- Early detection is key
Say Good Bye to Bed Bugs
It can happen to anyone. Bed Bugs are not a sign of a dirty house, so do not be so hard on your self. I tell my clients to look at bedbug infestation as an opportunity to clear excess clutter out of your life and simplify. Bed Bugs can be considered a cultural problem in the US because we have accumulated so much stuff and bed bugs travel & hide in your stuff. Along with the economic downturn and credit crunch, perhaps we can use this as an opportunity to focus less on material items and more on quality of relationships and life. A fact is that the less you have in your house, the easier it is to detect and exterminate bed bugs. Some of the procedures followed here will also assist in control of rodents and other insects and will cut down on allergens in your home. First I will tell you how to avoid them and exterminate them. Afterwards is who they are, what they look like, where they come from, information about their bites and home remedies to help your bites.
This is a mini bed bug manifest. If you do not want to become an expert in bed bugs and just want them exterminated or your do it yourself bedbug extermination failed call us at 347 723 1825 and we will provide you with a proposal for elimination. Severe infestations are best handled by a professional. Our environmental commercial abatement & janitorial division services provides Extermination, Lead Abatement, Asbestos Abatement, Mold Remediation, Flood & Fire Restoration, Air Quality testing and Janitorial to include carpet, fabric and cleaning of hardwood & tile flooring. We are licensed by US EPA, NYC DEP, and NYS DOL and serve residences & commercial buildings in the tri state area.
How To Get Rid Of Bed Bugs
Before spraying your home with harmful insecticides, especially if you have kids, try the US EPA approach called Integrated Pest Management (IPM). IPM is an effective and environmentally sensitive approach to pest management that relies on a combination of common sense practices. Today we also call this a Green practice. IPM programs use current, comprehensive information on the life cycles of pests, which you will find below and their interaction with the environment. This information, in combination with available pest control methods, is used to manage bed bug infestation and damage by the most economical means, and with the least possible hazard to people, property, and the environment. IPM is not a single pest control method but, rather, a series of pest management evaluations, decisions and controls.
Important items in bed bug extermination are prevention, knowledge and early detection. Once a bed bugs or several bed bugs come into your home it can take several weeks before they start multiplying exponentially. Once they start multiplying exponentially they will harbor in many more, harder to exterminate places. Be conscious of bites, fecal spots on sheets and your neighbor’s cleanliness. Bed bugs will come through the electrical outlets and moldings, so if you live or work in an attached house, apartment commercial building you can get infested from your neighbors.
Bed Bug Prevention: It is important to carefully inspect clothing and baggage of travelers, and may I stress being on the lookout for bed bugs and their tell tale fecal spots. Also, inspect secondhand beds, bedding, and furniture brought into the house. Repetition of process below is important because bed bugs can live for one year without a blood source. In addition the initial process must be repeated every 10 days for 3 times because of the life cycle.
Inspection: The entire room or house should be searched and inspected frequently for indications of bed bugs infestation. Use a good flashlight and check the bed mattresses especially the tucks & along the seams. Bed Bugs often hide in mattresses but they can also harbor in furniture, behind wall coverings, bed frames, mouldings, cracks in walls and floors and behind pictures/paintings. They will crawl and nest inside tiny crevices anywhere indoors, as long as there is a source of human blood. Bed bugs are typically nocturnal insects, they come out to feed at night normally between 2am and dawn when all the lights are out. If you think you have them set the clock for 4am and turn on the lights. There is a good chance they will be walking on your sheets and mattress if present. Change over to light color sheets if you have dark sheets so you can detect them and their fecal spots. Small reddish or brownish fecal spots on one’s linens are often the first sign of bed bugs. These spots are the bed bug’s droppings. Another sign is swelling where you’ve been bitten. Bed bugs hide in the tack strips of the carpets. Carpets hold dust, molds and many other indoor pollutants. If you have them or plan to install them, you must maintain a regularly schedule carpet cleaning schedule by a professional. In General they can be bad for your health especially if not maintained and cleaned properly. It is best to install and maintain hard surfaces in your house to include nail down hardwood flooring and tile.
