You’re noticing little bites on your body when you wake up. There seems to be small black marks on your sheets, and you swear you saw something small moving one night. Don’t worry you’re not going crazy; but you may have bed bugs.
Bed bugs are notorious for overstaying their welcome, but there are ways to effectively get rid of them. A professional exterminator can kill bed bugs with heat and eliminate the problem in a matter of a few hours. Knowing how long the infestation has been there and common patterns of your bed bugs will help the exterminator figure out the severity of the infestation.
We’ve put together a guide to help you with a bed bug extermination timeline and how heat treatment can take care of the problem in just a day.
With Bedbug Infestations Size Matters
If the bed bug infestation is small, then a professional exterminator can usually determine how long they’ve been there. If it is large, then it becomes more difficult.
You’re dealing with a large population, potential earlier treatments, multiple entry points, etc. Bed bugs are nasty insects that can proliferate like crazy. It’s difficult to determine a large-scale infestation timeline through visual observation only.
It’s best to simply agree they’ve been there for months or even years and it’s time to get rid of them.
With smaller infestations, it’s much easier to determine how long they’ve been there. In many cases, this is important to determine if the bed bugs arrived after a certain person visited, after buying a new mattress or sheets, etc.
If aunt Matilda brought bed bugs into your home, It might be wise to let her stay at a hotel until she figures out her own bed bug problem. The reality is there is a stigma associated with bed bugs and people don’t like to talk about it. They may be hesitant to call an exterminator because of that, but the longer the infestation exists the more bugs you’ll be dealing with.
Determining Timeline for Small Infestations
A trained professional can examine the evidence and usually get a good idea of when they arrived and how many there are. Fecal matter is one of the most obvious signs of an infestation, but can they help determine age?
They can be used for generalities, but nothing specific. Bed bugs only create fecal matter when they feed. If they don’t feed regularly, then they don’t produce much fecal matter. If there is little fecal matter, then it means either they don’t feed often, they haven’t been there long, or there isn’t that many.
The same goes for large amounts of fecal matter. It could mean a lengthy and large infestation or regular feeding.
There are a few ways to determine how long an infestation has been going on. When bed bugs molt, they leave behind dead skin castings. For example, if skin castings from bed bugs are present around a mattress, you can usually assume the infestation has been going on for a few weeks.
Also looking at the number of adult bed bugs around an area to determine a timeline can help estimate the severity of the issue. It takes about seven weeks for a bed bug to mature from egg to adult. If there are little to no adults, then the infestation happened within the last seven weeks.
An exterminator could possibly check and determine when the eggs were laid. The assumptions being made are there were only a small number of bugs at the start and new bugs weren’t introduced.
Given all this information provides some insight to the severity of your infestation, however whether you have
Kill Bedbugs With Heat
Now that we’ve provided some insight on how long the infestation began, it’s time to get rid of them for good with bed bug treatment. Bed bugs rarely go more than a few feet from their meal and are most commonly found on mattresses, box springs, bedspreads, and even your clothes.
You could find them in your shoes, in the carpet, and anything else you might own.
A heatbox is a machine that holds small objects such as clothing, shoes, and other small to medium size items that may be infested with bed bugs.This box heats the items to a temperature above 122 degrees, which is the lethal limit for a bed bug. The hot box will kill all bed bugs at any stage of their life.
It’s important that only approved items go into the hot box. If not, then it could cause a fire. If the hotbox is gas or propane-fueled, then there must be adequate ventilation as well.
For box springs, mattresses and bed frames, walls, and anything else in your house, heat treatment by large furnaces that an exterminator brings in are most effective. The exterminator will have the furnaces heat your house to a lethal temperature for bed bugs, killing them all, no matter what stage of life they are in.
Placing clothing into a hot clothes dryer can also kill bed bugs that are clung onto them.
Home Treatment of Bed Bugs
A professional exterminator can do a whole house or whole room heat treatment to eliminate the bed bugs. They use equipment that gets everything in the room from the furniture to the cracks and the crevices to more than 117 degrees fahrenheit.
This effectively kills the bed bugs in all stages. The exterminator may follow up on the home heat treatment with pesticides to really make sure all of these pests are dealt with. The heat will do a great job of getting rid of the bed bugs, but a combination of the two should allow for a peaceful and bed bug-free home guaranteed.
Keeping Them out
Killing all the bed bugs during an infestation doesn’t matter much if they come back again. Therefore, it’s important to determine why and how the infestation occurred. If they are coming in from outside the treated room, they will return.
Sleep Well Bed Bug-Free
Soon you can finally rest easy knowing your bedroom is free of the bed bug menace. Killing bed bugs with heat ensures that they won’t be coming back. Don’t risk your home and health by letting the infestation continue.
If you are ready to get your bed bugs dealt with or need help identifying them, give us a call at 208-957-5511 or visit our site for more information.