Bed bugs, how to recognize where they come from and how to get them out

When a person begins to find the first bites of house bugs on his body, he does not even suspect that these are itchy marks on the skin of his body. Always the first thing that comes to mind is allergic manifestations. Everyone is starting to remember how their diet has changed, what foods have been added, and so on.

The next stage is insects. Since the "allergy" only intensifies, and the diet, it turns out, has not changed at all, probably these are fleas from a domestic cat or mosquitoes. And only if a person still gets an appointment with an allergist or dermatologist, it turns out that this is not an allergy, not fleas or mosquitoes, but the most common house bugs.

Then the most exciting stage in family life begins, associated with the search for bedbugs. After all, somewhere they are hiding, these petty bloodsuckers. Our today's conversation is about where bedbugs live in an apartment, how to properly look for bedbugs and other areas that will help you better understand these parasites and think over more effective measures to combat them.

How to recognize a bed bug

In appearance

Bed bugs are small insects that feed on human blood. The newly hatched bed bug larva has a translucent brownish color and is comparable in size to a poppy seed. In adults, the bed bug has a flat, oval, rusty-red body the size of an apple seed. Bed bugs can be easily confused with other small house bugs, including carpet bugs, pretend bugs, and newly hatched cockroaches (nymphs).

Trail, excrement and eggs

Blood stains, excrement and pest eggs can be found in various places, such as:

• seams and quilting of mattress, sheets, pillowcases and upholstered furniture;
• cracks and crevices in furniture;
• wall skirting boards.

By bites

Some people don't respond to bed bug bites. For those who react, bite marks may appear within minutes or days, usually on areas of skin that are exposed during sleep. These marks appear as small bumps or extensive itchy scars. Scars usually disappear within a few days. Since bed bug bite marks may look like mosquito bites and other insect bites, the very presence of a swelling or scar is not evidence of bed bug infestation.

Growth and reproduction of bed bugs

Bed bugs are most active while a person is sleeping. They crawl onto unprotected areas of the skin, inject the mild anesthetic contained in their saliva, and suck in a small amount of blood. Most people do not feel the bite itself.

Bed bugs need a blood supply to grow and lay eggs. The female lays 5–7 eggs a week, and in her entire life, if there is sufficient nutrition, she can lay 200–500 eggs. It takes about 10 days for the eggs to fully mature. Bed bugs reach maturity in 2–4 months and can live up to one year.

Preventive measures

By purchasing a steam cleaner, you can forget about bedbugs forever, even if the dwelling turns out to be a hostel. Insects are afraid of high temperatures, which means evaporation and freezing are the most effective methods of prevention.

After disinfection of the room, of course, you do not need to steam all the places, but

• furniture,
• frames,
• rear panels,
• things,
• soft furniture
• mattresses require steam treatment.

To do this, you need to set the device to a temperature of 65 degrees, if some parasites survived, after a high temperature, they will have no chance. Everything needs to be washed with a high temperature mode, what cannot be washed can be sent to the freezer, to 10 days. To do this, each thing is wrapped in separate packages.

Bed linen and underwear, towels must be ironed at a high temperature. It is necessary to fry on both sides of each thing. Carrying out preventive steam cleaning once a week, you can not only bring the room into a sterile form, but also get rid of all types of household insects, including blood-sucking ones.

For those people who do not want to engage in self-destruction of insects, there are specialized organizations. If there are problems in everyday life, calling the service will allow you to disinfect the room you like. In the arsenal of services, a large selection of services provided, the price depends on the type of work.

Prevention of home infestation with bed bugs

Bed bugs enter the house along with furniture, luggage and clothing, as well as from adjacent rooms through pipes and electrical wiring.

1. Never bring bed frames, upper mattresses and lower box spring mattresses or upholstered furniture found on the street into your home.
2. Check all used or rented furniture for bed bugs.
3. When staying overnight during your trip, inspect your bed and furniture. Do not place suitcases on the floor or bed and be sure to check them before leaving.
4. If you suspect that you have been in an area with bedbugs, immediately wash and dry your clothes with hot air, or store them in an airtight plastic wrap until you can wash them.

