Bed bugs have made a huge resurgence worldwide over the last few years. A recent survey of pest control companies found that a staggering 95% of companies encountered bed bugs within the last year, a huge increase over the past decade. According to the survey, bed bugs were most commonly found in
- Apartments
- Single family homes
- Hotels / Motels
Other less common places bed bugs were found included college dorms, homeless shelters, nursing homes, office buildings, hospitals, schools, public transportation, laundries, movie theaters, day cares, libraries, summer camps, restaurants, locker rooms, prisons, fire and police stations, moving vans, ambulances, funeral homes, and doctors offices. Read about how beg bugs even shut down Jay-Z and Rihanna’s recording studio in Manhattan. We have also noticed increased call volume for bedbugs at the end of holiday season when people return home from vacations.
Follow these tips to increase your chances of avoiding these annoying pests.
- Check any bed you stay in during your travels. Look for bed bug fecal stains (black dots or smudges) and bed bugs themselves along mattress seams, where the mattress rests on the boxspring and where the boxspring rests on the bed frame. Bed bugs are about the size of a tick and are fairly easy to see with the naked eye. Don’t put your suitcase on the hotel bed until you check out the bed thoroughly – just in case. That’s the main cause of bed bug infestations, traveling in your luggage!
- Bed bugs are not more likely to affect economically disadvantaged people. The economically disadvantaged are less likely to hire a professional pest company to get control, thus they are more likely to not be able to get rid of bed bugs, but are not more likely to get them.
- Bed bugs are not more common in unsanitary conditions. We have personally treated several very nice, very clean hotel rooms for bed bugs. All a bed bug needs to live happily is a bed (or other shelter) and a live body.
- Bed bugs feed mainly at night and generally do not hurt when they bite. Many people do not have any skin reaction to the bite. For those that do have a skin reaction, it is so similar to many other insect bites and skin conditions that they can’t be diagnosed as bed bug bites just by looking at them – even by a physician. You have to find a bed bug to know that you have bed bugs.
- Bedbugs have never been shown to transmit any diseases.
- Bedbugs can move from one room or apartment to another, but it takes 6 to 8 weeks.
