Most people assume that having bed bugs would be painfully obvious. You’d be able to see them crawling around, you’d find their droppings on your sheets and mattress, and you’d feel the awful, itching rash their bites can cause, right? Well, in established infestations, all of these may be true. But in the early stages of an infestation, when treatment is easier and more cost-effective, bed bugs are hard to detect. They are often overlooked or mistaken for something else entirely. Unfortunately, when that happens, the bed bugs have the opportunity to colonize and reproduce into an established infestation, which is much more damaging and costly to treat.
Look Before You Suspect Bed Bugs
The best way to catch a bed bug infestation at the beginning is to periodically check for them. The sooner you identify bed bugs in your home, the easier and less costly the treatment will be. Whenever you clean your bedding or stay in a new bed away from home, check for:
- Reddish brown spots on the sheets or mattress that are left behind when a bed bug is squashed by weight.
- Darker brown or black dots that look like marker ink spots, which is what bed bug droppings look like.
- Small whitish remnants of eggshells that may look like tiny grains of rice.
- Yellowish dried skins that have been shed by the bed bugs as they grow.
- Live, moving bed bugs.
Be sure to look along the seams, piping, and tags on the mattress and box spring because that is where bed bugs are known to hide when they aren’t feeding.
Are Bed Bugs Feeding On Your Blood?
In most cases, people experience flat or raised red bumps that can be swollen, itchy, or infected. Bed bug bites usually occur on exposed skin, like the neck, arms, legs, face, and shoulders. They can be arranged in small groups or in lines, and in cases of allergic reaction, can merge together to form larger, red area similar to hives. There are many other conditions that have similar symptoms to bed bug bites, so they are ignored or mistaken for something else for too long, giving the bed bug colony more time to grow. If you experience any of the above symptoms, visit a doctor for a diagnosis as soon as possible to help eliminate the bed bugs early.
Detecting – and eliminating- Bed Bugs With Our Bed Bug Preventive Warranty
Because we know how imperative it is to stop an infestation at the earliest stage, we’ve developed a Bed Bug Preventive Warranty that not only detects the beginning of a bed bug infestation with interceptor traps but uses a combination of other tools that helps to stop it from growing. Our professional technicians also will caulk and seal cracks and crevices to close potential harborage areas where bed bugs could hide, giving bed bugs fewer chances to colonize. Let us help you detect any bed bugs in your home and stop them in their tracks before you’re dealing with an expensive, destructive bed bug infestation.