from it. I've read some people have used heavy duty steamers and steamed carpets, baseboards, beds, etc and that seemed to have worked for them. With the heat treatment they bring ducts into your house and heat your ENTIRE house to 120 degrees maybe a little higher. But it is harmful to some fabrics, pictures, paint, etc. There's a lot of prep involved. But it is the most effective way to rid your home of them.

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12y ago

Yes, hot water can kill bed bugs! All you need to do is cook a boiling pot of hot water up to the temperature of 114 degrees and than pour it on a huge pile of bed bugs. The water is so hot that it causes instant death to the bed bugs because that hot temperature will burn them to death within less than 1 second.

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10y ago

No I am afraid the answer to that question is NO, that is unless you are staying in an excessively hot climate. It is true that heat treatment is used to get rid of bedbug infestations and it is effective. But with that, the temperature at which all bed bugs die needs to be 113 degrees Fahrenheit = 45 degrees centigradeor higher and exposure for 90 minutes or more. Bedbug eggs needs exposure of a temperature of 118 degrees Fahrenheit = 47.8 centigrade or higher for at least 90 minutes to be sure of them all being destroyed before hatching. So there are very few places in entire world were that sort of temperature naturally occurs indoors in any bedroom. In fact bedbugs most happily live and breed in climates that humans generally find too uncomfortably hot and sticky to sleep in.

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9y ago

Heat can kill bed bugs. Some might suggest that you should place the bedding in a dryer and the heat should kill them. However this leaves the mattress still potentially infected as it, obviously, won't fit in a dryer.

There is a heat treatment that pest controllers are licensed to use.

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13y ago

Yes you can kill bed bugs with heat. The temperature needs to be at least 115 degrees Fahrenheit.

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11y ago

The right temperature is 65 degrees Celsius (149F).

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8y ago

You can kill bed bugs with heat... the heater in your home will not do it. You need some pretty extreme levels of heat in order to kill them.

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11y ago

yes

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