Night, night sleep tight. Don’t let the bed bugs bite. While that seems like a harmless enough nursery rhyme, the thought of your bed being infested with bed bugs is not a pleasant one. The reality is that you are likely to have an infestation necessitating pest management at some point in your lives. The 2015 Bugs Without Borders Survey conducted by NPMA and the University of Kentucky found that almost 100% of those employed in the pest management industry had been called out to treat a bed bug infestation over the past year.
While we may think our own homes are unlikely to be infested and that only hotels and motels suffer from such threats, in fact apartments and condominiums, and single-family homes rank the highest for infestations with 95% and 93% of professionals reporting these respectively. Just on 75% of those surveyed listed hotels/ motels as a top three place for finding bed bugs requiring pest control. Of course, bed bugs do not only appear in such areas. The strangest places where professionals have found bed bugs include a funeral casket with a dead body in it, a dance club, and a prosthetic leg! They can also be found in hospitals and schools and even offices. If you notice bed bugs symptoms such as red, itchy skin with bites in a row, it is best to call in a house exterminator immediately.
Summer seems to be the busiest time for home exterminators treating bed bugs, although they are not a seasonal pest. Over 66% of pest professionals indicated summer was busiest in the 2015 Bugs Without Borders Survey. Bed bugs are resilient creatures, able to withstand extremes of temperatures between around freezing and 122 degrees fahrenheit, and able to go several months without feeding. Hatchlings are also tiny meaning they can move around easily and are very hard to spot. This makes them very difficult to treat. The best way to remove and prevent bed bug infections is to use an integrated pest management system. This may involve a combination of professional and do-it-yourself measures that intervene in the life cycle of the pest. It is important to ensure that residences that have been infested with bed bugs are inspected by professionals to ensure that all bed bugs are removed. Sleep tight!
