Bed bugs are on the rise. Did you know that you can find them in just about every place where you find people? That means hotels, hospitals, homes, offices, schools, stores and even public transportation. Bed bugs attack you while you sleep and leave you an itchy welt as a gift. As their numbers increase, you will soon be covered in itchy welts.
The Life Cycle of the Bed Bug
It all starts when you bring a bed bug home. Once inside your house, the find a place to hide near your bed. A female can up live up to a year and lay five eggs each day. Her eggs are hard to see, because they are a bit bigger than a grain of salt. Over her lifetime, she can potentially lay 500 eggs. Each one of those eggs contains a new bed bug. Once hatched it move through five stages until 21 days later it becomes a new hungry adult. If you have never seen a bed bug, they are about the size of an apple seed and exhibit a yellowish brown to reddish brown coloring. If are getting bit each night, you can forget moving to a new room, bed bugs will crawl up to 100 feet in search of food. If you move out, it better be for a long time, bed bugs can live for five weeks without feeding.
Where Do Bed Bugs Live?
Infestations are hard to detect. During the day, bed bugs love to hide. They are most active during the middle of the night, when you are fast asleep. Bed bugs love to gather in rooms where you sleep. If you imagine all of the places in your bedroom where you could hide an apple seed, you begin to realize how many places a bed bug could hide. Bed bugs love clutter, if you have a bunch of stuff under your bed and in your room, they will hide in it. The love box springs, bed frames, nightstands, electric outlets, cracks, furniture and especially your mattress.
Signs of an Infestation
Even though bed bugs love to hide, they leave signs. You might notice a sweet musty smell in your bedroom. A second sign are the bites. They are itchy and red, and will often occur in lines or clusters. If you are getting new bites each night, you might have bed bugs. They are also messy eaters. While drinking your blood, they will defecate. You will begin to notice reddish brown spots in your sheets and on your pajamas. The last sign are the bed bugs themselves. When their numbers increase, their hiding places become crowded and you might begin seeing them during the day.
How Pointe Pest Control Treats Infestations
We employ Pest Management Professionals. Each one is licensed and certified to eradicate bed bugs. Last year alone, we effectively treated over 1500 infestations. We have multiple methods at our disposal. One method for severe infestations is our heat treatment. Bed bugs and their eggs die when temperatures reach 122 degrees. We heat your home up to 135 to 145 degrees to make certain that the heat saturates every hiding place in your home. For smaller infestations, we use insecticides that are engineered to control bed bugs. When you want the best in bed bug control, you need Pointe Pest Control.
