Bed bugs are never something you want to see around your home, but taking care of them is no easy task. Here’s how you may have gotten bed bugs and a step-by-step guide to bed bug control and bed bug prevention.
Bed bugs enter the home undetected on luggage, clothing, linens, and couches. To get rid of them, you’ll want to enlist the help of the experts at My Pest Pros.
Thankfully, there are a number of steps you can take to stave off a bed bug infestation and target areas where they like to hide. The rest of this article will discuss bed bug control, where they tend to gather, and how you can get rid of them for good.
What Are Bed Bugs?
Bed bugs are small, reddish-brown insects that spend most of their time secluded during the day. At night, they are attracted to the carbon dioxide produced by humans and feed on their hosts.
How Do Bed Bugs Enter a Home?
There are numerous ways a bed bug infestation can start, but it usually goes undetected until the infestation becomes more serious. Bed bugs and their eggs can be brought in on personal belongings stored outside, luggage, clothing, and furniture.
Once bed bugs have invaded a home, the female will lay hundreds of eggs that will hatch into larvae and eventually grow into adults. Bed bugs tend to aggregate together as a result of mating hormones, which can quickly cause a bed bug infestation to spiral out of control.
How to Detect Bed Bugs
Bed bugs are hard to detect, only coming out at night to feed and then following a chemical trail back to their safe space. They usually hide in a dark crevice where they can hide amidst other bed bugs. Generally, there are two ways you’ll know you have an infestation.
First, you may notice their distinctive smell of rotting raspberries or simply spot a bed bug depending on the severity of the infestation.
More likely, however, you’ll notice inflammation and itching as a result of their bites far before you see any physical evidence of these sneaky parasites. Bed bug bites are distinct, often having the following characteristics:
- Marks located on the face, neck, hands, or arms
- Inflammation with a darker spot in the middle of the bite
- Itching at the bite location
- Multiple bites arranged in a cluster or line
While bed bug bites aren’t dangerous for all people, some react severely to them, experiencing blisters, hives, or severe itching.
How to Handle a Bed Bug Infestation
Depending on the extent of the problem you may be able to take some steps for bed bug control. Start by assessing just how bad the problem is. Check the following locations for activity:
- By your mattress
- In cracks on your headboard
- On your baseboards
- In your furniture joints
- In the couch cushions
- In dirty linens
Live bed bugs are usually red in color, and their droppings will look like tiny black specks. Hatched eggs will leave behind small yellow eggshells, and you’ll also notice red smushes from dead bed bugs in places on your couch or mattress.
Once you’ve assessed where you need bed bug control, it’s time to start cleaning the house. Vacuum every nook and cranny of your home, making sure to get inside drawers, behind dressers, and in every dark spot bed bugs might like to hide. To combat a bed bug infestation, you can take the initiative by vacuuming your home from top to bottom.
Once done, seal the contents of the vacuum thoroughly and discard them.
After vacuuming, tidy up your home thoroughly, remove dirty laundry and throw out anything you don’t need to avoid encouraging further infestation.
While you can certainly kill a lot of bed bugs by vacuuming, you’ll want to enlist the services of My Pest Pros to prevent the spread of bed bugs. With their no-tolerance policy for bed bugs, they use heat treatments and liquid treatments for your entire home to eradicate every last pest.
How Does My Pest Pros Get Rid of Bed Bugs?
First, a trained pest control expert will inspect your home for signs of bed bugs, removing any visible ones and handling problematic infested areas with a solution designed to kill adults, larvae, and eggs.
My Pest Pros also uses heat treatments to kill bed bugs. Using this method, the pest control experts at My Pest Pros will raise the temperature in your home to 130 degrees, creating an environment where bed bugs cannot survive. This method is environmentally friendly and highly effective at destroying bed bugs.
Usually, the treatment only takes a few hours, allowing you to get back in your home sooner than traditional treatments.
My Pest Pros also offers traditional liquid-based treatments that are less expensive. Directed pesticides are useful in some cases where the infestation isn’t as severe, and the experts at My Pest Pros will go through several sessions of treatments to eradicate a bed bug problem before it gets worse.
Final Thoughts
Bed bugs are a nightmare to deal with, and while you can certainly take some active steps to reduce bed bug activity in your home, contacting the professionals at My Pest Pros is always the best option to get the job done. Call us at 703-665-4455!