There’s something infuriating about bed bugs. You can sanitize your home, flush all of your furniture, machine wash and dry everything you own at the highest heat settings and still, somehow these microscopic pests come out on top. It’s not your luck – or lack thereof – it’s not even your cleaning abilities. It’s the way these creatures have transformed into one of the most resistant pests ever. Here’s why.
They’re Naturally Resistant
Let’s break down what’s so impossibly successful about these critters. Bed bugs can go without a blood meal for months. Yes, months. For things like cockroaches, a regular meal is essential for survival. But for bed bugs, they can hang back in your walls or the crevices of your couch and wait. This means there’s no time frame for you to move out of the house and starve them out over a romantic weekend away or an impromptu two-week vacation.
Bed bugs breed quickly, too. One female can produce hundreds of eggs in a lifetime and while all stages of life are important to eliminate, their eggs are the most difficult to penetrate with treatment. They’re sticky, small, blend into spaces you wouldn’t ever think to look in, and even if you eliminate all adults, those eggs hatch weeks later and start the cycle all over again.
Even more problematically, they’ve been proven to become resistant against many pesticides. Years of exposure with the same chemicals have allowed scientists to note levels of resistance in certain populations. It’s no longer just evolution; it’s pest evolution at play and it’s getting worse with each passing year.
Why Home Remedies Fail
From the onset, people want to try to get rid of bed bugs themselves. It’s understandable – who wants to pay someone when you can go to a hardware store and buy bug spray? But here’s where it becomes complicated.
Those bug bombs, those foggers – we all see them advertised – they fail to penetrate where bed bugs actually go. They squeeze themselves into nooks and crannies behind baseboards, wall sockets, stitching in the mattress seams, behind wallpaper. One spray on the surface gets maybe 20 to 30 percent of them if you’re lucky. A majority waits it out, breeds again.
People also try heat treatments as well; crank up the space heater or bring out the steamer. The idea is good – bed bugs die with sustained temperatures of over 120°F – but getting your room that sustained temperature throughout is pretty much impossible without professional equipment. Unless you’re literally cooking a room while another room maintains optimal temperature for humans, the bed bugs will just relocate.
Bed bugs also tend to scatter when they sense danger (the treatment fumes). Thus, if you treat one room aggressively without proper containment, you’re pushing the infestation into your other rooms. Now that gets expensive – and that’s how many people realize they have a bigger problem than what started.
What Professional Treatments Actually Do
With a bed bug infestation, it’s good to treat early because once professionals get involved, it’s not just about the stronger chemicals. Professional bed bug exterminators take integrated approaches that provide multiple solutions in the same package.
From the onset, there will be a treatment plan involving an extensive inspection using professional-grade items people don’t have in their arsenal at home. There will be careful oversight of every level of the infestation; sometimes even monitors or canine companions that sniff them out (that’s important because if you can’t find them, you can’t kill them).
The treatment itself usually combines multiple methods. The chemicals aren’t what they used to be – professionals use well-researched products that drive down resistance issues applied in ways that actually work for nooks and crannies. They may use dust formulations that penetrate wall voids and spaces that liquids can’t go into.
Many professionals use heat treatment methods which can get an entire room or house to lethal levels without creating an unsafe environment for humans or animals involved. This isn’t your space heater variety – this is specialized heat created with fans and tools that ensure every inch reaches and maintains the lethal temperature range for several hours.
But Get Ready For Follow-Up
One treatment rarely does the job effectively. When it comes to prevention and professionalism, this is one of the biggest differences. Professionals schedule follow-up appointments because they know how bed bugs biologically work.
Their eggs hatch between 6-10 days and newly hatched nymphs are sometimes harder to kill than adults. A more structured follow-up usually accommodates these new bugs before they mature enough to breed themselves which breaks the breeding cycle necessary for a true infestation elimination.
Between treatments come specific instructions on preventative measures and preparations – from encasing mattresses to treating possessions treated in specific ways and remaining mindful for signs of additional activity after treatment has commenced. It’s detailed work that requires patience from everyone involved.
Preventing After Treatments
Eliminating bed bugs is only half the battle as they’re great hitchhikers, reinfestations are quite common from people going on vacation or bringing in used furniture.
Used furniture is an obvious risk but bed bugs also travel in luggage, clothing, as well as any electronic or books you bring back from somewhere else. Prevention comes from being aware. For example, open up your luggage before you start unpacking at a hotel or check second-hand purchases before bringing them home.
If you travel frequently, it may be wise to keep your luggage in your garage as you immediately wash your clothing once you return home.
Regular check-ins help alleviate infestations early on which are much easier to get rid of than established infestations. This can mean checking mattress seams or headboards or using passive monitors trapping them as they attempt to scale the legs of beds.
The Final Word
Bed bugs are difficult to eliminate because they’re naturally resilient creatures, biologically effective breeders with quick maturation rates who can hide well and have adapted against conventional treatments.
When people attempt to get rid of them themselves it fails because they can’t get to those hidden populations; they forget about eggs; they make things worse by attempting big treatments instead of systematically treating like professionals know how to do.
When it’s time for professionals to step in, they come with realistic expectations integrated with inspections, multiple treatment methods, strategic timing and follow-up attempts which account for life cycles necessary for elimination during multiple attempts.
It’s not the cheapest option – but it’s often cheaper than months upon months wasted getting rid of yourself plus throwing out furniture in defeat along the way.
So, when it’s time for treatment through professionals to take hold, realize that it’s better sooner rather than later because complications arise the larger the infestation grows. The more challenging – and expensive – it becomes to fix them sooner than what could have been initially.
