Bed Bugs Removal
While most pests are a nuisance, bed bugs are the worst. These blood-sucking parasites can easily find a cozy home in your furniture, prompting you to throw it all away. The reddish-brown insect feeds on the blood of humans and other animals. Insects fall into two types based on their source of food. Insects like cockroaches feed on the food we leave, such as bread crumbs, and then you have bed bugs, which feed on human skin and blood.
If you are looking for a professional team to rid your home of a bed bug infestation, contact NYCleaners. We use environmental and human-friendly equipment. Our team has extensive experience in removing bed bug infestations from properties to provide better results than any other technique or method.
What Are Bed Bugs?
Part of the Cimex genus, bed bugs are small in size and feed on blood. In fact, humans are not their only target for a hearty meal; pets aren’t safe either, as bed bugs can suck the blood of cats and dogs as well. Due to their size and speed, bed bugs can easily spread from one place to another. This explains why infestations are so common. You may also find bed bugs in the most crowded locations such as schools, hotels, retail stores, and offices.
Bed Bugs Symptoms
Bites from a bed bug can lead to a rash and itchiness. Scratching the area causes redness and minimal but apparent swelling. You will develop red and round spots resembling the bites of other insects. Since bed bugs usually feed at night and their bites resemble those of other insects, it is hard to tell if it’s a bed bug or another insect. Here are some of the symptoms that you have bed bugs in your house:
- Itchiness
- Red spot on your hands, face, and another visible part of the body.
- The spots may be in cluster or line.
You might develop an allergic reaction with the bite of bed bugs or not react. The allergic reaction may include hives, blisters, and itchiness.
How Can You Recognize the Bed Bugs?
Here are some of the characteristics of bed bugs so you can easily recognize these blood-sucking insects:
- You can see bed bugs with your naked eyes
- The adults are mostly dark brown, but after sucking the blood, it turns red. Young bed bugs are white
- Their speed is similar to an ant’s speed
- Bed bugs do not have jumping or flying capabilities
- Their shape is oval and has four to seven millimeters in length
- When these insects are in a dormant state, it can live for more than one year. However, their normal life span is just five to six months
Here are some characteristics of the eggs of the bed bugs:
- The size of the egg is equaled to a pinhead
- The eggs are white
- Bed bug larvae leave their eggs after 10 to 14 days
- The eggs stay in small and tight spaces and are found in clusters
How to Spot the Bed Bugs
You’re most likely to find bed bugs in high traffic areas where you sleep, such as the bedroom. Here, they come out at night. They live in narrow, dark, and inaccessible areas and avoid light. Here are some clues to spot bed bugs:
1. On Skin
- Bites from bed bugs are similar to those of mosquitoes and can cause severe itchiness.
- When you are sleeping in an infested area without covering your hands, legs, and face, you may experience aligned and clustered bites on the body. However, as time passes, you will encounter bed bugs bites all over your body.
2. On Bed
- You will find black spots on your bedsprings, mattresses, and sheets. These are the feces of bed bugs that can also cause an allergic reaction to some people.
- You may also find dead or alive bed bugs, their eggs, or skin that they shed. All these signs suggest that the bed bugs are somewhere near.
Where do Bed Bugs Hide?
In the beginning, when bed bugs start colonizing, they hide under the bed and couch so that they can easily feed on blood by biting people when they are still. However, once they grow in numbers, they spread out in the bedroom or travel to the other rooms. The following are their favorite hiding spots:
- Bedroom drawers, furniture, and headboards.
- Bottom, seams, bedsprings of the mattress.
- Curtains and carpets
- Door frames, moldings, and window.
- Sofa, sofa covers, chairs, and wheelchairs.
- Suitcases, handbags, backpacks, and clothing.
- Clocks, radios, telephones, and other electronic items
- Books, magazines, and papers.
- Floor, cracks on the walls, and wood.
- Posters, frames, and tapestry
- Baseboard heater and electrical outlets
How the Bed Bugs Spread?
