3 Important Things You Need to Know About Bed Bugs

Have you recently found yourself waking up with itchy spots on your arms, legs, and around the rest of your body? Have you been blaming your cat or dog for bringing in fleas but none of the flea treatments that you've tried have actually made a difference? Once relatively uncommon, bedbugs have been making a comeback in recent years. Unfortunately, there are many myths and misconceptions that have allowed bedbugs to become an even bigger issue than they might otherwise be. Some things that you need to know about bedbug infestations include:

It's everyone's problem: One common myth surrounding bed bugs is that you have to be poor or dirty to get an infestation. This is completely untrue. Bed bugs do not care how dirty your house is, how clean you are, or how much money you make. While a "dirty" house may offer more hiding places than a clean one, there are still plenty of hiding places for a bed bug. This includes such places as behind outlet covers, underneath mattresses, and in between the cracks naturally present in most types of furniture. With so many places to hide and wait for their next meal, even the most pristine-looking home can house many bed bugs.

It just takes one: Unlike some other bugs and insects, all it may take is a single female bed bug in order for your home to be infested. Because all it takes is one, you may not even know where the infestation even came from in the first place. For instance, imagine that you are out eating at a restaurant. One of the other patrons unknowingly visited a location earlier in the day that had bed bugs and they inadvertently picked up a couple on their purse, backpack, or shoes. At the restaurant, one of the pregnant female bed bugs crawls off in search of a meal or a new hiding place and hitches a ride on you instead. Without ever having visited a place that had an active colony of bed bugs yourself, your home will now swiftly become a new breeding ground for these pests.

Bed bugs will stick around: Some insects and bugs have a lifespan that can be measured in just days or weeks, but this is not necessarily the case with bed bugs. Depending on the temperatures and the life stage of the bed bugs in question, a bed bug can sometimes live for months or even around a year without even eating. This makes bed bugs even more difficult to eradicate as they may go dormant and inactive during the cooler months of the year, making you think that they have been completely eliminated, only for them to show up again once the weather warms up. Because of this, control and elimination of bed bugs is best achieved with the help of services such as Yuma Pest Termite Systems.