Got bed bugs? Bedbugger.com » sweden

Bed Bugs in 18th Century Sweden - who ya gonna call?

bugzinthehood — Fri, 04 May 2007 19:58:20 +0000

Ã‚Â Answer:Ã‚Â Ã‚Â Ã‚Â Carolus Linnaeus

From a just published article in Smithsonian Magazine

But many of his other views were surprisingly modern. He foreshadowed Darwin in his belief in a universal struggle for survival. He was the first to classify human beings in the same genus as other primates, and he grouped whales with mammals (previously they had been considered fish). He advocated biological control as a means of dealing with insect pests (he was particularly keen to find the invertebrate “lion” that would control bedbugs), and he understood the importance of biodiversity…

FAQ: I am not in the US. Can you tell me where to buy XL ziplocs, or what mattress covers are called in my country?

nobugsonme — Sun, 22 Apr 2007 19:38:17 +0000

Sometimes I get messages commenting on the Nortamericano-bias, USA-bias, or even NYC-bias of the site.
Others assume Bedbugger.com was made for NYC Bedbuggers (not so!)

Although people often think this to be the case, this site was never intended to be for residents of the US, but rather, for everyone with bed bugs, everywhere. Although I (Nobugsonme) lived for many years abroad, I am in NYC, I am best able to provide information on fighting bed bugs here, and news on what’s going on.

However, I’d love to make the site more helpful for Bedbuggers everywhere, as I know you would too. This is where you come in. Tell us everything you can to make this site relevant to your country-people. Use the comment function and point us to useful information and useful stuff.

I get google alerts for all bed bug-related stories on the ‘net. But these are weighted towards US stories in particular. If you see bed bug news covered on a website (especially a newspaper or television website in your country), please drop me an email and let me know (nobugsonme at yahoo dot com).

If you see suggestions on the FAQs for treatment methods which you feel do not apply in your country, or suggestions of products not available to you, or if the product has a different name or is sold by a particular company, please post a comment directly on the relevant FAQ telling us. We’d be happy to give people information specific to the UK, Canada, Australia, or anywhere else, but first we need the information.

(This request comes with the usual disclaimer that people who are themselves selling things should advertise on the site rather than posting phony ads in the form of “happy customer testimonials”: you know who you are.)

A few of the FAQs may be closed to comments, usually because people were using them to post comments about other issues besides the information in the FAQs. If you find this to be the case, you can email me at nobugsonme at yahoo dot com, and I will re-open them. It’s best to post your corrections to the FAQs, rather than emailing them to me, since I get a lot of email every day and don’t have time to copy and paste lots of addenda to the FAQs. For the same reasons, it’s also best not to post information in the comments on this FAQ (below) which would be better placed on the FAQ about protecting your bed, travel, etc.

Thank you for making the site a better resource for Bedbuggers everywhere!

Bed bugs in Sweden: Ikea, used mattresses, and the spread of vägglus

nobugsonme — Sat, 24 Mar 2007 08:47:36 +0000

I dropped the CusterMap we had on the old host, which showed the geographical locations readers were coming from on a map with red dots, partly because I think there are other options to be tried out.

But when we last looked at a month of Bedbugger visitors, there were some interesting things to be seen. Most dots were in North America, with every part of the US and Canada represented. We had readers on every continent, and in most countries, from Iceland to the tiny island of Reunion.

In Europe, two cities had the largest dots: London and Sweden. I realize our readership does not just mean people either have bed bugs or a concern about them, but also that one has access to the internet and can read and write enough English to get by. (Thanks to our so-far-anonymous first Bedbugger translator, who is generous and modest, we may soon be able to help more people.). It seems entirely possible that Sweden has a lot of people who read English and have internet access, but it appears to have a lot of bed bugs as well.

Reader Tiago, in Sweden, commented in the “Tales of Woe” yesterday, mentioning the spread of bed bugs there:

Nobugs, the situation here in Sweden is getting complicated, from what I understand - my swedish is still weak but, by now, I know very well the word vägglus - swedish for bedbugs, although literally they call them “wall lice.” There is a fairly important second hand market thing here and that may help spreading them. I also understand from the commercials that IKEA takes old mattresses away as a discount on your new one - I hope they know what they’re doing!

The term “wall lice” used to be used here in the US, too.

Sweden strikes me as a country that cares about the environment. Mattress recycling is a good idea on many levels, but having the mattresses exposed in the truck to new items being delivered, and to goodness knows what else on the other end, is a very bad idea.

I think a lot of us care very much about the environment and are thus all the more horrified to find ourselves bulk-buying (and throwing out!) enormous plastic bags, having endless toxic pesticides sprayed in our homes, and slashing up and replacing furniture that would otherwise be good for years more.

There are ways to recycle mattresses and other items safely. We need governments and corporations to become aware of this need, and help solve the problem of the spread of bed bugs, while still allowing us to avoid sending everything to the landfill. (Do you know how many years it takes to disintegrate an XL ziploc bag?)