Bed Bugs !

Brutus_Beefcake

Anyone had any experiences with these ? How did you get rid of them.
Apparently they are increasing in population all round the world.

safesound

My boyf has plenty of experiance with them (being a pest controller and all), what do you want to know?

Brutus_Beefcake

I found one in the living room. Is it possible that it could have got in the house via a suitcase brought back from a holiday ? And can you ask him if he agrees that there are increasing cases of these annoying bugs nowdays ?

safesound

Yup, its the no.1 most common way for bed bugs to get into people houses. People go on holiday, stay in a hotel, dont realise that it has a bed bug problem (as they only normally come out in the dead of night), pick one or two up in their clothes/luggage/towels etc and bring them back home with them.
Have you been bitten lately? They leave a small red spot, with possible blood scab but not neccessarily, usually on whichever side you sleep (they get between you and the mattress).
If you arent getting bitten (at all) then I wouldnt worry about it, but if you are I suggest you contact a pest control company as the council doesnt deal with them and they are notoriously difficult to get rid of once they have a foot hold as they hide in the smallest of places (folds in fabric of mattress, joints in bed base, carpet edging, etc).

As for them increasing in numbers, he says only proportunately to the rise in foreign holiday going to exotic locations where they maybe arent as worried about pests/insects as we are in the UK.

safesound

Pink-winged wrote:

How did you know it was a bed bug Brutus, if you found it in the living room?
Sorry not being cheeky, just interested in how you knew what it was.[/size]

This is a bedbug, EEERRRGGGGHHHHH!!!!!
http://www.cdc.gov/ncidod/EID/vol11no04/images/04-1126_1ab.jpg

So if it looks like that, then you know you have a bed bug problem.

Bendybops19

Oh my word i thought they were tiny, like smaller than a pin head !!!!!!!!!!

safesound

Brutus_Beefcake wrote:

I found one in the living room. Is it possible that it could have got in the house via a suitcase brought back from a holiday ? And can you ask him if he agrees that there are increasing cases of these annoying bugs nowdays ?

Okay boyf now home and says
Theres probably an overall decrease in bedbugs since WW2 primerily due to higher hygeine standards and of course public opinion (this is not so of other countries). Foreign hotels, and indeed planes, all pose a high risk to travellers from all sorts of pests; cockroaches, spiders, and bugs, just to name a few.
As for the bedbugs, I dont mean to scaremonger but heres a few facts. They are one of only a few insects that solely prey on humans and are a true insect predator. They need only feed once in 12 months and once you have an infestation underway it can be extremely hard and very costly to deal with. Back last December I dealt with a case not disimilar to yours where a woman and her husband went on holiday to Africa in Sept. On their return she placed her luggage on the bed, within three weeks the bedbugs started to feed. Within six weeks she was diagnosed with a serious skin allergy/irritation (this diagnosis was wrong btw). By late Novemeber she was being bitten 30 times a night. By the second week of December and after trying every flea/insect spray she could lay her hands on as well as washing all bedding, stripping the room, and doing any and everything else she could think of (she wrongly believed she was being bitten by fleas) she finally discovered some small red insects in her fourposter bed tubing and called my company to deal with the problem.
As for your problem, my guess is you've probably found the bedbug somewhere where you placed the luggage (or unpacked) perhaps on the settee or chairs? It could be that you only brought one back with you, but it could equally be that you brought a hundred back with you. My advice would be dont waste your time by buying insecticides in the hope of controlling an infestation, the only way to control it is by using professional pest controllers. The best way to go about things would be one of two ways; first, you could wait and see. Bedbugs tend to bite above the waist, you may notice small red blood spots on your mattress/sheets. If you find you are being bitten then you have no option but to get it sorted out ASAP, it WONT go away on its own.
Second option, would be to get a pest company to do a precautionary spray of all areas around where you found the bug and all bedrooms. It goes without saying you should have boil washed all items that can take it from your holiday luggage, and I would strongly recommend close examination of all suitcases and hand luggage that you took with you.

Brutus_Beefcake

Many thanks for the info. That picture confirmed what I had seen (and killed). Guy from the council came round and sprayed a few rooms. Also found a couple of them living underneath the slats of a wooden bed ! Bed now thrown out and mattress gone too (needed replacing anyway). He reckons I have got it under control before its too late and I also think I have narrowed it down to a trip where I took my own bedding on a weeks holiday and 1 or 2 hitched a ride home !

Council guy has been a pest controller for 12 years and told me that in his first 5 years of doing the job he had one bed bug incident to deal with, and last week alone he had 3 ! He says its becoming more and more common due to them being more resistant to insecticides and also chemicals that nearly wiped them out many years back have been banned for being too toxic to humans. Eurghh - it makes me feel sick thinking of them.

macgyver

Hi there,
I think I have some sort of tiny insect or bedbugs in my bedding. Every morning I wake up I have red papules on my legs which itch a lot. The doctor says that these are insect bites. I have washed my bedsheets and everything but they keep coming.
My OH does not have any problem, maybe my skin is more sensitive.
I wanted to ask is there any cheap and safe pesticide available which I can use to get rid of them.
As I remember I had the same problem last year in this season.
Any help would be much appreciated
Thanks

Ajax18

Oh dear.

I had bedbugs in our last flat and it was horrible! The only way to get rid of them is to get pest control in to spray everything...

Bed Bugs are little brown bugs that look beetle like. They usually live in families so you can recognise bed bug bites in that they occur in groups. You don't get just one bite but up to ten in one circle predominately on your legs and arms...

They live in your mattress, carpet, clothes...

What you have to do:

Put all your clothes into bin bags and put them in the basement or any other cool place. They hate the cold and die! Then wash them thoroughly...
Do the same thing with your bed sheets.
Get pest control round to spray the whole flat or house, including your mattresses. This might have to be repeated.

Hope this helps. Our bedbugs disappeared after about three months (but that is mainly because our landlady was a liar and didn't help us whatsoever). She claimed that we had brought the bedbugs in. Incidentally former tenants came round and told us that they had had the bed bugs too!

Good luck!

black-saturn

Yep I'm afraid pest control is the only option and after that you will need to boil the sheets, pillows, duvets etc etc so they don't come back. A bit like headlice as in once they are there they are hell to get rid of.