Bed bugs are a nightmare, once you get them they can seem to never go away. Some people will still feel like they’re itching even years after they get rid of the pests. The favorite places of bed bugs are areas that are relatively dark and warm, like many areas in your climate controlled home. It’s hard to spot bed bugs and infestations can spread quickly in places like hotels and college dorms and can lead to getting pest control services Melissa TX.
If you don’t want to literally be checking to make sure the bed bugs night every night before you fall asleep, it’s a good idea to try to prevent an infestation from happening. The bedbug problem has gotten so bad in the United States that the EPA released a guide about preventing the annoying critters and the damage that they can cause to your family and home.
What Do They Look Like?
In order to prevent your house from getting infested with bed bugs, you need to start with knowing what the pests look like. Bed bugs are small, really small. They’re only about as big as an apple seed. Their shape is always flat but the males and females look a little bit different than each other. Both sexes of bugs are oval-shaped, but the female is longer than the male who has a more rounded shape. They are brown in color but sometimes can look clear if they haven’t fed much yet. They also have 4 legs and 2 antennae.
It’s important to remember that bed bugs can look quite different depending on what stage they are in their growth. The eggs usually come in clumps of tiny white balls. When bedbugs are young, they are even smaller and look almost white. It’s important to look for both as a few eggs can lead to big problems as you’ll have multiple generations of bugs living in your home.
What Traces Do They Leave?
Since beg bugs mainly move around at night when people are sleeping, the bugs themselves can be relatively hard to find. There are other signs of bed bugs to look for that you are likely to find before you ever even see a bug. Most of these can be checked for while you are changing your bedding, which is something that you should be doing often if you are traveling a lot or spending a lot of time in public places.
Since bed bugs like to live in your bed among other places, you’re likely to crush a few in your sleep. When you do, you’ll find blood stains on your sheets. You can also keep a lookout for the feces that they leave around your home and especially in the creases of your bed. It will look like small dark spots in clusters and at a distance, almost looks like rust. This is also a good time to look for eggs and their casings as they will often be on a different part of the bed as well.
