What You Need to Know About Bed Bugs
Bed bugs are tiny insects that can cause major problems when they get into our homes. Unfortunately, any home or business is susceptible to bed bug infestation. Being proactive and scheduling regular pest control visits for your Rockville home is the best way to keep these biting pests from taking over your home.
What are bed bugs?
One of the most undesirable pests to discover in our Maryland homes is the bed bug. Bed bugs are small, biting insects that solely feed on the blood of warm-blooded animals. While bed bugs will feed on the blood of rodents, birds, cats, and dogs, people are by far their favorite hosts.
Bed bugs are similar in size and shape to apple seeds. They are wingless, have six legs, and have short antennae. Those they have just eaten are a dark purple color and are capsule-like in shape. Bed bugs that haven’t fed for a while are flat and a mahogany color.
Are Bed Bugs Dangerous?
Though bed bugs do bite us and feed on our blood, the good news is that they aren’t known vectors of diseases, unlike other blood-feeding insects. That is not to say that we should want to share our beds with these pests. While not everyone reacts to their bites, some people develop a red itchy rash around their bite sites. Excessive scratching at the bites can lead to secondary infections requiring treatment from a medical professional.
The biggest concern with bed bug infestation tends to be that sharing a space with them is unsettling and causes worry and sleepless nights. Bed bugs often affect a person’s mental health more than their physical health!
Why do I have a bed bug problem?
Bed bugs can become a problem in any of our Maryland homes. Our houses provide them with warmth, shelter, and access to reliable food sources; you and your sleeping family!
Bed bugs move from structure to structure by hitchhiking a ride on people, our clothing, or after crawling onto our personal belongings. Transporting secondhand items like mattresses, furniture, and electronics from one home to another is another way a bed bug infestation can begin.
Once inside a house, bed bugs make themselves at home. They won’t hesitate to begin feeding, breeding, building their populations, and traveling throughout your structure.
Where will I find bed bugs?
Bed bugs are not pests that you will find outside crawling through your yard or grass; they live inside with people. Bed bugs like to hide in dark, tight spaces and emerge to feed on their sleeping hosts, attracted by a person’s body heat and the carbon dioxide we produce as we breathe.
Regularly inspecting your home for bed bugs is the best way to identify an infestation before it takes over your entire home. Some of their most common hideouts include:
- Cracks in walls, floors, and wooden furniture.
- The seams of mattresses and box springs.
- Under clutter or piles of dirty laundry.
- Behind wood trim and baseboards.
- Inside electronics or outlets.
- Within pieces of upholstered furniture.
If you find bed bugs or signs of their presence in your home (piles of their exoskeletons, rusty spots or bloodstains on bedding, furniture, and mattresses, or a sweet, musty odor), immediately reach out to us for immediate help.