How To Quickly & Easily Get Bed Bugs Out
Some of the worst pests to have in your home are bed bugs, Cimicidea (scientifically speaking, pfft), but we’ll tell you how to get rid of them. To be out front, we do not recommend trying to kill bed bugs yourself; even hiring a different extermination company, which hurts, will be better than doing it yourself. The reason is that these things are so infestive and have many survival tricks. We’ll go through these tricks and how a proper treatment can ensure getting rid of bedbugs for good.
First, we must admire their resilience and how they made it through all these ages. “Cimicids appeared in the fossil record in the Cretaceous period.” Wikipedia. “Bed bugs have been a household pest issue for more than 3,300 years!” pestworld.org. So, If you call someone and they tell you not to worry about it, and they can get rid of bed bugs in one day, no preparation needed, think twice.
Imagine sitting on a friend’s couch, the bus, a movie theater recliner, or a restaurant chair for around 15 minutes. A bed bug senses your body heat if you’re close enough or your exhaled CO2 if you’re a bit further. It crawls out of its hiding place and finds its way to your skin, where it starts to suck on your blood. Once you start moving, bed bugs usually stop feeding and try to hide for a while. If your movement results in you returning home, the bed bug cannot get off you and back to its hiding spot. They’ll wait for a chance to do so when you’re sitting or lying at home. Only then will they feel safe to crawl into a new hiding spot in your home.
Why Bed Bugs Are So Hard to Kill
This horror story mentioned three Survival tricks of bed bugs, a sense of body heat, a sense of CO2, and hiding in cracks, crevices, and seams of furniture, mattresses, and, most annoyingly, your clothes. But it misses one critical trick. Bed bugs can go without feeding for 20 to 400 days, depending on temperature and humidity. “Older stages of nymphs can survive longer without feeding than younger ones, and adults have survived without food for more than 400 days in the laboratory at low temperatures. Adults may live up to one year or more, and there can be up to four successive generations per year.” UC IPM.
There you have it. Now we know what we’re up against. It is time to learn how to kill bed bugs. For starters, if your method is not 100% effective, do not attempt it because that would only cause bed bugs to spread and become harder to control and easier to spread. You might have heard of wounded animals being more vicious than their non-irritated counterparts. So get all the cards in order before initiating your plan. What cards would we use?
How Exterminators Kill bed Bugs
To get rid of Bed Bugs, we would use a combination of
1) apply a full-fledged chemical treatment that covers baseboards, mattresses, couches, and other cracks and crevisses where bed bugs might hide,
2) use three different chemicals to a) kill them immediately and flush them out of their hiding spots, b) break their breeding cycle, and c) have residual active barriers lasting up to 6 months.
3) ask you to prepare the treatment by washing and drying all clothes and bedding, amongst other preparation guidelines we listed on our FAQ Page where you can find the self estimating formula.
4) treat twice for good measure.
As you can see, it IS a process, but it’s doable. If you want to get rid of Bed Bugs, follow these instructions or call us. We’d be happy to help. Our Bed Bugs Extermination Service comes with 6 months guarantee.
