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Comment by idlewords | Hacker News Reader

This exactly. Freezing is useless unless you have something like a lab freezer that gets to -50C. Hot dryer for clothes, and you can put empty luggage in a dark trash bag and leave it in the sun to heat treat.

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Having run the bedbug site, what's your advice on long-term travel? I've never gotten bedbugs, but I feel it's only a matter of time. How do you balance prevention with simply living your life?

Bedbugs are my valued business partners and I feel it's only right I should give back sometimes.

I do a quick bedbug check (headboard, nightstand, boxspring) in hotels I visit and mostly don't worry about it.

Have you ever found any by doing that?

Fromy my experience, they aren't great at stealth. I once had them in a hotel room, they came crawling towards me as soon as I laid down. I killed the first two and fled. Got a different room at the same place that was not infested (it was late and I was poor then). No bedbugs came home with me though I did put clothes in the freezer just in case.

It really depends on how severe the infestation is, and how long it has been since the bugs had a meal. Very hungry bedbugs will come out in the open, less hungry ones will wait until the middle of the night to feed.

I do wonder how very hungry bedbugs exist in a hotel room. But the evolutionary pressure against gratuitously running over an uncovered bedsheet while the light is on is pretty clear, too.

Yes, once. It was a heavily infested room in a hotel in West Virginia, I could see multiple juvenile bedbugs along a seam in the box spring.

Always use the luggage stand.

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