Did You Bring Bed Bugs Home From The Holidays?

Did You Bring Bed Bugs Home From The Holidays?

With the holidays behind us, you might be worrying about all kinds of things: sending the kids back to school, taking down decorations, and sticking to your New Year’s resolutions. But are you worried about bed bugs? These nuisance pests can invade your home undetected. You might have brought them home without even realizing it!

A bed bug infestation takes a lot of work to get rid of when it happens, so it is important to learn how to prevent bed bugs from getting inside in the first place and what to do if they invade your home.

How Bed Bugs Get Into Your Home

Bed bugs travel by clinging onto various objects. They don’t fly or jump. They use tiny claws to grip onto fabric, and then wait for people to transport them to wherever they need to go. They can hold onto furniture, clothes, backpacks, shoes, hair, furniture, and even fur. Once a bed bug enters your home, it can multiply and then soon there will be a whole family of bed bugs feeding on your family. The worst part is that these infestations can spread very quickly as the bed bugs travel from your home to other locations and vice-versa.

Bed Bug Infestation Signs And Prevention

There are several signs that indicate a bed bug infestation. The most obvious one is seeing the bugs themselves around your bed or on your mattress. However, since bed bugs are nocturnal and incredibly tiny, you might struggle to spot them. Look instead for the things they leave behind: molted skins, blood stains, droppings, bite marks, and eggs. All these signs indicate that you may have a bed bug infestation.

Bed bug bites are the easiest way to identify whether they’re the pest infesting your home. Their bites are small and red with a clear center. There are usually multiples of them in a line or zig-zag pattern. If you spot these marks on yourself, your children, or your family members, there are probably bed bugs in the vicinity. If you spot them on others while at their home, that means that bed bugs could be coming home with you.

Preventing bed bugs is quite difficult but not impossible. They die at extreme temperatures, so washing and drying your clothes on the hottest settings can kill them before they have a chance to spread. Vacuuming your carpets and steaming your furniture also helps to get rid of them. When vacuuming, make sure to empty the bag outside away from the home.

When traveling, make sure to keep your luggage off and away from the bed, and always inspect your room for bugs before settling in. After returning home, immediately empty your luggage and wash all clothes and fabric items on the hottest washer and dryer settings. Vacuuming your luggage is also a good idea.

How to Get Rid of Bed Bugs in Your Home

Even if you put in a lot of effort to prevent bed bugs from getting into your home, it can still happen. Once they’re inside, getting rid of them, using DIY methods, is nearly impossible. People can spend years fighting bed bugs and they still won’t go away. Some DIY solutions can do more harm to your family than the bed bugs themselves, and there’s no guarantee they’ll work.

Instead of wasting your money on ineffective and possibly harmful DIY solutions, call Russell’s Pest Control to get help with your bed bug infestation. We’ll make sure that your home is completely bed bug free with our comprehensive inspections, treatments, and follow-ups. Our friendly trained technicians will give you the best customer service and best treatment coverage you can ask for.

What To Do If Bed Bugs Have Stayed In Your Home After The Holidays

What To Do If Bed Bugs Have Stayed In Your Home After The Holidays

After a busy season, the holidays have finally wrapped up. You’ve exchanged all the gifts that weren’t quite right, put your decorations away, and sent your guests back to their homes with promises to get together again soon. But have all your house guests left? It’s possible that some uninvited bed bugs have stayed in your home after the holidays.

How Bed Bugs Get into Your Home

Bed bugs are year-round pests that don’t take a season off. Although they are most active in the summer when the weather is hot and vacationing is at its peak, they remain active throughout the entire year. After the activity of summer, fall often sees an uptick in bed bug infestations as the bugs make themselves comfortable in their new homes. When the holidays roll around and traveling picks up again, bed bugs return to their active lifestyle.

These pests don’t just walk into your house from outdoors. Instead, they travel around with people. They might hitch a ride on someone’s clothing, a purse, bag, or backpack, or in someone’s luggage. When they have a chance they will crawl off of whatever they were riding on, and start to make themselves at home in a new location.

