In every clean and tidy house, “invisible neighbors” - insects and animals - live next to a person either constantly or periodically. Warmth and food attract many settlers. But among all the “uninvited guests” there are those who cause the greatest discomfort and bring a lot of trouble into the house - house bugs - where do insects come from in an apartment, what harm do they cause to household members, and how to get rid of them forever without risk to health. Let's consider these and many other questions.
Why do bed bugs appear in a clean house or apartment?
Contrary to existing opinion, the reasons for the appearance of bedbugs in a house or apartment are not at all related to the uncleanliness of the owners. Insects are ectoparasites of humans. They feed on the blood of warm-blooded creatures - domestic animals and humans. Therefore, the main instinct of the parasite is to answer the question of why bedbugs appear in a house or apartment. They came to find food, which they sense through their senses of touch. Having discovered it, the pest looks for secluded and hard-to-reach dark places near a food source, where it hides during the day and reproduces. The bedbug is a small nocturnal insect, which is why it is so difficult to detect.
But the description of a household pest does not answer the question of why bedbugs appear in an apartment, or how they enter a house where they have not been before. The answer to the question is extremely simple. There are many ways to infect premises:
- removal of bedbugs from neighboring apartments. To understand how bed bugs get into rooms and where they come from in a confined space, you need to imagine the paths of their movement - ventilation and sewer shafts, cracks and crevices in the walls and floors;
- relocation from the cold basement of an apartment building to warmer living quarters;
- presence of an animal in the house. When wondering where bedbugs might come from, remember that a pet can bring them from the street on its fur;
- Uncleanliness of pet owners. Don’t be surprised why bed bugs appear if your pet’s belongings are not disinfected;
- receiving a parcel or buying an item in a dubious place. When wondering where bedbugs came from in the apartment, remember that storage areas are not disinfected;
- staying in a hotel, public place, etc. In this case, the answer to the question of where bedbugs can come from in an apartment will have the most obvious answer - they were brought into the house on clothes and accessories;
- trips.
The most common reason why bedbugs appear in furniture and beds is that a person himself brought the pest into the house on the soles of shoes with dust. It is generally accepted that there are several types of domestic bugs - furniture, bed and linen bugs. But in fact, there is only one insect, but there may be several places where it is located in a person’s apartment. In nature, this type of insect is extremely diverse.
Danger to humans
The greatest danger to humans is an allergic reaction. It occurs due to enzymes injected into the wound, and microparticles of chitin and excrement rising into the air with dust. Often an allergic reaction occurs even in people who are not prone to it.
Allergic reaction to a bedbug bite in a child.
Like all bloodsuckers, house bugs are capable of carrying serious diseases:
- typhus;
- tuberculosis;
- yellow fever;
- pseudotuberculosis;
- tularemia, etc.
Infection of an insect can occur from a previous owner, and, moving to a new one, the bug is capable of infecting it during its life.
If a private home is inhabited by rodents, with which bed parasites sometimes also come into contact, then the list of diseases will be even wider.
Where do bedbugs hide in a house or apartment?
It is not enough to know where bedbugs come from in an apartment to avoid their appearance. You need to find out where to look for them in order to periodically carry out preventive measures.
Exterminators recommend checking 1-2 times a year:
- bookcases and shelves with bed linen, towels;
- mattress and carpets. You need to examine folds, edging, fringe, etc. The test will be effective if you stir up the accumulation of tissue;
- pet bed (at least once a month);
- places where wallpaper has come off the wall;
- cracks in the baseboard or walls, floor, ceiling;
- clothes that are stored in the closet for a long time;
- area around the battery, etc.
Furniture, bed and linen bugs hide in an apartment where ultraviolet rays and cleaning cannot reach them. Therefore, if blood-sucking insects are found among your neighbors, you should thoroughly clean the living quarters, paying special attention to treating the above-mentioned areas with insecticide.
How to detect a bug in an apartment: signs of the insect and its description
Having found out where bedbugs come from in a clean and tidy house, we will figure out how to detect the pest. The human ectoparasite has a flat, spherical body with short legs and a long trunk. It is very difficult to crush a hungry insect due to the shape of the body, but when it drinks blood, you only need to lightly press it down. Therefore, having decided what causes bedbugs in the apartment, pay attention to the bloody spots on the bed. This is the main sign of the presence of a parasite in the house.