Sanitation & Cleaning: Good sanitation and hygiene habits will help prevent the infestation of bed bugs, but it might not eliminate them. Sanitation measures include frequently vacuuming the mattress and premises to include the inside of draws & closets, outside of furniture, floors & mouldings. Laundering bedding and clothing in hot water and drying on a high heat setting. Wiping down all hard surfaces with Rubbing Alcohol. Bleach is good to kill bed bugs but toxic to humans especially if used incorrectly. After vacuuming, immediately place the vacuum cleaner bag in a plastic bag, seal tightly, and discard in a container outdoors. This prevents captured bed bugs from escaping into the home. A stiff brush can be used to scrub the mattress seams to dislodge bed bugs and eggs. Since many of our clients have expensive mattresses we clean and covered them with an allergy or bed bug cover. Discarding the mattress is another option, although a new mattress can quickly become infested if bed bugs are still on the premises. Steam cleaning of mattresses generally is not recommended because it is difficult to get rid of excess moisture, which can lead to problems with mold, mildew, house dust mites, etc. Applying pesticides on mattresses is a bad idea because you can poison yourself or your family. After completing the cleaning process be sure the bed is moved away from any walls so that it does not make contact with them. Coating the bed legs with Vaseline for 3 to 5 inches stops bed bugs from crawling up into the bed. Keep the bed covers, blankets and clothes off of the floor. Bed bugs infested bedding materials and cloths will need to be thoroughly cleaned. Wash them in hot water and dry in the dyer on a hot setting or take them to a laundry mat if you don’t want to bed bugs in your washer and dryer. But never use insecticides on materials that would come in contact with your body. Also, if you have pets, be sure to understand the possible affects chemicals may have on them.
Construction: Chaulk cracks at the base of mouldings, plaster cracks in the walls, glue down loose ends of wallpaper or remove it. Taking apart furniture is advised so you get at the source of the bed bugs infestation. Doing this in a garage or outdoors is preferred if possible. In many case if there is major infestation, we discard the box spring and build a temporary one out a melamine until the bed bugs are gone. We like to use Melamine because it is a white plastic like material and if bed bugs return they are easy to iidentify.
Green Extermination: Takes lots of work and it is the safest for your and your families health. Perform the Sanitation & cleaning listed above three times ten days apart. Apply Petroleum Jelly on bed legs and at the top of moldings. Apply Diatomaceous Earth on perimeter of baseboards & spot treat infestation areas with non residual Pyrethrin, a natural insecticides found in daisy-like Chrysanthemum flowers grown and harvested in Kenya, Africa and Austrailia.
Isopropyl (rubbing) alcohol kills bed bugs on-contact. Find the surfaces bed bugs inhabit, including crevices and harborages. Mix the isopropyl alcohol at a 1:1 ratio in a spray bottle with water. Liberally spray the surfaces and crevices and allow to dry naturally. Less water is recommended for smaller areas or areas sensitive to water.
A residential dryer can be effective for killing bed bugs on clothing, bedding materials, stuffed animals, shoes or any other soft articles which are “dryer-safe.” When using the dryer, operate using small to medium size loads and run the dryer on high for at least 15 minutes. Remove the items immediately and seal them in a plastic bag for 24 hours. This will ensure that you kill all of the bed bugs. Important: Please use your own dryer. Do not take the items to a laundromat or community dryer units. It is important to contain the infestations, and traveling with the items will only help spread the bed bugs and contaminate the other locations.
We are now using extreme heat & extreme cold to kill bed bugs. It’s safer and more effective than many of the chemicals traditionally used. We also use steam cleaning for any hard surfaces infested with bed bugs. The proper equipment will heat unpressurized water to above 220-degrees. We spray the infested surfaces with the steam, completely saturating the areas. We than speed dry the surfaces to avoid damage or mold infestation to furniture or other articles.
Extermination with insecticides: Insecticides are not recommended for do it yourself use. Never bomb or fog room because the bed bugs will scatter increasing the territory they claim. Spot extermination based on inspection is best.
Who they are ?
Bedbugs are most often found in hotels, hostels, shelters, and apartment complexes where lots of people come and go. Because bedbugs hide in small crevices, they can hitch a ride into your home on luggage, pets, furniture, clothing, boxes, and other objects. Bedbugs are found worldwide, but are most common in developing countries. Once rare in North America, they are on the rise due, in part, to increases in international travel. The Bed Bug is a persistent little creature. Bed Bugs are more of a nuisance than a health hazard. There is no proof that they spread disease.
Most people find bed bugs (Cimex lectularius) a most disagreeable houseguest. These parasites are usually no more than ¼ inch in length in their adult state and can engorge themselves with human blood in less than 15 minutes causing their bodies to fill to as much as three times its usual size. Fully engorged bed bugs bear little resemblance to their original state and are often thought to be a different insect altogether.
Bed bugs can lay between one and five eggs per day with an incubation period of 10 days in warm weather (slightly longer when cool). These newly hatched bed bugs will require five significant blood feedings to reach adult size. They will molt in between feedings by shedding their exoskeleton. One mature they will begin the process of laying new eggs.
