How to Find Bed Bugs During the Day?
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If you think you’re immune to suffering from bed bugs because you rarely stay in a hotel, think again. The incidents of homeowners finding that they have bed bugs in their homes are rising and most exterminators admit that they treat homes for bed bugs all year long. Still, because bed bugs tend to be more active at night, people may find it difficult to locate them during the day when they have more time to look for these pests; however, this doesn’t mean that the task is impossible.
If you do decide to look for bed bugs during the day, how do you find them? Fortunately, just because bed bugs are more active during the nighttime hours doesn’t mean you can’t find them during the day. All you have to do is know what you’re looking for and the rest is easy.
Getting Started with the Bed Bug Search
Before you get started, it’s a smart idea to have a flashlight and a magnifying glass, and to open up all of your curtains and blinds so that you have as much natural sunlight in your home as possible. Because bed bugs are so small, you’ll need as much light as possible and natural sunlight always works best.
The first thing you should do is look for any signs that you have live bed bugs. Because they love to feed on you while you’re asleep, your bed is the first piece of furniture you should check. Look over the entire mattress but especially the stitching and seams of the mattress. Next, carefully inspect the entire bed frame and the box spring, focusing on any cracks or crevices that can easily hide these pests.
And don’t stop at your bed. Keep in mind that bed bugs can be found almost anywhere in your home so if you have any furniture that consists partly of wood, make sure that you check those pieces thoroughly. More often than not, bed bugs are easy to see if you know what they look like. They are about the size of a grain of rice and are usually reddish in color.
What to Look for
Remember that bed bugs love to hide so you may have to look very carefully and use either a flashlight or a magnifying glass in order to see them. And even if you see no live bed bugs, this doesn’t mean that you don’t have a problem. In fact, if you see no live bed bugs, you still need to look for eggs or nymphs. Nymphs are small like the bugs themselves but are transparent in color. Some may have a reddish-brown color in the middle of their bodies and this means that they are already starting to feed.
The eggs are half the size of a grain of rice and are most often found in areas that don’t normally get a lot of movement or disturbance. You can also look for signs that include black spots or small stains of blood as well as shed skins or exoskeletons. All of these things are signs that you have bed bugs that are multiplying regularly and therefore need to be taken care of.
Of course, you don’t always have to go looking for bed bugs to know that they exist in your home. If you have any type of red marks or bites on your body, especially if they itch and are uncomfortable, it could mean that you have bed bugs. But this doesn’t mean that you don’t need to look for the bugs anyway. After all, once you know that they are in your home, you have to know exactly where they are if you want to get rid of them. Inspecting your home thoroughly is the first thing to do.
A lot of the time, the bites appear as tiny red dots that are often found in clusters of five or six bites. They are not huge bites but they are almost always grouped together and are therefore usually easy to find.
Where Should You Look to Find Bed Bugs?
The first thing that you need to realize about bed bugs is that they absolutely love to hide so prepare yourself for the fact that finding them can be very time-consuming. Considering they are only the size of a grain of rice and can be found in just about any crack and crevice in your home, it can seem to be an impossible task to find them. Once you realize what they look like and you get used to looking for them, you’ll be surprised how easy they are to find afterwards.
Let’s take a look at some of the places they love to hide. These include:
- Behind paintings on the wall
- In dressers
- Behind electrical outlet covers
- In nightstands
- In other types of upholstered furniture
- In sofas and couches
For the most part, the majority of live bed bugs can usually be seen with the naked eye; however, some of the bugs, as well as eggs and nymphs, will likely require a magnifying glass or flashlight to find them quickly. There are also other places where you may find bed bugs and these include:
- Backpacks
- Clothing
- Luggage
- Rugs or carpets (although they don’t usually stay there for long)
Of course, once you discover you have bed bugs in your home, you’ll need to take action fast in order to get rid of them quickly. Bed bugs are not that difficult to get rid of, especially if you only detect a small number of them. Still, if you’ve spent the day inspecting your home for these bugs and you’ve determined that you have a lot of them, it is likely best to go ahead and call an exterminator to get rid of the problem once and for all.
Conclusion
Bed bugs are not pleasant insects to find in your home so it’s good to know that there are numerous over-the-counter products that are very effective at getting rid of them. Finding bed bugs during the daylight hours is usually easier than trying to find them at night when they’re more active. Once you know what to look for, it gets easier and easier each time you look. And this is the first step to making sure that you get rid of them so that you’ll have one less thing to worry about.