As bed bug infestation increases in a room, they start to travel to the other rooms and even other houses. It’s possible to find bed bugs in the cleanest hotel in the world. Due to their small size and hitchhiking quality, they travel through suitcases to other places and make their tiny hideouts. Here are some of the common ways in which bed bugs spread out:
- Through items that we use daily such as sofas, mattresses, wheelchairs, handbags, clothing
- If you travel to an infested area, bed bugs might crawl on you are lead their way to your house
- Through public or private laundry and other clothing items
- Buying items from secondhand stores or flea markets
- While traveling to different cities and countries, they will take support through your sleeping bags, clothes, and backpacks
- When you buy items from a mart or retail store infested by bed bites, they will climb on your clothes or the items you purchase
Risk Factors of Bed Bugs
Bed bugs stick close to places with plenty of humans so they can access a steady supply of food. They pierce their straw-like tiny mouth part in the skin to start sucking blood. Their saliva works as anesthesia and numbs the area so they can easily suck blood without disturbing you. This explains why you don’t feel the pain for a while after.
Bed bugs can survive a year without food. They have survival skills and travel through various items and people until they reach a comfortable environment. You can find bed bugs in the following places:
- Shelters
- Dorms
- Motels, hostels, and hotels
- Cruise ships
- Apartments
- Cruise ships
- Public and private transportation
Bed bugs can survive pesticides and other chemicals by running out of the area. They travel through stuff and different items without anyone noticing. Hence, they’re prevalent in different areas of the world.
How to Remove Bed Bugs
It can be extremely difficult to get rid of bed bugs on your own. Nonetheless, you can follow these steps to clean your home and keep them from spreading throughout the home:
Step 1: Locating all the Hideouts
If you’re suffering from a small infestation, it’s a bit easier to control the spread. If you wait too long and they begin reproducing, it becomes difficult to get rid of them. On the other hand, when they are in smaller numbers, you will find it challenging to identify their hideouts. Nevertheless, start by searching for bed bugs by looking at all the possible hideouts. Trained dogs can also inspect the house and detect the presence of bedbugs by tracking their smell. As these insects are tiny and can squeeze into small places such as folds of curtains, couches, and mattresses, you have to look in every possible place. Check the list above for all their favorite hiding spots, and make sure you look in those specific areas of your home. If you are still confused about their possible hideouts and methods to get rid of these bugs, contact us for a complete home inspection and elimination of these bugs.
Step 2: Contain the Infestation
Once you locate their hideouts, make sure you eliminate all of them. Remember, a single female bed bug lays 1 to 5 eggs a day. If you did not disrupt their hideout, you might not get rid of them, and they can colonize again.
The first thing that you can do to trap bed bugs is to vacuum them. Use a vacuum cleaner in their possible hiding spots. For instance, vacuum clean your carpets, dresser, electronic devices, bed, and couch. Now throw the content that you collect in a sealed plastic bag. Collect all your clothes, pillowcases, and other items that might contain traces of bed bugs and keep them in sealed plastic bags. Wash and dry these items at a high temperature. If you cannot wash an item, put it in the dryer for 30 minutes.
Step 3: Preparing to Kill Bed Bugs
After cleaning one room and possible hideout, collect all the items that you did not clean in the first step. These include books, drapes, carpets, etc. Try to throw as much stuff as you can, especially things you find under the bed. Avoid shifting items from an infested room to a clean one because even a few bed bugs can colonize your home. Seal all the open areas. Look for the holes in the furniture and seal properly. Then, tape up all the electronic outlets and seal them too. Don’t leave any open area for bed bugs to leave the room. The final step will be moving all your furniture away from the walls so bed bugs do not run for the walls.
Step 4: Killing the Bed Bugs
Cleaning you Home
Sure, you can try many methods to eliminate bed bugs from your home. However, these methods aren’t foolproof. This is often because the sneaky bugs are hard to find. You may require some chemicals to kill the bugs, but first, you need to use heat. Just like most species, bed bugs cannot survive high heat or intense cold. They only survive at the range between 0 degrees and 46 degrees Celsius. Here are some methods you can rely on to eliminate bed bugs:
- Wash your clothes and other bedding items for 30 minutes in hot water. Now, use a dryer at the highest temperature for 30 minutes.
- Place all your items in a black bag and leave them in a closed car with a hot temperature. However, during winter, these bugs will die after three to six months in a sealed bag.
- You can use steamer on your couch and bedding items to kill the bed bugs.
- You can also keep the items in a plastic bag with a seal and freeze them in a freezer for four days.