Adult female bedbugs can lay more than 5 eggs per day during their lifetime and the new generation of bed bugs will immediately seek a blood meal and they might be looking at you through hungry compound eyes. When they are finished eating they leave tiny sores to remind you of their midnight binge.
Bed bugs feed on the blood of human beings but can suck blood from other animals as well. Birds and mice are the most common animals. Bed bugs most often feed at nightime when people are asleep. When they feed, they inject a salivary secretion into the wound to prevent coagulation. The fluid can cause a person’s skin to itch and even become swollen. Scratching can cause sores which often become infected. Bed bugs are not known to transmit any human blood-borne pathogens.
An adult bed bug is about 1/5-inch long, oval in shape and flat. They’re generally brown except after sucking blood. Their body then becomes swollen and the color changes to a dark red. Bed bugs like to hide in the cracks and electrical outlets in walls, behind wallpaper, base boards and picture frames, between beds and around the creases of mattresses and in bedding materials. They have a rather pungent odor which is caused by an oil-like liquid they emit. Bed bugs are often carried into houses by clothes, luggage, furniture, and bedding. Or sometimes even by humans.
Bed bugs seek harborage in cracks and crevices. Common harborages in hotel rooms and cruise ship cabins include: folds & creases in bed linens, seams, tufts & under buttons on mattresses, in drapery pleats & hems, beneath loose wallpaper, in headboards, desks, entertainment centers and nightstands, behind base molding in wall-mounted artwork, etc.
Using a flashlight carefully inspect for bed bugs. Search for crawling insects, blood spots, and excrement and/or cast skins. Confirm that suspected insects are bedbugs prior to treatment. Make efficient use of your time by combining inspection with vacuum cleaning. Use a canister vacuum with crevice attachment. Remove mounted artwork from walls. Inspect backside of artwork. Working in conjunction with vacuum tool, brush and vacuum crevices to remove loose dust from artwork and mounting hardware. Using a brush in conjunction with vacuum’s crevice tool to remove dust, cast skin cases loose and bed bugs from cracks and crevices.
Bed Bug Bites ?
The words “bed bugs” are enough to send most of us running with skin all a quiver at the thought of little blood-sucking creatures crawling all over us as we sleep. These little bugs are pests, to be sure, and they can be difficult to get rid of once they have decided to make your house their home, hiding during the daylight hours in cracks and crevasses where they are almost impossible to excise. Because of this, you may not realize right away that bed bugs are the source of the annoying sores on your legs when you wake up in the mornings. Bed bugs are attracted by both warmth and the presence of carbon dioxide, which is what we exhale in breathing. The bugs climb up onto your skin and pierce you with two hollow tubes, one of which injects anti-coagulants and anesthetics. The other tube is used to withdraw your blood, feeding for about five minutes before returning to their hiding places.
There may be a cluster of bites instead of singular ones when you awake, and this is typically caused by disturbing the bugs while they feed, causing them to detach and return to feed momentarily. A well fed bedbug can live anywhere from four to six months, while a dormant one might live without feeding for up to 18 months. The bites can be found just about anywhere on your body, with exposed bits of skin being the preferred feeding ground for the bugs, making your face a target along with arms and legs. The bits cannot be felt at first, but as the anesthetics wear off and the skin begins to react to the injections, the bites can make themselves felt minutes or even hours after the bedbugs have returned to hiding.
If you have bedbugs, your infestation can get worse very quickly since a female bedbug can lay up to five eggs per day, and up to around 500 eggs in her lifetime. Since it takes only five weeks for hatched nymphs to grow to maturity, your problems could expand exponentially within a relatively short period of time, and infestations can be hard to control.
Beg Bug Bites Treatment
We recommend calling your doctor, especially if you see suspect your bites are infected. If you’re not sure, call your doctor or go to the emergency room immediately!
Suggestions for home treatment-
Step 1: Wash skin with soap and hot water.
Step 2: Liberally apply an anesthetic cream or lotion
Step 3: Apply ice to avoid swelling/welting
Repeat every 6-8 hours until symptoms subside.
The History of Bed Bugs ?
Bed bugs have been around for centuries. Documentation reaching as far back as the 17th century has told about infestations of bed bugs. In the United States, bed bugs were very common until about World War II. With the introduction of such pesticides as DDT, a great decrease in infestations occurred. It was not until the last decade that reported cases gave an indication of a possible rise in bed bug infestations.
Authorities believe that the rise in reports can be attributed to the extermination tactics of pest control today. Today, many pest control experts use baiting tactics for in home infestations of such things as ants, roaches, and spiders. These baiting tactics work well for their intended subjects, but since bed bugs are blood feeders, they do not fall for the baiting tricks used. This change in exterminating technique has contributed to the rise in reported bed bug infestations.