Bed bugs are small, flat insects with an oval shape and brownish colour that feed on the blood of humans and warm-blooded animals.
Their flat bodies allow them to fit into tiny spaces about the width of a credit card.
They can hide in cracks and crevices located close to resting areas such as mattresses, box springs, bedside tables, and other areas around beds. This gives these pests easy access to sleeping humans, hence the name “bed bugs”.
According to Adam Juson, co-founder of commercial pest control company, Merlin Environmental, the “most common sign of bed bugs” are bites on the skin, especially after sleeping but people may also recognise blood speckles on their bedding from the bites.
The expert added: “Bed bug poop can also appear on bedding and furniture and looks like small brown spots.”
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Bed bugs can live for about a year without a food source making them very difficult to starve to death.
These creatures typically stay out of the way during daylight hours, and only come out to feed when people are asleep. Bed bugs detect carbon dioxide from people breathing, which tells them people are resting nearby.
Adam claimed that using heat is the “most effective way” to get rid of bed bugs.
He explained: “Temperatures more than 50 degrees Celsius for about 90 minutes will get rid of any bed bug problem.
“If you think you have bed bugs, you can wash your bedding and clothing on a hot wash and then tumble dry on a very hot setting.
“However, since the bed bug may not be in your bedding, but could be hiding anywhere in the room, it’s best to heat the whole room up and make it too toasty for comfort.”
For those who have certain pieces of furniture that can handle the moisture and temperature, they should slowly go over the flat planes with seams and focus on crevices and areas where there are bolts and screws because that’s where bed bugs would hide.
In terms of time, only a couple of seconds are needed to directly apply the steam when killing bed bugs.
The expert noted that it’s best to “always use heat to destroy them” because heat is “more effective and less hazardous” to humans, compared to toxic chemical treatments.
Killing bed bugs with steam gets tricky whenever there are deep crevices that the steam can’t penetrate into. That’s when it could be worth enlisting the help of a pest control specialist.
Adam said: “At Merlin Environmental we have bed bug hunting sniffer dogs that can pinpoint exactly where the bed bugs are, so we can treat them with heat.
“This is a much faster, and more reliable way of finding bed bugs than relying on human sight. Alternatively, we can employ our industrial heating system to ‘cook’ bedrooms that are known to have bed bugs, ensuring that the room is left free of bed bugs.”