While there are several ways to find and treat bed bugs, it’s common to start with a visual inspection. If you’ve woken up several nights recently with new bites on your skin, and you’re not sure what the cause may be, consider inspecting closely for signs of bed bugs. Conducting this type of inspection is inexpensive, and it lets you to know whether to invest in further treatment or detection efforts.
To inspect for bed bugs, you’ll have to move most of the furniture in your house, and possibly peel up areas of the carpet. Bed bugs can hide in the tiniest cracks, so many people even find between a wall and the plate of a light switch. Bed bugs do leave some very clear signs to keep an eye out for though.
Look for blood stains in the folds of your sheets or near the edges of your mattress. It’s a little unsettling, but bed bugs often leave blood stains in the night.
- Look for eggs in your mattress lining, and underneath furniture that’s pressed against the wall. Also look in the corners of your room.
- You may need to peel back the fabric lining of your sofa or similar furniture to find them hidden in the upholstery.
It can be worth the effort to look closely for bed bugs if you’re not sure whether you even have an infestation. Once you do confirm an infestation, however, it’s time to seek professional help.
The Professional Options to Bed Bug Problems
A full sweep by a bed bug sniffing dog is probably the best way to locate all the areas of your house that are crawling with bed bugs. Confirming an infestation by searching for bed bugs is the best first step, but it won’t find every bed bug or locate the exact areas that need treatment. A bed bug dog will be able to find each part of your home that has bed bugs, so that the extermination efforts can proceed as smoothly as possible.
Once you do a thorough scan with a bed bug sniffing dog, the removal and extermination can begin. Professionals will usually use a combination of industrial pesticides and heated air treatment. The combination of both these elements is powerfully effective, because bed bugs are so sensitive to heat. The rooms which are being treated may be sealed off for a couple of days, but the wait is worth it because the treatment is so effective.
Even if your bed bug problem is relatively mild, there’s a good chance that any lesser forms of treatment won’t be completely effective. If you do try other remedies, and they don’t kill every last bed bug, then you’ll have to start over again from scratch each time they reproduce.
If your problem has reached the proportions of a business or domestic crisis, then there’s little reason to do anything but spring for the best options available. Search out a local exterminator who specializes in bed bugs, not a generalist. Make sure he advertises himself as a bed bug specialist and that he has a lot of experience. A credible service will have a game plan for how they want you to be involved, and they actually won’t guarantee 100 percent effectiveness. That guarantee might seem alluring if you find it, but most professionals who know what they’re dealing with know that it’s not realisti