Anyone who has had bed bug bites, knows how itchy and painful it is. Many of you with children worry when they wake up in the morning, scratching and digging at their bites. The worst part is that the bites were clustered, often in threes. Bed bug experts called them breakfast, lunch and dinner. All you know was that the bed bug bites had to stop.
In early infestations, bed bugs like to hide in tufts, seams, and folds of mattresses and daybed covers; later they spread to cracks and crevices in the bed and mattresses. They are nocturnal, so if you are awake between 3 am and 5 am, you may be able to see one on your bed. I have to admit that I set the alarm, so I could get up and check the beds of my children. Only once did I find an actual bed bug, so finding them is not necessarily a good indication of infestation.
The fact that I acted EARLY was a HUGE reason why I was able to successfully get RID of bed bugs and experienced no more bed bug bites.
If allowed to multiply, they can be found behind baseboards or woodwork, window and door frames, pictures, and moldings, and in furniture, loosened wallpaper, and cracks in plaster and partitions.
They can even hide in mattress box springs, wall sockets, old books (look in the spine and between pages), behind wallpaper, clothing cracks and crevices of the floor and wall and basically anywhere they can stick their flat small bodies.
"When I'm traveling I will pull sheets off of the bed and look for black dots or a live bedbug," Warneke (Orkin Pest Control Services) said. The Herald
- Look for bed bug leavings on your sheets. They look like black dots. Inspect carefully around the seam of your bed. I found these especially in the seam of the mattress, but they were VERY TINY.
- Sometimes you may find eggs, egg shells and cast skins near these places.
- There is usually is a distinctive odor in rooms where bed bugs are numerous
Now you know about bed bug bites and you know a bit more about signs of bed bugs. You may be fairly certain you have bed bugs, next you need to learn how to get rid of bed bugs.