Bed bug infestations are difficult to control. While vigilance and sanitation are important, some serious infestations may require professional help.
Pest management professionals use a variety of chemical treatments to eradicate bed bugs. These include liquids that are sprayed into cracks and crevices, as well as insecticide dusts in hard-to-reach places like behind baseboards, drawers, and furniture. Contact Bed Bug Control Boise for professional help.
Bed bugs are primarily nocturnal and active at night, but can be found during the day as well. They feed by piercing the skin with their mouthparts, leaving itchy bite marks on the victim’s skin, often in a linear or clustered pattern. A sweet, musty odor can also be present when the pests are present.
Bed bug detection technologies have not kept pace with the rapid resurgence of these insects. Many methods depend on visual inspections and identification of live bugs, exuviae (droplets), or fecal droppings. These are time consuming and unreliable when only a few bugs are present. Using dogs to detect bed bugs is becoming more popular, but is expensive, may unintentionally advertise the presence of a problem, and cannot reach all the places where the insects hide. Passive pitfall traps and monitors are effective for detecting an infestation, but must be regularly monitored and replaced.
Thoroughly inspect all furniture that is near the bed, including dressers, nightstands, and other wooden pieces. Use a flashlight to look into all the nooks and crannies, especially along seams and screw holes. Pull the mattress out a few feet and inspect underneath, as well as behind the headboard. Inspect upholstered furniture, and remove cushion covers to look for eggs or bugs. Inspect clothing and other personal items, double bagging anything that could be infested or contaminated before putting it back in storage.
It is also a good idea to clear out any clutter that might provide hiding places for the pests, such as clothes, books, toys, papers, and electronics. Getting rid of this stuff can help you to see the extent of an infestation, as well as speed up treatment. Also consider caulking cracks and other hiding places where bed bugs are known to lurk in your home, around frames, floors, baseboards, and moldings. This eliminates a valuable hiding place and makes it more difficult for the pests to escape. Lastly, consider removing or at least reducing animal habitats such as bird nests and bat roosts. These can offer the pests a new harborage site and accelerate an invasion.
Prevention
Several measures can help prevent a bed bug infestation. Keep bedding, mattresses and box springs free of clutter and clean; vacuum frequently. Consider encasing mattresses and box springs in special protective covers, which remove all hiding places for the bugs. These are available at most major retailers.
Be especially careful when traveling or staying in a hotel/vacation rental. Do not spray anything in your room unless you have been told by the hotel management to do so. Doing so may actually disrupt the pest control treatment they have already started and may spread the bugs to other rooms.
If you suspect a bed bug problem in your home, inspect the entire bedroom area and any furniture that is close to it. Start with the mattress and box spring, then move on to the dressers, nightstands and closets. Inspect the creases, seams and trim on chairs and couches as well.
Use a flashlight and magnifying glass to look for signs of the bugs themselves. Adults are rusty red, about the size of an apple seed and 3/8″ long, and have six legs. Nymphs are lighter in color and go through five stages (diagram shows only three) of growth before becoming adults.
Be sure to remove and wash any infested clothing and place it in trash bags. Do not leave dirty clothes next to clean laundry or on a counter; bed bugs can crawl out of the bags and infest your house. When discarding potentially infested items, wrap them in plastic or tape over the edges and throw them in an outdoor trash container as soon as possible to prevent spreading the bugs to someone else’s home.
Sealing furniture with specially made moat-style traps can also isolate an infested room and intercept the bugs as they travel to and from their hiding places to feed at night. A small, commercially available product called diatomaceous earth can be used as a substitute for pesticides in some situations since it works by drying out the bugs. However, make sure to use food grade DE and not pool grade DE, which can be toxic when inhaled.
Treatment
A professional can perform a thorough inspection and assess the extent of the infestation. They can identify hiding spots, locate eggs and determine the severity of the problem. This information will help them select the most effective treatment strategy. The homeowner must prepare the room in advance of a professional visit to reduce the number of hiding spots and make it easier to treat all areas that are infested. This includes decluttering and vacuuming, washing or heat-treating infested bedding, linens and clothing, and sealing cracks.
Begin by emptying drawers, closets and other storage containers. Double bag items like toys, papers, books and electronics that could serve as hiding places for bed bugs. Launder all infested linens and clothing, ideally at the highest temperature settings recommended on the labels. If you can’t wash items, seal them in plastic bags until they can be carefully treated or cleaned (for example, placed in a hot dryer for 30 minutes or in a freezer). Remove and inspect mattresses and box springs, headboards and footboards, as well as dressers, nightstands, armoires and other furniture near the beds. Look under and behind these items as well.
Also inspect and vacuum your car, especially the seats, trunk and crevices. Many people have discovered that their bed bug problem started in the back of their car where the bugs hitched a ride from an infested public place like a hotel.
Infestations of clothes and drapes can be difficult to treat because bed bugs are resilient and can survive long after a person is free from them. Vacuuming and sanitizing with strong cleaners is usually sufficient, but if these steps don’t work, it may be necessary to take more drastic measures.
A variety of commercially available products can be used to control bed bugs, including pyrethroids, pyrroles, neem oils and insect growth regulators. These chemicals can be applied as sprays, powders or foams. Some of these chemicals are designed to be absorbed through the skin and act as a repellent, while others kill the bugs or prevent them from reproducing. These products are available from pest control companies or online.
Recommendations
For a serious bed bug infestation, non-chemical treatments are usually not enough to get rid of them completely. High heat (115 degrees Fahrenheit) and extreme cold kill them, but these treatments are difficult to carry out in a home, require multiple applications and are dangerous for children and pets. Chemical treatments are much more effective, but they leave a strong odor and are more disruptive to your home life. They also take longer to work than temperature treatments.
Before a professional begins treatment, prepare the room by moving all furniture away from walls (bed bugs can climb on them and spread to untreated areas). Clean or throw out all clothes, books, magazines, and papers. Vacuum all floors and carpeting. Wash all linens in hot water. If you have a mattress encasement (like Mattress Safe covers) that is made to enclose an entire mattress, use it. These encasements trap the bugs inside so they cannot escape and also make it harder for new bugs to invade.
A thorough inspection of the entire room is needed, including the undersides and trim of the bed frame and headboard, all tufts, pillows and upholstered pieces, the creases, buttons and seams of mattresses, box springs and foundations, and all cracks and crevices. Check for black/brown spots (dried blood or feces), white eggs (very small and very hard to see), live or dead bedbugs, and a musty odor.
In addition to whole-room heat treatments and insecticide sprays, fumigation can be used for very heavy infestations. Fumigation involves tenting a building and filling it with a powerful pesticide that penetrates the structure, killing all insects within. It is more expensive than other treatments, but it is the only way to guarantee that all bed bugs are killed.
Unless you are absolutely sure that the infestation is gone, it’s wise to take precautions when visiting friends’ or family members’ homes. Be sure to keep your own clothing off the beds, and ask if you can change in the bathroom or bedroom instead of the living room. Also, ask not to sit on any upholstered furniture in the house. Even if it doesn’t look infested, the bed bugs might be hiding in the arms of chairs or under loose wallpaper.