After cleaning all the bugs, you can create an unfavorable environment for the bugs to survive. This will keep them away from your home. Place a covering on your box spring and mattress. Cover your pillows with bedbug proof coverings. Even the covers’ bugs could not escape and die of hunger, and they cannot lay more eggs.
Using Chemical and Non-Chemical Treatments
You can also use numerous chemicals and non-chemical techniques to keep the bugs from reaching your home. You can search for EPA-registered products that only affect bed bugs. You can use the following chemicals to eliminate the bugs from your home:
- Pyrethrins and pyrethroids
- Pyrroles
- Neonicotinoids
- Desiccants
- Foggers or bug bombs
- Plant oil-based products like EcoRaider and Bed Bug Patrolare
Step 5: Check the Progress
If you want to clear up all the bugs from your home, treatment will take some time. With each session, check for proof of more bugs. You cannot leave any sign to survive bed bugs and check the infected area from time to time for any activity or sign. A way to double-check if you have bed bugs at home is to keep interceptors on the feet of the bed. If bed bugs try to climb the feet of the bed, interceptors will trap them. You need to keep checking the interceptor from time to time for a year.
Step 6: Controlling Infestation
It is hard to get rid of bed bugs. Even if you think that you are in the clear, they might still roam around in your home, hiding in dark and small places. If you find traces of bed bugs again, you need to try another method to clear them.
In this case, contact a professional team to inspect your home and clean out your home. You can contact us for complete inspection and elimination. We have all the resources and techniques to bring a bed bug infestation under control. Our experienced and highly trained bed, bug removal team will go through all the possible hideouts and clean every trace of these bugs.
Why Should You Call Professionals?
It is possible that you might not get rid of bed bugs despite trying numerous strategies. We can provide professional bed bug removal services to control even the worst infestation cases. Trying to get rid of bedbugs on your own can be difficult if you don’t have adequate knowledge about their hideouts or proper equipment to track them. For information on bed bugs and techniques to inspect or remove bugs from your home forever, contact us, the trustworthy pest control professionals.
How to Prevent Bed Bugs?
Below you will find some tips to prevent bed bugs from entering your home:
- Do not keep your luggage and backpack on the floor when you visit a shelter, hostel, hospital, or hotel.
- As you enter the bedroom to stay for the first time, look for signs of bed bugs. If you find any signs, contact the owner immediately.
- Use hypoallergenic covering for your box springs, mattresses, and furniture to prevent bug bugs from reaching your skin.
- Cover yourself thoroughly by wearing full-sleeved shirts and long-legged trousers, so bed bugs do not reach your skin
- Use a bed net, especially to reduce pest infestations. This mostly helps when you are away on an international trip and don’t want to bring a foreign bed bug to your home.
- If you have bought secondhand furniture or a bed, always check it for any signs of bed bugs before bringing the item to your home
- Create an unconditional environment for bed bugs so they cannot survive
Conclusion
Getting rid of bed bugs is not that easy. You need to determine all the possible locations they may be hiding in and eliminate the bugs through deep cleaning. For permanent removal, it’s important to eliminate all signs of them as they can come back rapidly. Once you rid your home of bed bugs, check back for signs for a year.
Whether you’re unsure of where to look for bedbugs in your home or are just tired after trying various methods, contact us and hire a professional team to inspect the property and eliminate a bed bug infestation. We have highly trained and experienced bed bug removing teams. They are aware of all the possible locations where bed bugs can hide. Once they clear up all bed bugs, they will test for the signs several times and help you create a bedbug-free environment.
Submit your review | |
Have been utilizing NYC cleaners for a year now. They checked for termites and now have worked with us on the bedbug’s issue. Incredibly expert and they know "bugs". Incredible work and phenomenal costs.
The professionals at NYC Cleaners are awesome at the cure of bed bugs. They completely inspected our home and effectively-recognized the pervasion. I am highly satisfied & will definitely recommend them anytime & anywhere.
Uneasiness and restless evenings are finished. Everything began when a bed bug was found in the workplace. Not knowing where it came from, we chose not to take any risks and quickly booked a meeting with NYC Cleaners. I didn't wind up having bed bugs and need to say, it was all well awesome.
Outright stars!! Much appreciated folks. NYC cleaners incredibly upbeat and I strongly suggest them if you actually have bed bugs in your property or business. Job well done!!