The insect's body color ranges from transparent white (larvae) to burgundy brown (when saturated with blood). The body can be 3-8 mm in length, but often these are adults up to 5-6 mm. One individual drinks up to 5-7 µl of blood. This is 1.7-2.5 times larger than the pest itself. To accommodate such an amount of food, the insect's belly stretches in height. This type of ectoparasite is clearly distinguishable from other household pests due to the shape of its body.
Bedbugs leave other signs of their presence in the apartment:
- black dots and “poppy seeds” on wallpaper, furniture, bed linen - feces;
- body parts;
- an unpleasant almond odor - an enzyme that is secreted by an insect at the moment of fright;
- a feeling of mustiness and dampness in the room or from the linen.
But the main sign that bedbugs have settled in the house is bites on the human body. They have a pronounced character - the insect bites along a line. The female lays approximately 250-300 eggs in six months, so within a week two adult individuals can flood the room with bloodsuckers. This means that, having discovered signs of a parasite in the house, you should not go into detail about why bedbugs appear in an apartment and clean houses; you need to take immediate action.
Are bed bugs dangerous?
Finding out where bed bugs come from in an apartment is important in a preventive sense. The answers will help avoid re-infection of premises. Which is very important, because bloodsuckers can not only cause night discomfort with their bites, but also be carriers of serious diseases. Persons with increased sensitization of the body to irritants will suffer from severe allergies after an insect bite. Therefore, in parallel with clarifying the question of why bedbugs appear in an apartment, it is important to understand how to combat them with parasites using effective methods.
Insects easily adapt to difficult living conditions, so with a large population, grandma’s methods will not help. If, during an inspection of the premises, several nesting sites for pests were discovered, it is better to call a professional exterminator. Otherwise, you will have to re-deal with why bedbugs appear in the apartment after control procedures.
Traditional methods of controlling and preventing bedbug infestation at home
Having found out why bedbugs appear in the house, we will figure out how to deal with them without risk to household members and pets. Folk remedies are considered gentle. They are also recommended to be used as preventive measures for re-infection of premises. Therefore, devote time not only to finding out where bedbugs come from in your apartment, but also how to get rid of insects. There are several means:
- spread plants with a specific smell in the infected room (the entire apartment, if parasites are found, at least in one room) - chamomile, calamus, wormwood, tansy, wild rosemary, etc. These odorous herbs will not kill the “uninvited guest”, but will prevent its appearance. Fresh bouquets will relieve household members of the need to wonder where bedbugs come from in an apartment where there are no pets;
- wash floors and wipe dust in the apartment with infusions of the above herbs. Wet cleaning with decoctions 2-3 times a week will eliminate the need to solve the problem of how bedbugs appear in the house after disinfection;
- When wet cleaning, wipe the floor, furniture, baseboards and other comfort zones of parasites with vinegar, ammonia, acetone, mothballs or kerosene. It doesn’t matter why bedbugs appear in residential areas, it is important how to effectively and safely deal with them. And the listed products are the strongest repellers of bloodsuckers, which can be bought inexpensively in a specialized store;
- Place bouquets of fragrant herbs in the ventilation holes of the rooms. Knowing where bedbugs come from in residential areas, these are the routes of entry that should be protected.
Folk remedies are effective for small populations of blood-sucking insects and as preventive measures. They are safe for both households and pets, but not as an effective measure. If you find bedbugs in your apartment, the reasons for which are described above, and you want to get rid of them quickly, you need serious measures. Either professional exterminators or ready-made industrial preparations will help here. Household insecticides will kill bedbugs in a house where they would not have come from - how to get rid of “uninvited guests”, and with what drugs?
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We don’t end our search on the bed...
Now. You found bedbugs in the bed. This means that you need to look for them in the entire room, and preferably in the entire apartment. Here you need to inspect all the cracks, holes, cavities where they can physically get into. The following rule works here: the more difficult it is for you to get to a particular bedbug shelter, the more likely they are to have a nest there. Therefore, if you only plan to move the bedside table, look under it, lift a pot of flowers, look under it and that’s it, then you will almost certainly not find the main places where bedbugs accumulate.
