The cold has many effects on pests here in Augusta. If you haven’t noticed, mosquitoes and their blood-sucking needle noses are nowhere to be found, spider webs are no longer hanging between trees waiting for your face to greet them, and smelly stinkbugs are no longer chilling on exterior walls of your home to soak up heat. We can all agree, these pests being gone is a welcome change. The problem is, one type of pest, in particular, is avoiding the cold and threatening to invade your home this winter. They are called bed bugs, and through stealth and determination, they will do everything in their power to get what they want.
How To Identify A Bed Bug Infestation
Before we talk about what bed bugs are and what their presence could mean for you and your family, let’s figure out if your home is currently bed bug-free. To figure this out, here are some signs you can keep your eyes out for.
- Bites on your skin in a straight line or zig-zag pattern. Typically you will find these bites on areas of your body that are exposed during sleep.
- Bloodstains on mattress linens or around where you sleep. After bed bugs feed, they tend to dribble excess blood as they flee to hide.
- Blackish-red dots of fecal matter. This bed bug excrement can be found around areas bed bugs hide around your room, usually beside cracks, outlets, and along floorboards.
- A musty smell in the air. This is the result of many bed bugs releasing pheromones at once.
- Eggs and egg casings inside cracks and crevices around your room.
- Live rusty brown, oval-shaped, bed bugs crawling around areas you sleep.
Why The Cold Doesn’t Bother Bed Bugs
One thing you should know about bed bugs is that the weather outside has no effect on them. It could be 110 degrees or below freezing, and they will be just fine. This is because bed bugs rarely leave the comfort of our temperature-controlled homes, and even when they do, they are only out in the cold as long as we are. You see, bed bugs are hitchhiking pests that use us and the items we carry to travel from one location to another. This can make bed bugs rather difficult pests to deal with.
What Are Bed Bugs?
The bed bug gets its name from its fondness for carbon dioxide, something we emit while we are sleeping. This emission draws bed bugs like a drug, meaning where we are, bed bugs want to be. One easy way to pick up bed bugs when out and about is to carry around freshly worn, sweaty clothing, like after you get done at the gym. If bed bugs are around, they will wander over and hitch a ride in your gym bag just to get closer to the scent of your used clothing.
How Hard Are Bed Bugs To Treat?
Once bed bugs get into your home, there is not much you can do on your own to get them out. This has to do with how resistant bed bugs are to pesticides and their ability to hide for weeks at a time in areas you cannot treat such as within your walls. It can be easy to find false success when dealing with bed bugs only for them to show back up weeks later stronger than ever. Without extensive training and knowledge on how to eliminate bed bugs, you are going to have a difficult time fully dealing with your problem.
The Best Way To Get Rid Of Bed Bugs
Here at Bug Busterzzz Pest Control, we have trained long and hard to know how to get bed bugs out of homes and we pride ourselves on the amount of success we have found fully ridding homes of infestations. Just ask any of our satisfied customers.
If you suspect you are being bitten at night by bed bugs and are looking for the best way to get them out of your home, we are here to help. Give us a call today and let us get rid of those sleep-wrecking pests. Quick and effective, we’ll have bed bugs gone in a flash.