How to get rid of bed bugs (Bites, Symptoms, Treatment)

Bedbugs are very small, brown color that suck blood of animals and humans. It’s size is around 5-7 mm. oval shaped. When feeding their body become swell with blood color. These bugs do not fly they just move quickly from places to places. Female bed bugs can lay hundreds of eggs through their life and it’s eggs size is like dust, which will make it harder for you to get rid of them. Here are the bed bugs pictures.

Let’s prepare yourself for a battle with bed bugs.

• Find out which rooms are infested. It is likely to be your bedrooms since they are the principal locations for bed bugs. However, any room in the house may be infested with bed bugs especially if anyone sleep in that room. One more popular place for them is living rooms with sofas and sofa beds.
• Keep your bed.  It’s not necessary to throw away your beds or bedding. We all know It is expensive to replace them and chances are: any new mattresses, box springs or beds you bring will also be infested if you don’t kill them all first. Keep the money to replace a bed, and spend them on hiring a professional is a better idea. (just in case you failed and want to hire them.)
• Sleep on the same bed. This is very important since they are following you. They need food, so if you keep switching where you sleep, they will follow and your house will be infested all over. Sleep where you usually sleep to reduce the risk of spreading them into multiple rooms.
• But keep your bed from the rest of the house.  Place your bed away from the wall so they can’t climb up the wall and creep on your bed. And also use bed bug interceptors under all feet of the bed frame to keep bed bugs off your bed while you are sleeping.

Bed bug interceptors can be bought at amazon.com

Now, after preparing yourself, lets know where you should seek for them then select the way to kill them and then how to maintain and prevent.

Where do bed bugs hide?

Bed bugs usually come in your home through clothing, luggage, 2nd hand beds and couches or furniture. You usually can’t spot them since they are really small and their color make it harder to detect. They don’t have nest but love hiding in tiny spaces together. The very first place they will hide usually are mattresses, bed frames, box springs, headboards…the easy places that they will wait for the night to come and suck your blood.
However, from time to time, they will be all over the places. Your entire bedroom will be filled with bed bugs or even your living room will also be infected.
This is the lists where bed bugs hide. Seek and Destroy accordingly.

1. Chairs and couches seams

2. Curtains folds.
3. Where materials meet and form a gap.
4. Drawer joints.
5. Bed frames and head board.
6. Alarm clock. Yes. Your alarm clock.
7. Pipes (drain, water, electrical conduits)

8. At the junction of wall and ceiling.
9. Under loose wall paper or wall hangings.
10. In electrical receptacles/appliances.
11. Window frame

This is their basic hiding places. Go get them.

How to kill bed bugs

Now that you’ve found them. It’s time to kill.

Below are the easy ways to kill bed bugs. You might have to do all of these since they are often survive from single method. And a few of them can reborn a new wave. First of all, please make sure that the methods you use are safe and legal. Many methods on the internet are not legal and also ineffective and harmful.

What’s not legal

• Using a pesticide in a way that doesn’t follow the label
• Mixing pesticides or ingredients together, this can be harmful and will not likely to work.
• Food-grade diatomaceous earth – this can harm you when you breathe it in. There are another version of diatomaceous earth with different size of diatoms, which reduces the hazard.
• Rubbing alcohol – I actually like to use this method but the compound vaporizes very quickly. It also is flammable and has caused countless house fires when used as a bed bugs control.

Now move on to how to kill bed bugs.

• Put all your affected items in bag and wash and dry them on hot setting. All linen, mattress covers, cloth, leather bags etc. Wash and dry them with highest heat possible. Heat will kill bed bugs. If there are something that can’t be washed or discarded then put them in a black plastic bag and lay it on sunny area. Make sure the temperature is 115°F/46.1ºC minimum. Or just use bed bugs spray and sealed the bag for a few months.
• After washing don’t just put them back to their places yet. Let them outside of the infested room and use hot steam to kill bed bugs and eggs. You can try a typical steam cleaner or a vapor steam cleaners (it is significantly hotter than a steam cleaner with less water vapor…around < 5% but a lot more expensive.) The McCulloch Mc1275 has a Nozzle temperately of 220 F. 115F is enough to kill Bed Bugs, however, you need to steam that area for about 10 minutes. With the MC1275, the area needs to be steamed for about 15 seconds to kill bed bugs on contact. There is not such thing as overkill….just kill them all.

