The third and most important step in the battle to get rid of bed bugs is to dehydrate them. This is the most important step as bedbugs are very resilient bugs and can withstand chemicals and cleaning efforts.
The best way to dehydrate bedbugs is with food grade diatomaceous earth. Diatomaceous earth(DE) is completely safe and organic and is not harmful for humans to ingest. It is however, harmful to breath in the dust so when you apply it wear a dust mask like you would if you were sanding something in a wood shop.
The best way to apply DE is in a thin lay of dust so that the bugs cannot avoid it. If you put down a thick layer of powder the bugs will avoid it. The best way I've found to apply DE is to use a baby bulb syringe. Dust the entire room where bed bugs have been seen, in particular dust the high traffic areas such as your mattress, box spring, head board and the carpet/flooring surrounding your bed. Work this dust down into the carpet so that the bed bugs cannot avoid the DE as they try to find you in search of their next meal.
The process of trying to travel through the DE dust will dehydrate the bugs and limit their life span and ability to reproduce severely. If you use this dehydration plan in conjunction with the next step you will have an effective 1-2 punch in putting this bug problem in your rearview mirror.
If you aren't able to get diatomaceous earth right away you can use a substitute such as baby powder to attempt to dehydrate the bugs. Once again, you should only apply a dusting as the bugs will avoid any areas with large amounts of powder.
