Bed bugs have become a real problem recently, with more and more places reporting outbreaks. What can you do to avoid being exposed to these nasty parasites?
If you do get exposed, what can you do to get rid of them (preferably before you bring them home!)?
Well I'm a bit of a sub-expert on this, having worked nine years in the hostelling industry and encountering them as a traveller once in India.
There's a bit of a dirty little secret in the hospitality industry about just how bad the bed bug problem has been for the past few years. Apparently all the big/expensive hotel chains have been having problems - it's not just dirty dives with holes in the wall that are affected.
What are the signs of a bed bug infestation?
What to do if you find bed bugs?
(Sorry for all the exclamation points but a lot of the advice is strong and necessary.)
Would you believe, there's a website called BedBugSigns?
From the site:
It can be hard to tell if you've got them or not, because they are pretty small, only come out for very short periods, and because they are pretty good at hiding. First off, you should look for some key signs.
Waste - Bed bugs create a lot of waste, and that is harder to hide than they are. It can consist of dark spots on your mattress (which can be blood, feces, etc.) or of shed skins, eggs, dead bed bugs, etc. You may find it inside your mattress, in the box springs, or in the linens. It looks like this:
Bites - You should be seeing little red bites on you without really knowing why. People rarely catch bed bugs in the act - they come out when you are asleep, and only bite for a short period. Also, like many bugs, you cannot feel the bite until a few minutes after it happens. The bites are very hard to identify - most doctors actually can't tell you for sure what they're from just by looking at them.
Hiding places - Look in all the key spots where they could hide. This means the mattress and around it, folds in the linens, curtains, and nearby furniture. Look for the waste or dark spots. You probably won't see live ones, but they look like little mini-cockroaches.
Catch them in the act - Keep a flashlight by your bed, and turn it on about an hour before dawn and watch the sheets closely for movement. Bed bugs usually bite around then, but if you get up or move too much they will go back into hiding. This can be hard to do - if you've only got a few of them, they only need to come out once a week or so anyway, so you might get unlucky and not see any, even though you have them.
Carpet tape - This is a great way to do it. Get some double-sided carpet tape (it's tape designed to keep rugs stuck to the floor) and lay out strips around your bed, and on the sides of the mattress but where you won't run into it when you sleep. Leave it out for a few days. If you've got bedbugs, it's likely that at least a couple of them will get stuck on it.
sources and useful links:
Serving as a volunteer in a larger city in the southwest US, I will share briefly some things I learned about a bed-bug infestation we had at our apartment (by no fault of my own, mind you).
A lot of the homes we went into were teeming with little crawling surprises, and many of our appointments were at old homes with trashy yards. Anyway, I don't know exactly where they came from, but it's not too hard to figure it out... I got transferred into the area and apartment just after the infestation was discovered and measures were taken against it.
hippitrail's answer was thorough and accurate from my experience. All our our mattresses and box springs were on the concrete in front of the apartment, sunbathing, eventually thrown away. The bed bugs don't like the heat.
Before we got new beds we slept on counters, table chairs, anything that wasn't cushioned and was off the ground... we had a pest control guy come in and spray some crazy chemical all over; this seemed most effective.
Interestingly... when we did get new beds, we were careful to check them daily especially in the creases of the mattresses and tight areas of the box springs. Bed bugs like tight places that squeeze a little, it seems. Even on our new beds we were getting bitten. The bites stopped the day I moved my bed away from the wall. Apparently, they were coming out from under the carpet (I think?) and crawling up the wall, into the bed, and biting.
We kept our eyes open always and had over-the-shelf chemicals at the ready when we saw them crawling on furniture, us, or the walls. We tore apart the cushions on the chairs and couches, sprayed them with household chemicals, and let them sunbathe for a while before putting them back.
Each evening when we came into the apartment, we undressed and washed the clothes right away. We kept all clothing off the floor and away from walls. Still, somehow I'd find little critters crawling around on my clothing. All we could do any more was kill each one we saw.
By the time I left the area 4 months later, the bugs were gone: not a sight of a single one.