Ways of appearance of bedbugs

• Together with old furniture. Buying a used wardrobe, sofa, armchair, you expose your home to the danger of insect infestation.
• Together with the furniture you bought in the store. It's no secret that the same sofa or mattress can be stored in a warehouse with violations of the required sanitary standards.
• From neighbors. This is a fairly common option, when bugs from neighbors 'apartments through ventilation systems or in other ways enter the neighbors' apartments. Very often this happens when neighbors begin to make repairs and drive insects from their habitats;
• From the apartment of dysfunctional neighbors. In almost every house and every entrance there are apartments where people live who do not look after themselves, and they don’t look after the apartment, and even more so, the bugs can move through the cracks between the slabs into your apartment;
• Old books. When bringing home old books, look at their spines, flip through the pages. Books are a favorite habitat for bedbugs, where they hide from human eyes in the daytime;
• Together with clothes. Often friends and acquaintances give things and shoes that for some reason did not fit them. And if there are bedbugs in your friends' apartment, they will successfully move to you and very soon divorce.
• Together with the builders. When starting repairs in an apartment, and hiring builders for this purpose, be careful - insects can come to your home on workers' clothes, or in boxes with construction tools.
• You yourself can bring these unwanted "guests" by spending the night in a hotel or with friends.

It must be remembered that cleanliness in the apartment, more daylight, the absence of old, unnecessary things and household items can reduce the likelihood of these unpleasant guests in your apartment.

Ways to destroy the nest

When the nest is found, you need to eliminate it. And the sooner the better.

Finding their nest is not easy, since bedbugs activate at night or in the morning.

If this is not possible, then you will have to act on your own.

Be careful though, as the wrong steps can exacerbate the problem. Then the bugs will scatter around the apartment or hide, fall into suspended animation for months

And it will be difficult to find them. But then they will definitely come back.

It is useless to crush insects mechanically. Boiling water or steam can only destroy the clutches of their eggs. Folk remedies (vinegar, kerosene and wormwood) should be used only as an adjunct to modern drugs.

You can learn how to use wormwood to fight bed bugs.

When choosing chemical agents to combat insect nests, one should take into account not only their effectiveness, but also the degree of toxicity, the smell of the drug, and its efficiency. Especially when there are children in the family. This article will tell you about bed bugs in detail.

Search for their abode should be based on the bedbug's predilections for secluded corners protected from light, located not far from eating places

Work should be done carefully, following the instructions, using protective equipment:

• protective clothing
• reliable gloves
• mask

In conclusion, we emphasize that it is not enough to destroy one nest, an integrated approach is important here.

It is great if you agree with your neighbors to carry out processing at the same time. Then intruders will not have a chance to migrate to a safe place, and then return to you again.

Even if the nests are empty and the pests have disappeared, repeat the treatment after two weeks. And then, for prevention, use, for example, insect crayons so that you never see bugs in your home again. We recommend that you learn about ways to deal with linen bugs.

Checking for bed bugs

• check upper mattresses and lower box spring mattresses, bed frames and bedding;
• inspect the top and bottom seams, quilting and any cuts in the covers of the upper mattresses and lower spring mattresses;
• look under the bed and inspect the surface of the bed frame and headboard;
• inspect crevices and cracks in bedroom furniture, floorboards and baseboards, window and door frames;
• remove and check zippers, seams and cushion padding;
• remove the drawers from the furniture and check their inner, top and bottom surfaces, joints, and screw holes;
• Walk with a spatula, old plastic or playing card over all cracks and cracks, displacing the bugs hiding in them.

This procedure can also be performed using a jet of hot air from a hair dryer operating at low speed. If bugs come out of the cracks, crush them with a paper towel and throw them outside the building.

• check walls and objects hanging on them;
• check for cracks in plaster and peeling wallpaper;
• inspect the front panels of sockets and switches (visual only);
• look inside phones, watches, smoke detectors and toys.

