How to Find Bed Bugs

How to Find Bed Bugs

If you have an infestation, it is best to find out early on, before the infestation has a chance to spread. Treating a minor infestation is far less costly and easier than treating the same infestation after it becomes more widespread.

Low-level infestations are much more challenging to find and correctly identify. Other insects can be easily mistaken for bed bugs. If you misidentifying a bed bug infestation, it gives the bugs more time to spread to other areas of the house or hitchhike a ride to someone else's house to start a new infestation.

Bites on the skin are a poor indicator of a bed bug infestation. Bed bug bites can look like bites from other insects, rashes, or even hives. Some people do not react to bed bug bites at all.

Signs of a Bed Bugs

An accurate way to identify a possible infestation is to look for physical signs of bed bugs. When cleaning, changing bedding, or staying away from home, look for the following:

• Rusty or reddish stains on bed sheets or mattresses caused by bed bugs being crushed
• Dark spots, which are bed bug excrement and may bleed on the fabric like a marker would
• Eggs and eggshells, which are tiny and pale yellow skins that nymphs shed as they grow
• Live bed bugs

Where Bed Bugs Hide

When bed bugs are not feeding, they hide in a variety of places. Around the bed, they can be found near the piping, seams and tags of mattress and box spring, and in cracks on the bed frame and headboard.

If the room is heavily infested, you may also find them in the following areas:

• In the seams of chairs and couches
• Folds of curtains
• In drawer joints
• In electricity receptacles and appliances
• Under loose wall paper and other wall hangings
• At the junction where the wall and the ceiling meet

Since bed bugs are only about the width of a credit car, they can squeeze into really small hiding spots. If a crack will hold a credit card, it can hide a bed bug.