Bed bugs are a painful nuisance, and can be tough to eradicate in your living space. Below we’ll examine what bed bugs are, what they need to survive, and how you can get rid of them if you’re unlucky enough to have them in your home.
What are bed bugs?
Bed bugs are small bugs about the size of an apple seed, and may either appear flat or rounded depending on when they had their last meal. They can look like ticks, but don’t attach to the skin. They are nocturnal, and can be difficult to find during the day, when they hide in crevices, within floorboards, and under cushions. Their bites commonly cause itchy welts or rashes, and can leave a trail of bites across the skin.
When trying to determine whether or not bed bugs are the cause of your bites (that can also be mosquitoes, fleas, spiders, or other insect bites), it’s often easier to locate the signs of a bed bug infestation rather than the bugs themselves. Look in your bedding, along mattress seams and other crevices, for rust-color marks on bedding and mattresses, tiny black spots or eggs, and pale skins shed by the nymphs.
Be on the lookout for bed bugs when traveling. You can pick up bed bugs from hotels and hostels, where people unwittingly carry them in their luggage and drop them off at a new location. From there it’s easy to introduce them into your home.
Because Bryan-College Station is a college town, there’s also an increased risk of bed bugs here. College students travel around frequently, staying with friends or in hostels where bed bugs thrive, and can transfer bed bugs from another source to their dorm or permanent residences.
Can you kill bedbugs with pesticides?
No one wants to find out that they have bed bugs. Conventional wisdom suggests you have to throw out your mattress, bedding and anything else that could have come into contact with the bed bugs. However, not only is this unnecessary, but it also doesn’t resolve the problem, as bed bugs can persist on headboards, in carpeting or wood flooring, and in other furniture such as dressers and bookcases.
So how do you kill bed bugs in your home?
While pyrethrin-based pesticides do work on bed bugs, they can be difficult to apply safely and in a way that will reach areas where bed bugs hide. The best bed bug treatment for consumers is to use a room fogger, but even these don’t get into all of the crevices where the bugs hide. Even if you can kill the bed bugs themselves, their eggs can remain behind to start a whole new cycle. If you treat the entire home at once, you may have some success, but you will need to keep an eye out for new infestations. In other words, getting rid of bed bugs can be a long and frustrating battle.
For the average homeowner, therefore, completely eradicating bed bugs is a difficult proposition and can be costly and time-consuming. If you discover bed bugs in your home, we recommend calling out a professional.
Do you want to kill bed bugs fast?
At ABC Home and Commercial Services Bryan-College Station, we offer a different solution that kills bed bugs quickly and without resorting to dangerous pesticides.
Our heat remediation treatment is a chemical-free, non-toxic method to eradicate bed bugs.
We raise the temperature of the room to 125 degrees, and because bed bugs cannot survive temperatures over 113 degrees, this process kills all of the bed bugs, including their eggs and immature nymphs. Even better, the process also kills bugs that are hiding in floor and wall cavities, within mattresses, and in furniture. Our heat-remediation treatment does no damage to furnishings or structures, and you don’t have to get rid of your bedding, clothing, or any furnishings. Best of all, we can usually kill bed bugs for good in a single treatment.