Examine the area for bed bugs, blood stains, excrement and insect eggs (you can use an electric torch and magnifying glass to do this). Start by looking at an area within a radius (3-6 meters) of where you sleep or sit. Usually bedbugs move this distance.

Cleaning and disinfection

Get rid of unnecessary items to reduce the number of places where bed bugs can lurk. Check for bed bugs in unnecessary items, and think about where these items can be stored until the pests in the house are completely exterminated. Recheck all items before putting them back in place.Remove dead bed bugs, blood stains, eggs and insect excrement using hot soapy water. Rinse all items with bed bug stains in hot water and dry them at maximum temperature for at least 20 minutes. After drying, store items in airtight plastic bags until you are sure to completely get rid of bed bugs. Vacuum carpets, floors, bed frames, furniture, crevices and cracks daily with a brush and crevice tool. After each use of the vacuum cleaner, clean the dust bag or seal it and throw it outside the building.

Before the arrival of the instructor-disinfectant, you must:

• Disassemble things, remove or pack unnecessary items, remove or isolate from the ingress of bedbug exterminators on dishes, personal hygiene items, cosmetics, clothing and underwear (if you suspect the presence of insects in underwear or clothes, they must be washed), isolate food and drinking water from possible contact with the agent.
• Carry out a thorough wet cleaning of the entire room, wipe all surfaces from dust, get rid of debris, organize free access for the instructor-disinfector to all rooms of the treatment object and to all pieces of furniture.
• If treatment is carried out for bedbugs, it is necessary to remove all bed linen for subsequent washing, prepare furniture items for processing, disassemble furniture items infected with bedbugs as much as possible in order to thoroughly process their internal surfaces, move them away from the walls where possible.
• When handling fleas, thoroughly wash all animal bedding (if any).
• When processing, it is necessary to remove pets, birds, aquarium fish from the premises.
• At the time of treatment, no one should be in the room, except for the instructor-disinfector conducting the treatment and the customer's representative (the instructor-disinfectant has a protective mask with him and provides it to the customer's representative for safe breathing).
• After processing, you must leave the room.
• The minimum time after which you can use the treated room again is 1 hour when processing microencapsulated drugs, the optimal time is 8-12 and 24 hours (depending on the drugs used). Therefore, when determining the processing time, calculate everything so that you can leave the room after processing for the maximum possible time for you and your loved ones.
• Premises treated with the product cannot be used before cleaning, which is carried out no later than 3 hours before using the facility for its intended purpose.
• After you return to the room, it is necessary to ventilate all treated rooms for at least 30 minutes, thoroughly wipe tables and other surfaces, using rubber gloves, with a damp cloth with a soda solution (30-50 g of soda ash per 1 liter of water). But you should not carry out a complete cleaning of the room in all hard-to-reach places, since in this case you will wash off or sweep away most of the applied preparation, which can lead to incomplete death of insects and the recurrence of their re-spread.

Where to look first

The bug is an ectoparasite, it feeds on the blood of humans and warm-blooded animals. The insect usually settles close to the food source, is nocturnal, so the ideal habitat for it is a bed.

The best time to see is early in the morning from 3 to 5 am, when bedbug activity is at its peak. Insects move very quickly, so when you turn on the lights abruptly at night, you need to watch carefully to notice where they are headed.

If it is not possible to catch bedbugs "at the crime scene", it is worth conducting an inspection during the day. First of all, the following places are examined:

1. Mattress. The underside is a secluded place where insects feel safe.In addition, they take root in the fabric sheathing, violating its integrity. On a white mattress, both adults and larvae, waste products are clearly visible.
2. Spring block. Pests here are in close proximity to humans, but are invisible to them, which makes this place an ideal hideout.
3. Bed frame. There are many bends, cracks, holes and grooves in the wooden structure where bloodsuckers can hide. Iron frames for bedbugs are not so attractive, but even here they can find loopholes for themselves.
4. Sofa. If this piece of furniture is used as a berth, then the following are carefully checked: backrest, side panels, folds of fabric, armrests, bottom and box for storing linen. It is important to inspect places that are hard to reach for humans - this is where the highest chance of meeting bedbugs is.