• After using hot steam wait for the humidity to go down first and you will then need to use vacuum cleaner to clean all the area. Don’t forget to change vacuum head to a small one for cracks and crevices. Vacuum your house from wall to wall and pay particular attention to seams. If your vacuum is full then sealed it in trash bag.

• Then find all cracks and crevices, this is where bed bugs are hiding and usually survive from heat treatment and vacuum that we use.

• Spray insecticide into these cracks to kill them, of course their eggs won’t be affected but we will then close the gap so even the eggs hatched, they will not be able to get out. Also repeat insecticide applications if you can still find bed bugs two weeks after the first war. It is unlikely that you will find all their hiding places at the first time, and their hidden eggs may have hatched.
• When using insecticide you should look for EPA-registered pesticides and bed bugs must be listed on the label. You can use foggers too, but please be careful because it can harm your health or cause a fire/explosion. And since this is a broadcast spraying action using this alone will absolutely not work, the bugs that hide in cracks and crevices will survive.

• Use plaster to close the gap, this will make sure the bugs can’t get out and will be killed with insecticide we sprayed.

• For more information about closing the cracks and crevices you can try visit here. (Actually it is quite easy but if you need detailed processes just click the link.)
• Consider using pesticides with different modes of action if it is needed. Desiccants or drying agents can be very effective.They work by dehydrating bugs. This way the bug stand no chance since they can’t develop any resistance to it. However, desiccants can take up to months to see result. And of course don’t let your pets eat it.

Desiccants like Silica gel must be grinded, if not it won’t work.

• If all the above does not work you may need to hire professional pest control firm. They have a lot of experiences including where to find bugs, more tools etc.

How to prevent bed bugs

Now let’s assume you have kill all of them already. We gonna take another step of how to prevent them from coming back.

1. Beware of the second hand furniture. You must examine them thoroughly before buying. Bed bugs love furniture and you know it.

2. If you happen to live in apartment or condominium, best practice is to alert the property manager. Together with a coordination of bed bug control. In this case a pest control company is usually needed. Bed bugs always move from apartment to apartment, many people are not aware of that.

3.  When traveling, be sure to check for sign of bed bugs. They can hide in your luggage and travel back with you to your house.

Bed Bugs Bites and Symptoms

It is common if your room is infested with bed bugs and you get bitten by them. This will usually happen at night and you won’t feel anything until morning and you see several welts and blood specks on bedding. The first time you get bitten you won’t feel itch right away. It usually takes a few days to feel intense itch. However, if you repeatedly get bitten, you will become more sensitive to bed bugs bite and it will only takes seconds to feel itch.

Life threatening & Serious reactions to bedbug bites

If you have following reactions/symptoms please seek immediate medical care.

• Irregular heartbeat.
• Swollen tongue.
• Anemia (it’s rare, but numerous bed bugs bites will cause this)
• Difficult breathing.
• Have large blisters.
• Fever.
• Have infection from scratching.
• Feeling very sick.

Bed Bugs Treatment After You Get Bitten

At-home treatment
If there are no signs of an infection or a serious reaction on you, the bites often can be treated at home. To treat them just wash the bites with soap and water. This will help preventing a skin infection and help reducing itchiness.If you have skin lesions and you are unsure of what is the cause you may want to seek medical care, but medical treatment is usually not needed for bed bug bites. You can purchase over-the-counter antihistamine pills or creams (diphenhydramine) ,which used for the itching, or Corticosteroid creams (hydrocortisone) to apply to the affected area.

However, if the secondary bacterial skin infection really develops, you may want to get some prescribed antibiotic ointment or oral antibiotic from health care professional. Rarely, in extreme cases of systemic allergic reactions, you may need to get injections of epinephrine, antihistamines, and corticosteroids may be administered. In this rare case, follow up with health care professional is necessary. Bedbug bites usually heal and go away within a week or two.