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Most household pests respond to normal treatments. They take the bait. They die in sprays with a residue. They stay away after their entry points are sealed. Not bed bugs! Bed bugs have adapted to survive pest control treatments, and they hide in places that are often left untreated. What works for other pests often doesn’t work on bed bugs, leaving people with new infestations despite all their efforts.
Pesticide Resistance
The first thing that makes bed bugs hard to kill is that they’ve become resistant to the chemicals that once easily killed them. For the past few decades, bug populations in homes, hotels, and apartments have been doused with the same chemicals again and again. The bugs that survived have procreated. Now, there are entire populations of bugs that can survive concentrations of chemicals that would kill most other pests.
This is not even a minor adaptation, either. Some recorded populations can survive doses of pesticides up to 1,000 times what it takes to kill a non-resistant bed bug. If someone goes to the store, picks up a pesticide, and sprays it on their mattress, they might kill off some of the bugs that are lucky enough to come into contact with it. The resistant populations will survive, though, reproduce, and create entire populations that are even harder to kill. That’s why it’s important to seek out a bed bug exterminator in St. Louis that understands this issue and varies the treatments they employ instead of relying on pesticides alone.
Where They Hide
Another reason bed bugs are virtually impossible to eradicate is that they don’t just live on mattresses. The most common misconception about bed bugs is that they only live in mattresses. In reality, bed bugs can hide in the cracks in bed frames, in box springs, behind baseboards, behind electrical outlets, behind loose pieces of wallpaper, in the seams of upholstered furniture, and just about any other tight space. Anything that’s within about 15 feet of a place where humans sleep can harbor bed bugs. One bedroom can house hundreds of places where bed bugs can hide. All they need is a crevice the thickness of a credit card.
That means treatment is not an easy task. An unsuspecting person can spray their mattress until it’s soaked and still miss the bed bugs that are hiding behind the nightstand or even in the drawers of that same nightstand. Those bed bugs are the ones that will survive when the treatment wears off and will come out looking for their next meal. This is just one reason people suspect they’ve handled a bed bug problem but are still waking up with new bites weeks later.
The Long Lifespan
Bed bugs have yet another adaptation that makes them nearly impossible to eradicate; they can survive for a long time without feeding. In cooler temperatures, adult bed bugs can survive up to a year without blood. This means that even if treatment is able to wipe out most of the existing population, there might be a couple that survives in a guest room that’s not frequently used or behind someone’s luggage that’s been placed in storage.
Repopulating is where the real problem occurs. A female can lay anywhere from one to seven eggs a day. So, by the time treatment catches up with them, it’s still possible for the population to grow to astronomical levels. Under normal conditions, it takes about a week for eggs to hatch. After that, nymphs only need one meal to mature into bed bugs themselves and can do that in five weeks. Once someone does the math on those numbers, it’s easy to see how a free-for-all could wipe out their home with a massive bed bug population.
Why Heat Treatments Are Different
It’s because of these factors combined that many heat treatments from professional services have gained popularity. Heat treatments are popular because they solve the issue in a way that leaves bed bugs unable to adapt the same way they do to pesticides. Bed bugs die when the temperature gets too high (over 120 degrees Fahrenheit) for long enough periods of time. They cannot become resistant to heat the same way they can with the chemicals people try to use to eradicate them. A proper heat treatment will raise the temperature of every inch of a room (even inside its walls and furniture) to fatal levels for bed bugs and their eggs.
Even these treatments require skill to perform correctly. Improperly-performed heat treatments might leave cold spots in rooms where the furniture makes the heat harder to permeate evenly through the space. Professional services have the equipment and expertise necessary to make the process as effective as possible.
The Inspection Process
One other reason people should work with professional services instead of attempting to DIY as much as possible is that the process for locating all the hiding areas that the bed bugs call home needs an expertly trained inspection process. These bugs are tiny and flat and they do a great job of hiding during the day when potential victims aren’t sleeping.
An untrained person might see some signs of an infestation in one room but miss other rooms that may be suffering from satellite infestations completely. As infestations grow, bed bugs will create multiple places to hide so that whatever treatment is directed towards them doesn’t wipe them all out. If someone is trying to solve their own issues but only performs a treatment in one room, there could be dozens of other places waiting to catch on and restart the infestation.
Professional inspectors know what to look for and what kinds of signs might exist, including specific areas where bed bugs hide based on how rooms are set up and how furniture is arranged. For instance, heavy infestations give off a specific smell that no other bug produces; it’s sweet and musty when people first notice it.
Moving Forward With Reasonable Expectations
Even though professional treatment is much more likely to lead to complete elimination rather than DIY treatments, it’s still not something that happens overnight and might require multiple forms of treatment before it works. No one should enter into this type of situation expecting immediate results from just one treatment; anyone promising this kind of outcome doesn’t know what they’re dealing with or they are simply not being honest about how these bugs operate and survive.
For all these reasons, bed bugs are one of the worst infestations when it comes to complete and total elimination. People shouldn’t try to cut corners when it comes to treating their homes for these hidden pests; otherwise, there is no fumigation or treatment that will sufficiently mitigate the problems people have been experiencing.
