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Bed bugs are one of the most persistent parasites and pests in the planet. Because they are so tiny, and they have the uncanny ability to get through small cracks and crevices, it is impossible to get rid of them using physical means like scrubbing surfaces or applying insecticides.

Thus, to treat bed bugs infestation, you should not take risks. You should seek help from the professionals who know what they are doing more than you do when it comes to treating or controlling bed bugs.

Bed bug bites and diseases

Health organizations from around the globe will attest that bed bugs do not spread out any plague or disease. Although, when bed bugs bite, they leave saliva under the skin of their host, bed bugs do not cause or transfer any disease.

That separates bed bugs from other blood-sucking insects like mosquitoes, which transfer malaria, dengue and a host of other ailments.

However, bed bug bites do irritate skin and leave itchy and uncomfortable marks. Sometimes, bed bug bites may look like mosquito or bites of other insects.

Hence, bed bugs may not pose serious health hazards. But the itchiness and irritation bed bugs bites will cause your body is enough reason for you to seek to treat infestation of bed bugs in your home.

You may develop blemished skin or may have lot of itch-wounds if bedbugs keep on biting you. Allergic reactions also happen to other bitten people. These allergies can sometimes lead to serious skin situations.

Planning the attack

If you plan to treat bed bugs infestation at home, you will have to develop a strategy that has been thoroughly and carefully planned.

Before contacting the local pest control operator in your area, be prepared to be asked to discard or throw several things or equipment in the room that may be a living ground or habitat for bed bugs.

Most of the time, bed bugs living inside beds can never be treated. That is because they are so tiny, they may creep to the tiniest opening or hole in beds. Pesticides treatment may almost always be futile in assuring the 100% treatment of bed bugs.

However, discarding beds and other things is not that simple. Treating bed bugs infestation in your home does not require or mean you will have to neglect protection of your neighbors and other people from the parasite.

Thus, disposal of things infested with bed bugs need some more attention. Sometimes, the thing may have to be burned. At times, the thing will have to be enclosed into bags so that bed bugs will not be able to transfer to other things or areas.

Because adult bed bugs can last almost a year without feeding, if the infested thing is not burned, it is advised that the thing should not be exposed to or near contact to any potential host, like humans and pet animals.

The once-infested room will also have to be thoroughly cleaned to treat or get rid of eggs that may have been left by the exterminated adult bugs.

Prevention is better than cure

They say prevention is better than cure or treatment. Cleanliness and hygiene is the most basic way or measure to prevent bed bugs from accumulating.

If you are into traveling, make sure the hotel or rooms you have stayed in are bed bugs-free. Otherwise, your clothes and baggage will carry them and you will return home not alone, but with lots of unlikely transients or companies.

Regular room check up or professional visits from pest control personnel is also advisable. Because these professionals know more about pest infestation than you do, you should seek their advise and help if you want to determine if your room is infested, or much more, if you want to get rid of bed bugs in your home.

If your room is infested with bed bugs, transferring to another place is not a solution. For as long as you will be carrying the cabinets, bed or other furniture with you, chances are, you are also carrying in bed bugs along.

Overall, to warp things up, treating bed bugs infestation begins at your self. Hygiene and education about bed bugs will be of great help. So keep on knowing and researching about bed bugs and seek professional help when you suspect infestation.

Incidence of infestations

With the widespread use of DDT in the 1940s and ’50s, bedbugs all but disappeared from North America in the mid-twentieth century. Infestations remained common in many other parts of the world, however, and in recent years have begun to rebound in North America. [1] The insects have become epidemic in the Boston neighborhoods of Allston and Brighton, Massachusetts, where in 2004 renters were offered subsidies to replace infested mattresses.

[2] As a bedbug infestiation is almost never limited to matresses or bedding, this remedy will be less than effective. Reappearance of bedbugs in the developed world has presented new challenges for pest control, and, without DDT and similarly banned agents, no fully effective treatment is now in use. The industry is only beginning to develop procedures and techniques.

Another reason for their increase is that pest control services more often nowadays use low toxicity gel-based pesticides for control of cockroaches, the most common pest in structures, instead of residual sprays. When residual sprays meant to kill other insects were commonly being used, they resulted in a collateral insecticidal effect on potential bedbug infestations; the gel-based insecticides primarily used nowadays do not have any effect on bedbugs, as they are incapable of feeding on these baits.

The Professional Pest Management Association, a US advocacy group for pest control operators (PCOs) conducted a “proactive bed bug public relations campaign” in 2005 and 2006, resulting in increased media coverage of bedbug stories and an increase in business for PCOs, possibly distorting the scale of the increase in bedbug infestations. [3].

Method of initial infestation

There are several means by which dwellings can become infested with bedbugs. People can often acquire bedbugs at hotels, motels, and bed-and-breakfasts, thanks to increased domestic and international tourism, and bring them back to their primary domiciles in their luggage.

