If bed bugs have become known for anything over the years, it is their natural ability for stealth. A big portion of this should be contributed to the parasite’s innate wit. Although extremely resilient, bed bugs are one of the smartest insects around. Unlike your common cockroach or ant, these creepy crawlers are smart enough to know their survival depends on not being detected.
Therefore, they will employ specific means and tactics to avoid detection at all costs. Whether it be missing a few feedings or rearranging their entire sleeping habits, these parasitic pests are more than willing to do the necessary.
Thanks to these skills and talents, you’ll almost be left with no choice but to force the bugs out into the open just to confirm their presence. Knowing the early warning signs and symptoms of a bed bug invasion do help, but it simply isn’t enough. Just because you are being rousted in the middle of the night with a nascent itching, it doesn’t necessarily mean you have a bed bug infestation on your hands.
You could simply be dealing with
mosquitos or
fleas. Do you have pets? It could be allergies. Learning how to trick these bugs into the open will only be beneficial to any homeowner in more ways than one.
Help Tricking Bed Bugs Into Revealing Their Presence
As was stated above, it is the bed bug’s natural wit that makes it such a formidable opponent. This little parasitic creature is smart enough to know its survival depends on remaining undetected in the home.
Not only are the bugs smart enough to understand this, but they are equipped with special abilities to take hiding to all-new heights. Simply put, they can squeeze and hide their bodies in some of the most unimaginable places. Squeezing into tiny nail holes, scurrying behind electrical outlets and baseboards, or burrowing into the far reaches of the mattress isn’t a problem at all.
You combine this with their natural wit, and it shouldn’t take a professional pest specialist to understand why you nearly have to force the bug into the open to reveal its presence. Of course, doing this very thing is much easier said than done but absolutely necessary for the procurement of definitive proof.
Force Them Into The Open
Although extremely resilient, resourceful, and witty, you can trick the bed bug into revealing itself. One of the most effective approaches is to first understand the bug’s nature. While a bed bug can go weeks without feeding, there will come a time when feeding is necessary.
These bugs try to make the process as easy and safe as possible, hence the invasion of the bedroom. Bed bugs feed when you sleep. Most people sleep during the night in the bedroom. Therefore, the whole ritual becomes all that much easier and safer for the bug when they take up residence in the sleeping quarters.
With that in mind, that gives you a huge advantage. You know when the bugs are likely to be out and about, scurrying around. This will be when you are supposedly sleeping. It doesn’t matter if you sleep during the day or night; these bugs will adapt their sleeping habits to the opposite of yours. If you sleep during the day, the bugs will feed during the day and sleep at night.
The best time to start searching for their presence is during this feeding time. One simple solution is to simply just wait for them to come out and feed. An adult bed bug is only about the size of an apple seed, so this task will still not be as easy as some might assume.
Manipulating The Environment
Unfortunately, staying awake during sleeping hours might not be a viable option for some homeowners. Even staying awake and searching during feeding hours doesn’t always guarantee a revealed presence because of the size of the bug. Whatever the situation might be, learning to manipulate your environment is one of the easiest and simplest ways to trick the bugs into the open. What does this mean?
It means tricking the bugs into thinking it’s feeding time. If you are a night sleeper this task will be much easier, as it’ll just require eliminating the lights and covering the shades with dark covers or shades. For daytime sleepers, this will be a much more difficult task but still entirely possible. It’ll just require the use of lights or heat.
Bed bugs are equipped with sensors that detect heat, so placing a heating pad or hot pack on your bed might also help draw them into the open.
A Strategic Relocation Of Bedroom Furniture
For those bugs that don’t take up residence in the mattress or bed frame, other unique methods can be employed to capture them. Even if the beds don’t sleep or hide in the mattress there will come a time when they need to travel to it for feeding. If you move the bed away from nearby walls the bugs will only be left with one means of access. That will be crawling up the legs. You can buy and place traps under the legs of your furniture to trap the bugs when they try to pass by.
While there are various designs available, most of these devices are designed like a dish and allow bugs to enter but prevent them from escaping. More expensive traps might even contain adhesive pads or lures. These are always quick go-to favorites for the professional pest community.
Detection Is Only The Beginning
As you should be able to likely see, uncovering definitive proof of the bug’s presence is just the beginning. You should also be able to see that this task certainly isn’t an easy one. Uncovering definitive proof is challenging enough. Unfortunately, things will only grow more difficult from here, as thoroughly eliminating the presence of the bug will be extremely difficult. It’s a task that’ll often require the assistance of a professional pest specialist.
We always have trained, qualified, licensed, and insured pest professionals standing by for the very task. All it takes is a simple phone call to our office to schedule your free in-home consultation or get a quote.