If you had guests over the holidays, it’s possible they inadvertently brought a bed bug or two along with them into your house. It’s unlikely that they took those bed bugs with them when they returned to their own home. If those bed bugs remained in your home, they will end up settling in and eventually reproducing, making the small problem of just a few bed bugs quickly become a much larger problem.

What to Do if Bed Bugs Get into Your Home

If you end up with bed bugs in your home, the sooner you treat the problem, the better. A female bed bug can lay between 1 and 5 eggs per day, and it takes about 10 days for an egg to hatch. That means that, even if you only have a few bed bugs in your home, their population can grow rapidly.

Unfortunately, regardless of the number of bed bugs in your home, they are notoriously difficult to treat. They are fantastic at hiding. Many have become pesticide-resistant, making many DIY chemical treatments ineffective, not to mention a health hazard for your family.

Get Help from the Professionals

The best thing you can do in the event that you discover any signs of bed bugs, is to call a professional pest management company like Russell’s Pest Control.

Russell’s offers bed bug treatments that involve three steps.

  • A thorough inspection to make sure your bed bug problem is actually a bed bug problem and not the result of another pest.
  • A review of our findings to discuss available treatment options based on what we discovered.
  • Appropriate heat remediation treatment to eliminate every bed bug in every stage of development, from the eggs right on up to the adults.

If you think you have bed bugs in your home, contact us immediately. The sooner we can take care of the problem, the easier and cheaper it will be!

Bed Bug Prevention For The 2018 Holiday Season

Bed Bug Prevention For The 2018 Holiday Season

Do you plan on traveling this holiday season? How many of your family members are traveling with you? Three? Four? Five? What if we told you that your vehicle, which is probably large enough to seat four to ten people, could actually fit hundreds? Of bed bugs, that is. That’s right. If you are not careful, this holiday season you may bring home more than some leftover Thanksgiving turkey or Christmas ham, you could bring home bed bugs. And even if you bring home only one bed bug, it could start an infestation, and bringing home a bed bug infestation is not a good way to end your pleasant vacation.

Traveling Bed Bugs

Bed bugs are most commonly referred to as hitchhiking pests. This means they will use items such as articles of clothing, or perhaps a newly purchased used piece of furniture, to invade your home. Inspecting these items before bringing them inside is a great first step in preventing bed bugs. If you plan on traveling this holiday season, and you find yourself staying a night in a hotel room, inspect the room thoroughly for signs of bed bugs, mainly around bedding. On sheets, look for things like small dots of blood, droppings, or even live bed bugs crawling about. These are all good indicators that it may be time to change rooms, or even hotels altogether. These same steps also apply if you are staying with relatives. Sometimes, due to their incredibly small size, bed bugs can be difficult to spot. For this reason, it is wise to take extra precautions while traveling. You can do this by storing clothing in airtight plastic bags, then when you get home, throw them in the washer and dryer on high heat. This will kill any hitchhiking bed bugs you may have not spotted.

What To  Do If They Invade

Keeping bed bugs out of your home is a lot easier than getting them out once they have invaded. If your home has fallen siege to bed bugs, the absolute best thing you can do is call a professional. Here at Russell’s, we have the top-of-the-line equipment used to handle even the most invasive of infestations. In addition, our staff of pest control professionals is highly trained to find and eliminate every last blood-sucking bed bug. If you want more information on our methods, or you would like to schedule an inspection, contact Russell’s Pest Control today! We work hard, so you can sleep well!

Bed Bug Awareness Week Starts June 3rd

Bed Bug Awareness Week Starts June 3rd

Are you scratching your head, wondering what Bed Bug Awareness Week is? If so, you’re not alone. There are lots of people who have never heard of it. Hopefully, you’re not scratching your head because you have bed bugs. Because, if you are, we’re too late. The whole purpose of Bed Bug Awareness Week is to empower home and business owners to prevent bed bug infestations from taking root. Bed Bug Awareness Week is coming soon and here’s what you need to know.

