Fact vs. Myths: Bed Bugs In Washington D.C.
01/20/2022
Bed bugs are small parasitic pests that often resemble an apple seed to the naked eye. They have a wingless, oval-shaped body with a reddish-brown ...
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No one wants to think about a bed bug infestation in their home or business, but the truth is that it could happen to anyone. If it happens to you, are you prepared to deal with it in the most effective way possible? You may think that do-it-yourself methods of bed bug control are the simplest and cheapest way to get rid of your Maryland bed bug problems, but we guarantee that you’ll want to call a professional instead.
What Are Bed Bugs?
Bed bugs are small parasitic insects that make most people feel itchy just from the mere mention of their name. Their name comes from the fact that they often bite human hosts in their beds while they sleep, which makes them a pest that is a cause of fear, stress, and insomnia.
Bed bugs usually grow no bigger than a quarter of an inch in length and have broad flat bodies that swell after a feeding. The adults are reddish-brown and the nymphs begin a translucent white color and then darken through each stage of development.
Unlike most pests that must be near in proximity to your home or business to infest it from the outside, bed bugs infest homes by riding in on their hosts. Bed bugs love to travel, and they often climb onto the clothing, bags, boxes, or luggage of unsuspecting people. This means that anytime you are out in public, you have the potential to bring bed bugs home with you.
While most active in the hottest months of the year, bed bugs are active year-round. They tend to spread to new locations most during the summer and over the holidays as these are the most active times of the year for travel. During the other parts of the year, they will still hitchhike from place to place, but they are also known to settle in and increase their populations in the areas where they're currently thriving.
The Common Mistake Maryland Home And Business Owners Make When It Comes To A Bed Bug Infestation
When Maryland home and business owners discover a bed bug infestation, they know that they must take action. A bed bug infestation does not go away on its own, nor can it simply be ignored and allowed to stay. Even if an infestation is discovered in its early stages, if nothing is done about it, it will continue to grow until bed bugs have overtaken the entire building.
It is at this stage that many home and business owners make a common mistake. Instead of contacting a professional pest control company to eliminate their bed bug problem, they assume it will be a lot less costly to take care of it themselves.
In theory, this makes sense. Most jobs are cheaper to do on your own. For instance, repairing your car yourself instead of bringing it to the mechanic will save you the cost of labor. However, if you don’t have any car repair experience or skills, you might not fix the problem or you could even end up making the problem worse.
The same goes for bed bug control. Although trying to eliminate a bed bug infestation on your own may save you the cost of hiring a professional pest control company, if you don’t have the experience or skills related to bed bug control, you might not fix the problem or you could even end up making the problem worse.
The Most Common DIY Bed Bug Control Methods
To further illustrate why DIY bed bug control may be more costly than professional pest control, let’s look at some of the most common do-it-yourself bed bug control methods.
Baking Soda
Sprinkling baking soda around the areas where bed bugs are most often found is a popular do-it-yourself method of bed bug control. The theory is that when bed bugs come in contact with the baking soda, it will dry them out and kill them.
At less than a dollar a box, it’s easy to see why home and business owners flock to this method of bed bug control. Unfortunately, there is absolutely no scientific evidence that it actually works. Even if it manages to successfully eliminate a few of the bed bugs that walk through it, you’ll still be left with a sizable and growing bed bug infestation.
Rubbing Alcohol
Like baking soda, rubbing alcohol is thought to eliminate bed bugs on contact. It has been shown that some bed bugs will die when sprayed with alcohol that you can find at the store. However, because not all bed bugs die when sprayed, your infestation will remain. Furthermore, it would be nearly impossible to directly spray every bed bug in your home or business, making this method ineffective.
Although it’s inexpensive at a couple of dollars a bottle, that’s two dollars down the drain on a method that takes a lot of time and doesn’t work.
Mothballs
Mothballs are a common DIY method of pest control for everything from moths to mice, so it’s no surprise that people try to use them to eliminate bed bugs too. It’s thought that the smell of mothballs is repugnant to bed bugs and will repel them. However, this theory, even if true, does nothing to actually get rid of your bed bug infestation. It simply drives them deeper into your walls where they can remain for several months without a meal before reemerging.
Mothballs are usually around $5 per box, so they are not a huge investment, but you’ll waste months thinking you may have eliminated your bed bug infestation only to have it come back even larger than it was before.
Washing Bedding
Washing bedding on a hot water wash and drying it on a high heat setting is an effective way to eliminate bed bugs on your sheets and blankets. However, this method of bed bug control, while effective for the items you’re washing, does nothing to eliminate the bed bugs that aren’t on your bedding.
Washing your bedding is an effective part of bed bug control, and one that only costs you the price of the water, electricity, and laundry soap, but it is only part of the solution.
Freezing
Like washing bedding on a hot setting, freezing items with bed beds is another effective way to eliminate them, but it is only part of the solution. You must ensure that your freezer’s temperature remains below zero and that the items stay inside for at least four days. However, like washing bedding, this doesn’t take care of any of the bed bugs that aren’t on the specific items you freeze. Since most people don’t have access to a large enough freezer to put items like beds, and since no one can put their walls in a freezer, this method is only partially successful on its own.
The Most Cost-Effective Bed Bug Control Method
You may have noticed that none of these do-it-yourself methods of bed bug control cost that much money. More importantly, though, you may have also noticed that none of them fully work to eliminate bed bugs.
If you attempt these methods, you may not have spent a lot of money, but you will have spent a lot of time and frustration with nothing to show for it. At this point, you may be tempted to try do-it-yourself bed bug sprays. A gallon of bed bug spray costs around $20, which again is less expensive than hiring professionals.
However, as in our car repair example, if you don’t know the proper way to apply the treatment, the proper places to treat, or the equipment needed to supplement a chemical treatment, you won’t experience effective results. In fact, you could end up putting the health of the people in the building at risk if you don’t apply the spray correctly, and you could make the problem worse by sending the bed bugs into hiding only to come out again in a few months.
When it comes to deciding the most cost-effective method of bed bug control, you need to take more than the direct monetary cost of the solution into consideration. DIY methods of bed bug control may only cost you a small amount of money on products, but they also cost you time that you could be spending on other things you need or want to do. Furthermore, since they don’t work or only partially work, you’ve wasted your time and money. If you own a business, you also have to take into consideration the money you will lose in revenue as you work on solving your bed bug problem.
Once you consider all the factors, it becomes clear that while it may be a short-term monetary expenditure, in the long run, professional bed bug control will save you time, money, and frustration.
At American Pest, we are experts in bed bug control. Not only do we understand the habits and life cycles of bed bugs, but we’ve also spent years perfecting our bed bug control methods to ensure that they are effective, efficient, and safe.
We use heat treatments to eliminate bed bugs in just one treatment. Our heat treatments work by heating your building to a temperature that is known to be lethal to bed bugs and holding it at that temperature for several hours.
Heat treatments are extremely effective because they can reach into every nook and cranny of your building, including within the walls where bed bugs often hide. They are also effective because they eliminate bed bugs in every stage of development, from egg to adult.
When you consider that your bed bug infestation can be fully eliminated in just one day and is guaranteed to work, it’s easy to see why the best way to treat a bed bug infestation in your Maryland home or business is through the professional bed bug control services of American Pest.
If you have bed bugs in your home or business, don’t fool around with DIY methods that don’t work. Instead, jump right to the guaranteed solution. Contact American Pest today.
