Bed Bugs: Treatment & Control Methods
Creating An Integrated Bed Bug Treatment Strategy For Your Home
Bed bugs have small, flat bodies that can fit almost anywhere. One New York contractor found more than 250 bed bugs in a package of kitchen sponges!
This can make them difficult to hunt down, and hard to completely eliminate. A comprehensive effort is needed for reliable control of infestations.
When it comes to pests that can infest your home, the bed bug is just about as bad as they get.
These creatures are quiet, stealthy, hard to find, and produce eggs almost nonstop. They're durable, persistent, and they quickly become resistant to even the most potent pesticides, and they're almost twice as resistant to radiation as cockroaches.
Do-It-Yourself Extermination?
Pest control professionals all over the world warm homeowners about the risks involved with do-it-yourself solutions for bed bug control.
Because bed bugs are so resistant to pesticides, homeowners place themselves at personal risk when applying enough pesticides to kill them.
A study by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention have documented 111 cases in seven states where people have become ill as a result of an amateur attempt to combat a bed bug population.
27% of these cases resulted in a moderate to severe illness, including the death of a woman in North Carolina.
The North American Pest Control Alliance (NAPCA) can connect you with a locally owned and operated pest control company in your area that will provide you with a reliable, long-term solution for any pest infestation you may have in your home.
NAPCA members provide pest control quotes for all homeowners within their service area. Whether you're interesting in controlling bed bugs, cockroaches, termites, rodents, or any other pests, we are the contractors for you!
Bed Bug Treatment Methods
Successful pest control experts use a thorough, integrated approach to control bed bugs that includes several different techniques. A minimum of two to three visits will be needed to ensure that bed bugs in all stages of their life cycle -- from egg to nymph to adult -- have been eliminated.
Your NAPCA Pest Control Professional will have a wide variety of tools and techniques available to determine that all specimens have been eliminated, including on-the-spot searches, traps, and in some cases, even trained bed-bug-sniffing dogs. More grass-root efforts )such as bed-bug-proof mattress covers) are also available to be employed.
Likewise, they will have a full arsenal of bed-bug-fighting weaponry, including the following:
Pesticides
Even during the early 20th century, when highly toxic pesticides were on the market, these chemicals proved to be limited in their ability to provide a complete extermination of bed bugs. In the past, pesticides such as DDT were beginning to prove less and less effective against these pets, as their resilience built up over time.
Now that bed bugs are reemerging, their ability to adapt and to build up resistance to pesticides remains. A poison that is effective against one strain of bed bugs may prove to be drastically less effective against a different colony.
This makes it hard to predict how many bed bugs have survived a pesticide application. We recommend using pesticides as one piece of a larger pest management plan.
Manual Removal Of Bed Bugs
While vacuuming is never a stand-alone treatment, it is effective for removing the bulk of adult and nymph-stage bed bugs, and is a good start for eliminating a pest infestation in the home.
However, vacuuming is an imperfect technique for eliminating bed bug eggs, which are "glued" in place by the egg-laying females.
If you have an infestation in your home, it's important that the vacuuming is left to the certified professional treating your home. Improper vacuuming removal techniques can actually cause a bed bug infestation to scatter and spread out, making them much more difficult to track down and remove.
Heat/Cold Treatments
If bed bugs have one weakness, it's temperature. Bed bugs can be killed by freezing, as well as by temperatures in excess of 122°F (50°C).
Removable items can be brought into treatment facilities (or simply washed with hot water) to clean out bed bugs.
Carpets, couches, mattresses, and fabric surfaces can be treated with a slow steam treatment, preferably with a wide tip, so that the bugs aren't knocked away by the blasts of steam before the heat hills them.
Your bedbug control expert may also bring along a mobile oven or heater along to sterilize clothes and other personal belongings.
Chemically Treated Surfaces
Some pest control specialists will use poison dusts and similar materials to treat surfaces. This is thought to kill bedbugs slowly, as they continue to walk along the surfaces.
However, it takes bed bugs a long time to pick up a fatal dose from a treated surface -- and even longer if the surface is a porous one such as is found on a bed, carpet, or cloth furniture.
Additionally, many pest control professionals are reluctant to apply poisons of any kind in many of the areas where bed bugs are common, as these also tend to be places where occupants of the home are likely to home in direct contact with the poison dust.
We Provide Professional Bed Bug Treatments!
Bed bugs are quite possibly the most persistent and resilient pests in the industry to properly control. If your home has an infestation, your best bet is to hire a professional to eliminate the infestation as soon as it's discovered.
Your local NAPCA professional can work with you to provide a long-term, reliable solution for any bed bug issues your home may have. Our goal is to provide you with
Each NAPCA specialist provides local homeowners with an on-site pest control quote. Your estimate includes an on-site inspection, a consultation where we answer all your questions, and a customized cost quote.