Bed bugs are hitchhiking bugs. The more we understand this, the better off we’ll all be. Bed bugs depend on us missing the signs. Sometimes, we even miss identifying these bugs when we see them. When we don’t recognize the threat, we become a carrier for these bugs. Sometimes, the place we carry them is into our own homes.

During Bed Bug Awareness Week, consider sharing the following bed bug facts with your friends and family on social media:

  • Bed bugs aren’t just found in hotels and motels. They have been found in libraries, movie theaters, taxi cabs, police call centers, senior living centers, daycares, college dormitories, and more. While you can definitely pick up a bed bug infestation while on vacation, be aware that bed bugs can get on you anytime you leave your home.

  • You may have heard that bed bugs are too tiny to see, but they aren’t. When they first hatch, they’re pretty small at only 1 mm in length, but they’re also semi-transparent. If a baby bed bug has your blood in its abdomen, you’re going to see it. And you’re going to want to see them. Recognizing a bed bug could alert you to an infestation or help to prevent an infestation from coming home with you. If you see a pale bug with a bright red abdomen, six legs, and two antennae on your skin, it is probably a bed bug. Use a piece of clear tape to trap it for closer inspection.

  • Bed bugs lay their tiny white eggs in cracks, crevices, creases, and other hidden places. These eggs are 1 mm in length and may be in a small batch. A quick inspection of sleeping bags, backpacks, book bindings, and other objects your kids bring back from a sleepover could prevent an infestation from taking root.

  • Always call a professional when bed bugs appear. These insects are extremely difficult to get rid of and DIY bed bug treatments have led to property damage and a loss of human life.

So, there you go. Now you have some sweet bed bug facts to share during Bed Bug Awareness Week which starts June 3rd. If you live in Tennessee, you can trust Russell’s Pest Control to help you get complete control of those tormenting pests.

Avoiding Bed Bugs On Spring Vacations

Avoiding Bed Bugs On Spring Vacations

Whether you are heading out to enjoy spring break or just taking advantage of spring to take a much-needed vacation, it is important to set aside a few moments to learn about bed bug prevention. Reading this article is a great first step. Here are 4 easy things you can do to reduce your chances of having bed bugs ruin your vacation or return home with you.

  1. Would you go into a neighborhood in a city without finding out whether or not that neighborhood is safe? It is also unwise to stay somewhere you haven’t checked out first. Bedbugregistry.com is a great resource to find out if bed bugs have been reported at the place you’ll be staying. You can also check other review sites and use the term “bed bug” in your search query.

  2. Would you walk into a forest at night without a flashlight? Of course you wouldn’t. And you shouldn’t go on vacation without a flashlight. Most smartphones have a flashlight app that uses the camera light on the phone as a light source. Use that light source to examine some key areas inside your room to make sure there are no bed bugs or bed bug signs present. Pull the bedding and sheets down to examine the mattress and box spring for black residue, black streaks, black droppings, shed insect skins, brown blood stains, or these tiny six-legged, oval, rust-colored bugs. They are about the size of an apple seed and look a little bit like one too.

  3. Would you operate dangerous equipment without following a few safety protocols? It is a good idea to follow a few safety protocols while on vacation. Never leave clothes on the floor or draped over a chair. Put clothing on a hard surface, or in a plastic bag, when you’re not wearing them. When you bring your luggage out, consider using the luggage stand. Most rooms have one.

  4. Would you rub your nose if you just shook hands with someone who has the flu? Maybe. But it is unwise. When you return home, put all of your clothing into the wash. Use the hottest temperatures to kill bed bugs in every stage of development. This little cleaning could keep a batch of eggs from turning into an infestation.

These tips should help you stay safer on your vacation and help to prevent an infestation from returning home with you but, as you probably already know, bed bugs can be picked up in a lot of places. If you ever do find bed bugs in your home, call a professional. These bugs are extremely hard to eradicate and improper bed bug treatments can cause prolonged infestations, more bites, or lead to devastating consequences, such as the loss of property or a loss of life.

If you’re in our Tennessee service area, let the bed bug control team here at Russell’s Pest Control deal with those blood-eating pests. Immediate help is just a call away.