Just like you, I live in an apartment building in Queens. The electical wiring might be the bedbug highway for your building. That’s how they moved through my building.

Here’s what I did at my place.

- Shut off power to all outlets.
- Unscrew outlet plates
- Puff in drione dust into outlet box. This stuff poisons and dries bugs up. Left alone in dark space, this powder lasts a long time.
- Replace outlet cover.
- Turn fuse box switch back on.

After that, I got clear duct tape. I taped up the gap where the outlet plate meets the wall. I plugged in a box adapter, so I could still access electric. Then, I taped up the edge of the box adapter to the wall, leaving no gaps. It’s a hermetically sealed box of doom. They might crawl out of the outlet, but if you taped it up correctly, they can’t get into your apartment. More importantly, they can’t get to you.

There’s a tiny bedbug that’s been dried up in one of my clear electrical prison boxes since 2006.

For anyone reading: it’s alot of work, but it’s so worth it. Just do one outlet at a time every other day. The tape looks ugly as hell, but it works.

I taped the gap between the molding and the floor of my entire apt also. Good luck to all.

I’m a journalist living in Alaska who picked up bed bugs while doing a story in a little quint town, the cleanest and most harmless place you could imagine. Funny! Of all the crappy places I’ve stayed and I pick up the critters in a coastal town with no crime or stoplights.
I appreciate your blog, especially your postings. The other bed bug blogs I’ve visited contain a hell and brimstone attitude, a kind of doomstay thunder in the background. Yeah, this is NO fun. I’m sick of vacuuming and sleeping on plastic pillow covers and washing laundry every damned day and constantly checking my teenaged son’s room and worrying that every pimple, bump, scratch is another bite.
But it could be worse. I don’t have cancer. No one is my family is dying. We have bugs, we get bites sometimes. But as long as I dust with DE and permethring and keep filling in cracks and tucking boric acid in corners and between floor tiles, things haven’t gotten out of hand. It’s been a five weeks since the critters hitched a ride home (in my suitcase? coat pocket? laptop case?) and so far, knock on wood, it’s not so bad. I can sit on the couch and write on my laptop and not get bit. I can sit on the floor and read and not get bit. Three weeks ago I couldn’t do either. I choose to see this as a small victory (Me, 1. Bedbugs, 7, but maybe I’ll catch up, eh?)
But the knowledge that it could quickly escalate is daunting. I’m a writer. I have very little furniture. But I do have books. Lord, I have books and books and books. And manuscripts and pages of rough drafts and Jesus, if they get in there it will tough (right now I have DE dust and boric acid lined around all my books on all my shelves).
Anyway, I just wanted to know how much I appreciate this site.
And, have you ever considered work in journalism? It isn’t always glorious, but it’s a paycheck.
Cheers and take care,
Itching and dusting in Alaska

I’m surprised you didn’t check the extension cord when you were doing the last extermination though?

Lou Sorkin is into pictures of bbs. Maybe you can send these to him for his photo site (of course, he would credit these beautiful pieces of photography to you!).

Well, at least this is a good way to catch bbs. I mean, if people like family members and pcos do not believe you have bbs, this is a sure fire-way of catching these mofos and proving these people wrong.