In our practice, we were sometimes able to find bedbugs in completely unexpected places. I’m not talking about baseboards and under parquet floors - they are almost always there. But it happens that their nests are found behind books on shelves and behind the shelves themselves, inside laptops and computer system units, behind pictures on the walls, in safes, in sockets, in old things that people have not worn for a long time. You must understand that if you leave such places in your house, then there is a high probability that bedbugs will remain there, and even after treatment, individual individuals may survive here and restore the population in a few months.
Simply put, the bed is just the beginning. This is where you discover bedbugs and this is where you start looking for them. And where you will find all the other nests is very difficult to say. The main thing is to understand that bedbugs are not only infested in beds. It’s very, very rare that this happens: they are in the bed, but not anywhere else. But these are extremely rare cases, most likely this is not the case with you and they are somewhere else in the apartment. It just seems to you that they live in the bed simply because they only bite you when you are sleeping on the bed. But in reality they can be anywhere.
More details about where bedbugs come from and how to fight them?
Bed bugs climb onto mattresses, pillows and upholstered furniture (we found out the reasons for their appearance in a person’s home above) from the floor, fleecy carpets, and animal fur. Smelling the smell of food, the parasite begins the process of nesting nearby its “prey”. This is how bedbugs get in residential premises - they look for a secret fold or lapel and hide there. After making sure of the safety and availability of food, they begin the breeding process. The same applies to furniture and linen items. When there is a lull in the night, the predator goes out to feed. It finds the victim by smell and drinks its quota of blood within 10 minutes. Having found out what causes bedbugs in the apartment, we will figure out how to get rid of them using strong industrial insecticides.
An insecticide is a toxic substance that destroys the chitinous cover of an insect and penetrates its respiratory system. The drugs paralyze the pest, which leads to suffocation. Having determined the signs and causes of bedbugs in an apartment, let’s consider how to get rid of them with ready-made preparations:
- detect places where pests accumulate;
- clean the premises;
- treat areas where parasites are localized with an insecticide;
- treat all comfort zones in the house;
- after some time (depending on the number of bedbugs, how pests appear in the apartment, and the chosen product), wash the premises, removing dead insects;
- reapplying insecticide to comfort zones.
It doesn’t matter where home bugs come from and why, rooms will have to be treated with ready-made insecticides 2-3 times. Perhaps more. The fact is that household preparations are not as aggressive as professional products, and therefore do not affect pest eggs. So that after 1-1.5 weeks you don’t have to wonder why bedbugs appear in the apartment after disinfection.
The drugs must be used strictly in accordance with the instructions. It is not recommended to use them without personal protective equipment. It is also worth remembering that with a significant pest population, even strong household insecticides will not help. Therefore, it’s not worth spending time figuring out where bedbugs come from in an apartment and how to get rid of them. It’s better to call an exterminator right away.
Store shelves offer a lot of ready-made products. But not all of them are safe and effective. Strong insecticides are best used in a house where people will not live for the first time after treatment. You should also carefully consider the choice of drug if there are allergy sufferers, small children and pets in the house. Effective drugs against bedbugs, like
fight them using them as described above:
- Executioner and Gektor;
- Empire and Insect Control;
- Cimex and Cifox;
- Delicia and Ecokiller;
- Get and Tetrix;
- Agran and Reid;.
These are not all drugs, but they are the most convenient to use and effective. If their use does not help, and you do not know how bedbugs appear in the apartment again after self-disinfection, contact a specialist. Remember: human ectoparasites are carriers of serious diseases and create an unfavorable microclimate in the house where a person lives.
Disinsection service with 24-hour on-site service
If you have a problem with insects, we invite you to contact us, the pest control service “Dezstation”. We have been professionally exterminating bedbugs for many years and know everything about how to quickly and effectively deal with these insects.
Our employees are ready to travel 24 hours a day, 7 days a week! Call the phone number listed on the website or fill out the feedback form to find out how to prepare for disinfestation and invite specialists to a convenient time.
