Conducting a bed bug inspection can be performed to uncover preliminary evidence before more drastic measures are taken. You’ll have to go after the bed bugs if you’re not sure whether your home’s been infested, because they’ll only come after you when you’re sleeping.
It takes some leg work and a lot of effort, but it’s the best first step if you’re worried about an infestation. Look in these specific places for bed bugs, and pay close attention to detail.
- Check in the seams and folds of all your stored clothing, bedding, and cushions. Bed bugs will often leave signs of their passing, such as eggs or blood stains.
- Near the corners and edges of your rooms, the carpet should be peeled back to look for signs of burrowed beg bugs. Bed bugs can fit into tightly enclosed spaces, and people are frequently surprised by where they end up.
- Heavy furniture, such as entertainments, may also need to be moved. Bed bugs love to hide in the dark spaces and cracks beneath heavy wooden furniture and next to the wall.
Bed bugs leave some pretty obvious signs of their passing, even though they’re usually only active at night. Here are some things to check for.
- Bed bugs shed their skins frequently, and the skin they leave behind usually looks like a brownish flake. Sometimes the skin retains the shape of the bed bug, and can actually look like a living specimen.
- Bed bugs eggs are to be found in the seams of your mattresses, cushions, and sofas. They look like round, white balls, about the size of a sesame seed. They can also be found in the dark spaces you might uncover when peeling back carpet or moving furniture during your inspection.
- Bed bugs that have been feeding often leave blood stains on the bedding or the furniture as they move back to their dwellings during the night.
Peeling back baseboards, lifting up carpets, disassembling and moving heavy furniture, these are all part of the deal when looking for the signs of bed bugs. Go through the process in every room of your house, but especially in the rooms that have mattresses or sofas.
The downside of a visual inspection is that even with maximum effort, the results are likely to be frustratingly inaccurate. Trained inspectors usually achieve about 30 percent accuracy, and a DIY inspection isn’t likely to be as accurate as that.
You can achieve good results though, just work diligently and don’t cut corners in any room. Your main purpose in checking for the signs of bed bugs should be to confirm a possible infestation. If you have been waking up with bites, but you’re not whether it’s bed bugs or not, this is the next step. You’re not likely to be able to spot every infested area though, so think of a visual inspection as a litmus test for whether you have a problem and need to get more involved.
If you do find bed bugs after this type of inspection, employ home remedies to deter the spread of the bed bugs and look into hiring a professional detection and treatment service.