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Bed Bug control

Step 1 Prepare the area : Pre-treatment Procedures

	Reduce clutter to make inspection easier.
	Personal items (stuffed animals, soft toys, blankets) should be removed, cleaned with a vacuum cleaner, and bagged in plastic for for a couple of days with strips if infestation is severe. You can also bag your laptops, phones, radios in a bag as well. The insecticide in the strips will not harm these items and is a non residual, so you don't have to launder these items after using the strips
	If you dismantle the bed frames, you may expose additional bedbug hiding sites.
	Remove drawers from desks and dressers and turn furniture over, if possible, to inspect and clean all hiding spots.
	Stand up the box spring and shine a flashlight through the gauze fabric to expose bed bugs. If the fabric is torn (possible hiding place), remove fabric to prepare for spraying.
	Caulk and seal all holes where pipes and wires penetrate walls and floor, and fill cracks around baseboards and moldings to further reduce harborages.
	Since infested garments and bed linen can't be treated with insecticide they will need to be laundered in hot water (120°F minimum). If washing is not available, sometimes heating the garments or bed linen for several minutes in a clothes dryer may work.
	Thoroughly clean the infested rooms .Scrub infested surfaces with a stiff brush to dislodge eggs.
	Vacuum in area of bed bug harborages with an vacuum attachment. Vacuum along baseboards, nearby furniture, bed stands, rails, headboards, footboards, bed seams, tufts, buttons, edges of the bedding as well as the edges of the carpets (particularly along the tack strips) are key areas to vacuum. A good vacuum cleaning job may remove particles from cracks and crevices to encourage greater insecticide penetration.
	Discard vacuum cleaner bag in a sealed plastic bag when finished.
	Caulk cracks and crevices in the building exterior and also repair or screen openings to exclude birds, bats, and rodents that can serve as alternate hosts for bed bugs.

Step 2 Inspect : Look For The Bugs

To inspect well, it may be helpful to briefly understand Bed Bug Diet and Bedbug Habits. Because the bed bugs may be difficult to see with the naked eye, we recommend an industrial powered magnifier such as flashlight.

The common bed bug is visible to the naked eye. Adult bed bugs are brown to reddish-brown, oval-shaped, flattened, and about 1/4 to 5/8 inch long. Their flat shape enables them to readily hide in cracks and crevices. After a blood meal, the body elongates and becomes swollen. Eggs are not known to be placed on the host's body but are found on surfaces near where the host sleeps.

Look in any place that offers darkness, isolation and protection. These bugs will often wander. Inspect adjoining rooms where an infestation is found. Even when the bed bugs themselves cannot be found, their hiding places can be located by looking for the spots of fecal material they often leave in easily visible places.

Fecal spots and the bloody spots (looks like rust) left on sheets and pillowcases when engorged bugs are crushed serve as sure signs of infestation. Adult bed bugs are about 1/4-inch long and reddish-brown, with oval, flattened bodies. Bed bugs prefer to hide in cracks and crevices during the daytime and come out to feed on the host's blood at night, usually while the host is sleeping. Because they can flatten their bodies, they can fit in very small crevices, specially around the bed area. They are found in habitual hiding places, preferably close to a blood meal. Even though the their preference is to be close they will travel several feet for a blood meal. Initial infestations tend to be around beds, but the bugs eventually may become scattered throughout a room, occupying any crevice or protected location. They also can spread to adjacent rooms or apartments.

Look for areas close by where the bed bugs are biting. Main areas of inspection are cracks and crevices in head and foot boards and attached side railings and supports. Look for any cracks or crevices where bed bugs may crawl into to hide. If the top of the mattress has any rips , the bed bugs may hide there as well. Look also in your box springs, both top and bottom for any rips that might shelter these bugs.

