“Sleep tight, don’t let the bed bugs bite!” We’ve all heard this before. It’s a cute little rhyme and all it’s really just a friendly way of saying good night to someone, usually a child or some other relative.
And that’s all well and good, I’m not going to tell anybody to stop using this rhyme, however it kind of gives the bed bug a bit of a lighthearted connotation. And trust me, there is nothing lighthearted about those menacing little jerks whatsoever.
I mean they’re not necessarily dangerous. A bite from a bed bug probably isn’t going to kill you, and you might get away with nothing more than a mild itchy mark which may not even be discernible as a bug bite.
Unless of course you’re allergic, in which case you could see a much more serious reaction, but in all likelihood, you’ll come away from it without any scars. Physical scars that is. The mental scars will mess you up.
You tell your kids not to let the bed bugs bite as if that will be a mild inconvenience, but if the bed bugs do bite, you’ll be tearing apart every bed you sleep in for the rest of your life to make sure there’s nothing crawling around in there.
Waking up covered in bites is not a pleasant experience, and if it happens to you it will sour your opinion of sleep for a long time. You’ll be on edge every time you lay down that your morning will be burdened with bite marks.
So these things are problematic, extremely unsettling, and if you happen to find them in your bed you should take every measure to do away with them. There’s a few different treatments so let’s take a look at them now:
Temperature Control
So first thing to consider here is to avoid using any kind of chemical treatment, because you don’t want to have a whole lot of potentially harmful chemicals hanging around in the air of the room where you’re going to be sleeping.
We’ll talk a bit more about the chemical options below if you do want to go that route, but a heat or a cold treatment is definitely with your consideration because it can be a very effective way to eliminate the bugs.
For this method, you probably shouldn’t do it yourself. In fact it might be impossible to do it yourself. Hire a professional, they know what they’re doing and they have more access to equipment.
Simply put, bed bugs cannot handle the heat. No stage of their development is safe. An environment that’s too hot will kill fully-grown bed bugs and destroy their eggs completely so it’s massively effective.
How it works is as simple as the affected room being heated to about 140° F and maintained at this temperature for a number of hours. It’s quick, it’s eco-friendly and it can be done in a single visit so there’s a lot to be said for this option.
On the other hand, the disadvantage is that it doesn’t come with residual protection, meaning that while it will kill all of the existing bugs, more can show up and you’d have to go through the same process all over again.
Insecticides don’t come with the same potential consequence, so let’s consider those for a moment now too:
Insecticides
Once again, you should enlist the help of a professional for this. Using insecticides on your own is a bad idea, you don’t know what kind of chemicals you’re dealing with and what effect they’ll have on your house.
If you want to give this a go by yourself, you could try using rubbing alcohol. It has been seen to be effective in many cases and there’s also been times where it hasn’t been, but if you’re on a budget and you want to try and fix the problem yourself before shelling out, this is worth a shot.
However if it doesn’t work, or if you want to just go for the most reliable solution first, then hire professional exterminators who are in possession of the best materials for the job. This will take a bit longer than heat treatment.
Reason being that there are several different steps, each of which uses a different product. Firstly ever exposed surface area needs to be dealt with, any crack and crevice where there could be a potential nest will be treated next and then the outlets and baseboards.
After this, which will be spread out over maybe two or three sessions, each of which will take a couple of hours and then there will likely be a follow-up visit or two. But this should ensure that your problem will be eliminated and you won’t face any further bed bug problems.
Aside from these two options, there really isn’t a whole lot else that you can do about bed bugs, aside of course from moving somewhere else or just straight up burning the house down. The latter of those will probably be frowned upon a little bit though.
But that’s okay because each of these are very effective. The choice will come down to a couple of factors. You should go for the heat if you want the less invasive, more eco-friendly option but if you want to save a little bit and ensure success, insecticides are the way to go.
The choice is yours, just make sure you do actually deal with the problem because bed bugs are a scourge on a good night’s sleep.
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