Bed bugs eggs on fabric sofa - Bed bug control and removal in Red Bank, NJ

Challenge

Bed bugs are the very definition of stealth. When not looking to bite us for their next blood meal, they hide anywhere and everywhere. Finding them is a challenge. Often, we first find evidence of bed bugs like egg casings and dark spots of fecal deposits that lead us to their secret hideouts. Most customers facing a bed bug infestation believe that when we come into their home to inspect, our sole focus is in and around the beds. For us, the beds are only a starting point. To root out all of these bugs and fully resolve the infestation, we have to be a lot more resourceful and do a lot more detective work. 

Homeowners and tenants in apartments should know what the evidence of bed bug activity looks like in order to timely get professional help before the infestation spreads and becomes more entrenched. You’ll often find them well before you’ll spot a crawling bed bug. And since these bed bug signs don’t move or hide, if you have an infestation, you should be able to find them — if you know what you are looking for. 

This routine bed bug inspection in Red Bank is a great example of uncovering evidence of bed bug activity. While performing a routine inspection, I turn the sofa upside down. Bed bugs love to nest in areas that puts pressure on them, literally. Tight, small areas that puts pressure on their chest and backs give them security and makes them feel safe. Under this sofa, there was evidence galore. First, I found a few bedbug casings. Casings are the “skin” that bed bugs shed during the molting process (ecdysis).  Bed bugs go through five stages of maturing on their way to adulthood. At each immature stage, the bug molts after a blood meal, shedding their molted exoskeleton. These discarded skins look like a live bed bug since they are just their outer layer, but these empty shells are translucent and don’t move. Often these skins are found in large clusters along the seams of mattresses or upholstered furnishings. Their droppings appear as tiny spots that are rust-colored or black since they are your partially digested blood. 

While bed bug casings and droppings are disgusting, they are only the remnants of bed bug activity. To confirm an active infestation, you should try to find bed bug eggs. This sofa had several. To the untrained eye, these eggs can be tough to spot due to their size. They are ridiculously small, about the size of pinhead or grain of sand, and they are white to clear, so they easily blend in against white fabric. A highly trained professional should be able to find bed bug eggs, and more important, by using a HEPA vacuum and steamer, destroy them before they hatch.  

The most critical part of any bedbug service are the inspections, both the initial inspection and later re-inspections. After all, you have to know where the bugs are in order to treat them. Cowleys’ team of bed bug specialists thoroughly inspects all areas of the home. While extra attention is given to those rooms known or likely to be infested, we carefully inspect every room, including those not believed to have a problem. With bed bug inspections, everything is verified,  and nothing is assumed. We follow a “whole house” protocol to make sure that the entire home is properly treated and any re-infestation is avoided. As long as family members are walking around the house, there is always a risk that these stealth hitchhikers will relocate elsewhere. This is why it is so important to deal with bug infestations immediately. Infestations naturally spread over time because bed bugs follow their food source (us!) and do not stay localized to any particular locations in a home. A single bug sighting is enough to call in a bed bug specialist. With bed bugs, every day counts. The longer you wait, the infestation becomes larger, more entrenched, and more difficult and expensive to treat. 

Solution

So what does Cowleys do when we get a frantic call from a homeowner complaining of bed bugs? First, we treat it as a true emergency and jump on the problem. An inspector is sent out for estimate within one business day of the phone call. Resolving an infestation is a joint effort with the technician and the homeowner, so a prep sheet is signed and discussed with the homeowner. The objective is to keep the infestation contained and localized for treatment. 

Initial treatment starts with a thorough re-inspection of all the rooms in the structure, including those rooms not thought to have any problems. While one technician is inspecting, the other tech painstakingly uses a HEPA vacuum to remove all live bedbugs from those rooms with confirmed sightings. After the rooms and contents have been thoroughly vacuumed, we then use a commercial grade steamer to clear out all cracks and crevices of common hiding areas, focusing on bedroom and living room furniture where people sleep and rest. Mattress and boxsprings encasements are installed on the beds, bed leg monitors are then placed where applicable, and a light chemical application is given to these areas. In the two-week followup, we thoroughly re-inspect, and apply additional chemical applications to areas of concern. Two to three weeks later, in our final inspection, we make sure the structure is completely free of bed bugs, again applying a light chemical application to any areas of concern. After this visit, our 90-day “no bite no sight” warranty goes into effect.

Customers who elect heat treatment have less preparatory work to do before our visit. For our pretreatment, we spray all baseboards and remove all electrical outlet plate covers and apply a light residual dust inside them. A day or so later, industrial heaters and fans are brought in, raising room temperatures to a level that is proven to kill all life cycles and eggs. The room is kept at this bed bug-lethal temperature, a little more than 120 degrees F, for several hours to ensure that all bugs and their eggs will perish. Later, during the final post-treatment, we apply an additional application to baseboards and bed frames, install mattress encasements, and conduct a final inspect of all rooms for any bed bug activity. We strive to make sure our treatment plan definitively resolves any bed bug infestation the first time around.