Inspection Check List

	Cracks and crevices in head and foot boards, attached side railings and supports
	Inspect mattresses top, sides and bottom. Check all buttons, seams and rips.
	Inspect electrical switch plates, pictures on walls, wall posters
	Inspect cracks in plaster or seams in wall paper.
	Inspect electrical appliances-radios, phones, televisions, ect., looking in hiding places.
	Inspect tack strips under wall-to-wall carpeting and behind baseboards
	Inspect secondhand beds, bedding, and furniture. The newer better built mattresses do not offer as much shelter and protection for the bed bugs to hide.

Step 3 Treat the Bed, Headboard, Frames and Footboards

Do I Have to Throw Out the Mattress?

This question would be answered upon the condition of the mattress or size of infestation. If there are holes or tears in the gauze fabric or fabric of the mattress, bed bugs and eggs may be inside, as well as outside. There are restrictions on how beds can be treated with insecticides. We do carry a line of mattress covers and box spring covers that are bedbug certified to place over your mattress or box spring so you don't have to throw them away. If using an labeled insecticide on the mattress or box spring, apply on mattress or box springs and zip it up. The mattress and box spring covers are so good that you don't even need to treat the mattress or box springs with an approved insecticide. It has a patented hook to keep the bed bugs inside the encasement, they cannot escape. Keep the encasement in place for one year (due to bed bug cycles).

How to treat the mattress with insecticides:

Look carefully at the folds and seams of the mattress, the headboard, foot board (if present), box spring/support platform, frame, etc for bedbugs and treat these area after vacumming.

Step 4 Treat all baseboards and furniture (Night Stand, Chests, Dressers, Couches and Chairs)

Spray liquid insecticides or aerosols :

	Spray around and under the bed and along the baseboards near the bed. After removing the drawers from the furniture, the inside of the cabinetry should be sprayed as well as the bottom and sides of the drawers. Do not treat the inside of the drawers. If needed the clothes in the drawers should be removed and laundered.
	Spray around the inside of the closet, door frame and door.
	Spray molding at top and bottom of room. Spray around windows.
	Spray seams of drawers, both top and bottom. Spray dressers from below. Spray where dressers touch the floor.
	Spray where bed touches floor, spray chairs and underneath chairs.
	Spray all baseboards, loose plaster, behind bed frames and headboards, beneath beds and furniture, and bedsprings and bed frames. Do not apply to furniture surfaces or mattresses where people will be laying or sitting. Infested bedding should not be treated, but should be removed, placed in sealed plastic bags, and taken for laundering and drying at high temperatures.

Dust Usage: (Do not dust on top of moist insecticides)
Put dust into duster. Remove switch plates and electrical outlet covers and dust into the openings. Dust any items hanging on the wall such as pictures with a small paint brush. Use a small paint brush to paint dust in seams and around buttons of mattress. Use dust or aerosol in all joints of the bed frame. If possible disassemble bed frame and treat from all angles with dust and aerosol. After the mattress and box spring has been treated enclose both of these. With these covers you can keep your bed and do not have to treat it again.

Preventing Bed Bug Infestations

It’s important to inspect used furniture, particularly bed frames and mattresses before bringing it into the home. Mattresses, in particular, carry the greatest risk of harboring Bed Bugs and their eggs. You should be wary of acquiring used furnishings, especially beds and couches. A practice that we have incorporated in our traveling is to inspect for bed bugs in hotel rooms. If possible, carry a flashlight with you and inspect the bed area completely as described above. Also, you may want to inspect or vacuum luggage when you arrive home to prevent any transference.

A second common source for bedbug infestation occurs in homes where bats, swallows, chimney swifts, pigeons, or other wild hosts have been roosting. Although similar in appearance, these bedbug species that normally feed on bats and birds can be differentiated from the Common Bedbug that prefer humans. The bat bedbug can and often feeds on humans. The bat bedbug has long hairs on it's body. Eliminate their bat hosts from the building and seal all openings so that bats cannot enter. Another group of bugs resembling the bed bug infest birds. These bugs are usually confined to bird nests. To control these parasites, the birds and their nests must be removed, and an application of with a residual spray.