What To Do If The Bed Bugs Come Back
If you find bed bugs in your home, your best bet is to call a bed bug exterminator and have them treat your home. Usually, this will get rid of the bugs. But bed bugs are very stubborn pests, and even with the best pest control treatments, they sometimes return with a vengeance. So, what should you do if the bed bugs come back after your first treatment endeavor?
1. Consider heat treatment services.
The most common way to get rid of bed bugs may be with pesticide, but this method has a shortcoming. If your applicator misses some spots, and there are bed bugs in those spots, the bugs you miss will continue to breed and will re-infest your home. If your home has a lot of little nooks and crannies, pesticides are more likely to fail, even a second time around. Heat treatment is a better option. This method involves heating your whole space up to 120 degrees F. At this temperature, bed bugs cannot survive for more than a few seconds.
2. Make sure you're treating the whole home.
If you only noticed bed bugs in your bedroom, that may have been the only room you treated the first time around. But if even a few bed bugs found their way into your living room or spare bedroom, this could cause an infestation to return. The second time around, have the pest control service treat your entire home -- or at least any room where there are soft surfaces like carpets and plush furniture. (You might be able to safely skip the bathroom and kitchen.)
3. Treat inside the walls.
Whether you opt for heat treatment or pesticides, make sure your pest control professional treats the spaces between your walls. This is a popular place for bed bugs to hide; they often crawl into the walls thorough outlets and will re-emerge again when hungry. If you are handling pest control on your own, you can treat between the walls by squeezing some diatomaceous earth into the outlet openings. This fine, powdery substance will dehydrate and kill the bugs.
4. Launder your clothing.
Sometimes, the bed bugs may remain after treatment because you only treated the premises. You failed to treat your clothing, which can be a secondary harboring point for bed bugs. Launder all of your clothing in hot water, and dry it on high heat. As mentioned above, temperatures above 120 degrees F will surely kill the bugs.
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