Suppose you visit the Environmental Protection Agency website. In that case, you will quickly realize just how difficult it is to find the answer to what is the best thing to kill bed bugs and keep them from coming back. While there are DIY and professional solutions available, not all of them are effective. It is more than likely that bed bugs will return sooner rather than later.
A better understanding of bed bugs, their life cycle, and feeding habits is essential to finding a way to eliminating the pests instantly and forever.
What Are Bed Bugs?
Bed bugs are tiny, oval-shaped parasites that feed on human and animal blood. They primarily feed at night and change from a flat to a rounded shape as they feed. They are generally brownish but can appear reddish after feeding. Their sheer size makes it easy for the bugs to hide and very difficult to see. Most commonly, you will only see the bug’s droppings, casings, and bite marks as evidence that you have a bed bug problem. Bed bugs don’t just infect beds. Most commonly carried into your home on your clothing. They also live along with your carpets, upholstery, curtains, drapes, and any other fabric or cracks in the wood.
An adult bed bug can lay up to 500 eggs in its lifetime, generally around six months. Nymphs hatch out of the eggs and experience five stages before reaching adulthood. They shed or molt their outer casing at each life stage as they grow. When eliminating bed bugs, it is critical to eradicating the eggs, nymphs, and the adult. The adult bugs can live without feeding for around eighteen months. The eggs can lie dormant for extended periods when the weather turns cold.
What is the best thing to kill bed bugs?
There are good and bad ways to get rid of bed bugs. Below are three standard methods of eliminating these blood-sucking pests.
1. Pesticides
Pesticides are effective at killing adult bed bugs. However, they most often do not eliminate the eggs. Eggs take between 8 and 10 days to hatch, which means that within 8 to 10 days of treating your home with pesticides, the nymphs will emerge, and your bed bug problem will start again.
The treatment happens in two or three stages – one to kill the adults and the second to kill the newly hatched nymphs before they reach adulthood and can lay eggs once again. Keep in mind that pesticides are toxic and, when applied per label, are not dangerous to you, your family, and your pet’s health.
2. Disposal
For severe bed bug infestations, disposal of infected items will reduce the insect population quickly. All infected items will be removed from the home and disposed of properly. Typically by a crew of trained personal to lower the risk of spreading the bugs. Now the disposal method is not the answer to, What is the best thing to kill bed bugs?
3. Heat
While bed bugs do prefer a warm habitat, they don’t like heat. Adult bed bugs start to die at temperatures exceeding 112 degrees F. The eggs dry out at high temperatures. They will continue to die once the temperature drops, and it will also compromise their ability to breed. Heat is, therefore, the most effective means of killing bed bugs instantly.
However, an inspection of the infected areas is required for a heat treatment to be fully effective. Remember that the tiny pests are experts at hiding, and the heat must reach these hiding places to eliminate all bugs, nymphs, and eggs.
To find out more about effective heat treatment to eliminate bed bugs instantly or to schedule an inspection Seattle Best Pest Detection or give us a call on 206.321.2085 today. We are open seven days a week.