They also can pick them up by inadvertently bringing infested furniture or used clothing to their household either via purchase or ” dumpster diving”. If someone is in a place that is severely infested, bedbugs may actually crawl onto and be carried by people’s clothing, although this is atypical behaviour — except in the case of severe infestations, bedbugs are not usually carried from place to place by people on clothing they are currently wearing.

Finally, bedbugs may travel between units in multi-unit dwellings (such as condominiums and apartment buildings), after being originally brought into the building by one of the above routes. This spread between units is dependent in part on the degree of infestation, on the material used to partition units (concrete is a more effective barrier to the spread of the infestation), and whether or not infested items are dragged through common areas while being disposed of, resulting in the shedding of bedbugs and bedbug eggs while being dragged.

Common location of infestations

Bedbugs are very flat, allowing them to hide in tiny crevices. A crack wide enough to fit the edge of a credit card can harbor bedbugs. In the daytime, they tend to stay out of the light, hidden in such places as mattress seams, mattress interiors, bed frames, nearby furniture, carpeting, baseboards, or bedroom clutter.

Bedbugs can settle in the open weave of linen; this will oft appear as a gray spindle a centimeter long and a thread wide, with a dark speck in the middle. Although bedbugs may be found on an individual basis, they more often congregate and nest in groups, although they do not behave in a cooperative, “groupmind” fashion such as one might find in nests of ants, bees, or termites.

Bedbugs are capable of travelling as far as 100 feet to feed, but usually remain close to the host in bedrooms or on sofas where people may sleep. They feed every five to 10 days. The manner in which infestations spread throughout a domicile is not entirely understood and differs from case to case.

Size of infestations

Some pest control professionals have deemed light infestations to be anything below 200 bedbugs in a residence, medium infestations to be in the range of 200–300 bedbugs in a residence, and severe infestations to be as bad as 2,000–3,000 bedbugs in a single residence.

Detection of infestations

Bedbugs can be detected often by looking for black tracks on bedding, which are the bedbugs’ fecal stains. These stains are most visible on light-colored bedding.

Occasionally an engorged bedbug is inadvertently killed or disgorged by incidental crushing, resulting in a visible smear of blood. Crushing them will produce a unique sickly sweet pheremone scent, which can also be detected in the ambient air in a severe infestation.

Symptoms of bed bug bites

Though bedbug bites can occur singly, they often follow a distinctive pattern of a linear group of three bites, sometimes macabrely referred to as “breakfast, lunch and dinner”. The effect of these bites on humans varies from person to person, but often cause welts and swelling that are more itchy and longer-lasting than mosquito bites.

Some people, however, have little or no reaction to bedbug bites. Those whose bodies do not initially react may subsequently develop symptoms, however, due to an allergic reaction caused by the development of antigen.

A technique for “catching” (detecting) bedbugs is to have a light source accessible from bed and to turn it on at about an hour before dawn, which is usually the time when bedbugs are most active.

A flashlight is recommended instead of room lights, as the act of getting out of bed will cause any bedbugs present to scatter. Bedbugs can also sometimes be viewed during the day.

Some individuals have used glue traps placed in strategic areas around their domicile (sometimes used in conjunction with heating pads, or balloons filled with exhaled breath, thus offering the carbon dioxide that bedbugs look for) in order to attract and thus detect bedbug infestations. There are also commercial traps like “flea” traps whose effectiveness is really questionable except perhaps as a means of detection, but traps will certainly not work to control an infestation.

Veterinarians may mistake bedbugs’ leavings on a pet’s fur as “flea dirt”.

The above having been said, bedbugs are known for being elusive, transient and nocturnal. For many, the only way to detect and identify with certainty an infestation is to contact a pest control professional.

Living with infestation

If it is necessary to live with bedbugs in the short term, it is possible to create makeshift temporary barriers around a bed. Because bedbugs cannot fly or jump, an elevated bed can be protected by applying double-sided sticky tape (carpet tape) or petroleum jelly around each leg, or by keeping each leg on a plastic furniture block in a tray of water.

A bed frame can be effectively ridded of adult bedbugs and eggs by use of steam. Small steam cleaners are available and are very effective for this local treatment. A suspect mattress can be protected by wrapping it in a painter’s disposable plastic dropcloth, neatly sealing shut all the seams with packing tape, and putting it on a protected bed after a final visual inspection.

Bedding can be sanitized by a 120° F (49° C) laundry dryer. Once sanitized, bedding should not be allowed to drape to the floor. An effective way to quarantine a protected bed is to store sanitized sleeping clothes in the bed during the day, and bathing before entering the bed.

Vermin and pets may complicate a barrier strategy. Bedbugs prefer human hosts, but will resort to other warm-blooded hosts if humans are not available, and some species can live up to eighteen months without feeding at all.

A co-infestation of mice can provide an auxiliary food source to keep bedbugs established for longer. Likewise, a house cat or human guest might easily defeat a barrier by sitting on a protected bed. Such considerations should be part of any barrier strategy.