Bed Bugs

The past four years we have seen a steady increase of bed bugs in homes, apartments, college dorm rooms and hotels. These bed bugs will become a huge problem for everyone unless we can get people educated about what to look for and the proper treatment to eradicate them. This is just a small list of the areas that we most commonly find bed bugs in and around beds, bed frames, carpets, night stands, baseboards, clothing, curtains, and luggage. Most cases we are dealing with have come from people traveling or their kids have come home from college. The biggest misconception is that bed bugs have something to do with how clean a person keeps their home and this couldn't be farther from the truth. These little pests will catch a ride with anyone, at anytime and come home with you.

Bed bugs are about the size of small seeds ranging from 1/6th-1/8 of an inch and are very flat in shape. Bed bugs feed mostly at night within an hour of dawn and they're drawn to carbon dioxide and our body heat. Their food source is blood and they generally feed every 5-10 days if they have a constant host. One thing you can't do is wait them out by not using a room as they will survive dormant for up to a year or longer without feeding. They will lay up to five eggs per day and hundreds in their lifetime of 6-9 months on average. Bed bug bites can either be in a straight line or sporadic in nature and will itch like a mosquito bite.

The bed bug is like no other pest that we deal with and the treatment is very specific. Abide Pest Control will use a spray application using pyrethrums. The most important part of the treatment is to be absolutely meticulous when you go around bed frames, box springs and the seams of the mattress. We will generally go around these areas two times to make sure that we have found all the bed bugs as you have learned they are quite small. Cracks in the bed frame are very susceptible and can house many of the little critters. We can't express enough how imperative it is to go over every square inch of the bedding and frame to make sure you have found them all. Next depending on how long you have had them, we will now treat the living room furniture. It is not necessary to treat all the carpeted areas unless you have had bed bugs for many months and have a more severe infestation.

There are no long term guarantees with bed bugs because the infestations can reoccur again and again if a person goes back to an infested area and brings more of them home.