How To Find Signs Of Bed Bugs

Looking for bed bug signs

Bedbugs are small insects that live on human and animal blood. Bed bugs are found all over the world and have recently spread rapidly among developing countries such as the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom and other countries around the world.

Bed bugs are usually acquired when transported by people traveling from one place to another.

Bed bugs can be easily transported and concealed in the seams or creases of luggage, and clothing, these are often your favorite hiding places.

If bedbug infestation is suspected, it is important to detect them early before it is much worse than it already is.

To detect a bed bug infestation, we must educate ourselves about these blood-sucking pests. There are some things one should look for to determine if there is an infestation of bed bugs:

Bite marks:

On the one hand, bite marks from bed bugs can be considered as a sign of a bed bug infestation. It is common for people to go to bed well, but they wake up with an itchy skin with the bites of these insects.

However, bite marks can not be a definite sign in determining a bed bug infestation because bed bug bites vary greatly from one person to another.

An example is that a person who travels, can only develop marks of bites days after being bitten when returning home.

This does not exactly mean that the house has a bed bug infestation. Another example is that some people may not even have a skin reaction, to bed bug bites.

Another reason is that bite marks, may not even be bed bugs.

These conditions vary and may delay the detection of a bed bug infestation. This may possibly cause the worsening of the infestation, which may be more evident, due to the population increase of bed insects.

Hence bite marks can be considered as a reliable sign of a bed bug infestation. There are clearer and more reliable signals that can be learned for proper detection of an infestation.

Knowing what bed bugs look like, looking for signs to find them

Knowing how bed bugs are, is important in order to detect a bed bug infestation. Luckily, adult bugs are visible to the naked eye.

Adult bugs are reddish brown, without wings, usually about the same size as an apple seed. Immature bugs are also visible to the naked eye, but they are smaller than the adults and are translucent and their color is yellowish-whitish.

The nymph stage is difficult to see, when they are in motion, they are bright red due to recent feeding. Bedbug eggs are small, about the size of a pinhead. The eggs are white-pearl and will have visible eyes as the age increases, at the end of 5 days.

The appearance of bed bugs, may vary depending on your state of feeding. An adult bug appears as a flat, oval disk. But when it feeds on blood, it inflates like a balloon and lengthens out.

A bed bug, which recently had a full blood meal, will also appear bright red. Your appearance will change as you digest your blood meal, after a couple of days; the bed bugs then begin to darken and flatten into an oval disk, again. The newly established nymphs are visible when they are bright red, have the form of a raspberry seed, they also change in appearance after feeding on blood.

Changed bed bugs

Moulting is the process where bedbugs change their skin. The insects have exoskeletons, skeletons in the outer layer of their body, which have to be undone to grow larger. Immature bedbugs change your skin so you can grow and move on to the next stage of life. Bedbugs change their skin 5 times before they become adults.

When they reach adulthood, bed bugs will stop changing their skin.

When a large infestation of bed bugs occurs, one should expect to see thousands of changed skins where bed bugs have undergone the moulting process.

The changed skins of these bedbugs actually look similar to the same bedbugs because they are the same in shape and translucent appearance, although they vary in sizes depending on the stage of life in which you have moved your skin. The only difference is that they will look like empty shells.

New infestations will make the skins changed almost anywhere. But for a large infestation of bedbugs and bedbugs with changed skins, they are in the area where these pests are added in groups. Usually, bedding changed skins can be found behind headboards on the bed, on the ceiling or wall, along the mattress and baseboard seams, or even glued to personal objects .

Bed Bug Fecal Stains

Bed bugs are fed every 5 to 7 days, and they digest their previous food at times when they do not feed.

Since blood contains a lot of water, bed bugs need to digest their blood meal immediately and remove excess liquid as waste. These fecal residues appear black, usually in groups of 10 or even more.

In a large bed bug infestation, fecal spots are signs that are found anywhere.

But if the infestation is fairly low, fecal stains are usually seen along the seam of the mattress and base plate, on the mattress label, behind the headboard, on the ceiling or wall, on the edges of the carpets, behind wall pictures, electrical outlets and curtain seams.

Looking for bed bug aggregations

Finding bed bug aggregations can be similar to finding fecal spots because they often leave fecal spots where they are added after mealtime. Attached places may have a number of signs of a bed bug infestation as they may have staining of feces, changed skins, live bed bugs and hatched eggs.

Aggregations can not be easily identified because they may appear as mold in the area. But if you look closely, the signs of bed bugs, are then notorious.

Bed bug aggregations can also be found along the mattress seams and on the mattress labels, behind the headboard, loose wallpaper, jagged paint, along the creases of the wood, along the frame closet doors interior, curtain rods on the inside and on curtains, and even on personal items such as books, photo frames and many other places.