· by Michael Blair, Nashville's Pest Control
Bed bugs have nothing to do with how clean a house is. They come home in a suitcase from a hotel, in a used couch, in a visiting relative’s bag, and once they are in a bedroom they feed at night, hide by day and multiply. Nashville, with its hotels, short-term rentals and constant traffic of visitors and movers, has as many as any city. The reason they are hard to get rid of is not that they are tough; it is that they hide in places a spray never reaches, and a treatment that misses a few eggs starts the problem over.
Confirming what you have
Bites alone do not confirm bed bugs; they look like many other bites and some people do not react at all. The evidence is physical: small dark spots of digested blood on sheets and mattress seams, shed skins, tiny pale eggs in seams and crevices, and the insects themselves, flat, brown and about the size of an apple seed, in the mattress piping, the box spring, the bed frame joints and behind the headboard.
Strip the bed and check the seams and the frame with a flashlight. Check the nightstand drawers, the baseboard behind the bed and the edge of the carpet. If you find them in one room, assume the adjacent rooms until proven otherwise. A pest company can confirm with a visual inspection, and some use trained dogs for large or ambiguous cases.
Why home treatment mostly fails
The aerosol foggers sold for bed bugs drive them deeper into walls and furniture and do not reach the eggs. Repeated use of consumer pyrethroid sprays has produced widespread resistance. Throwing out the mattress moves the problem, since the bugs are also in the frame, the baseboards and the nightstand, and a mattress left at the curb infests whoever picks it up.
What does work at home is supportive: heat. Bed bugs and their eggs die at temperatures a clothes dryer reaches, so bedding, clothing and anything fabric goes through a hot dryer cycle and into sealed bags. Encasements on the mattress and box spring trap what is inside and remove the hiding places. Vacuuming seams and crevices removes some. None of it clears a room on its own.
- Do not fog, and do not spray consumer pyrethroids
- Dry all fabrics hot and bag them sealed
- Encase the mattress and box spring
- Do not move furniture to other rooms
Professional treatment: heat or chemical
Whole-room heat treatment raises the room to a temperature lethal to bed bugs and eggs and holds it for hours, with fans to push heat into furniture and wall voids. It is a single-day treatment that reaches everywhere, including inside upholstery, and it leaves no residue. It needs preparation, since some items cannot take the heat, and it has no lasting effect, so a reintroduction the following week starts over.
Chemical treatment uses professional products in rotation, applied to cracks, seams, frames and voids, in two or three visits spaced to catch nymphs hatching from eggs the first round missed. It leaves a residual that keeps working. Many companies combine them: heat for the knockdown, a residual for the weeks after. Either way, the treatment is only as good as the preparation.
What the homeowner has to do
The company will give a preparation list, and following it is not optional. Clutter is where bed bugs hide and where treatment cannot reach; the room has to be cleared to the point where every surface is accessible. Fabrics have to be dried and bagged before treatment and kept bagged until the treatment is confirmed to have worked. Furniture has to be pulled from walls. Items that leave the room can carry bugs with them, so nothing leaves unbagged.
Afterward, keep interceptor cups under the bed legs to catch any survivors and prove the room is clear, keep the encasements on, and know where the bugs came from so they do not come back. Inspect the luggage after every trip, and leave used upholstered furniture alone.