Bed bugs in my bed. I’m horrified!!

[BeLimeTiger]

We got back from holiday in Italy three weeks ago and my partner was complaining of bites (I thought he was being a bit of a hypochondriac). Anyway, I noticed bites today and specs of brown/red on our pillows.

I found one of the critters and took a picture of it… definitely bed bugs.

Has anyone successfully treated an infestation and if so how? I’ve put all the sheets and mattresses protectors in the wash. I’m so horrified!

Good luck. Apparently they’re quite hard to remove.

Diatomaceous earth powder, Amazon has it , do NOT breathe this in, I spread a little on a carpet area or wooden floor/lino area and sweep it into a cloud of dust with a hard brush, then LEAVE the room/area until the dust settles, they will not survive this treatment, wear a mask while doing this if you can but move outside or to another room with the window open until the dust settles into carpets/furniture.

Assume you brought some back from your holiday accommodation?

Then what? Hoover it up after a period of time?

You’ll probably want to take a week off work. Then buy some diatomaceous earth. And a torch. Then get on Google.
Good that it’s probably from the trip and probably still contained in one room. Likely from your luggage.
The DE is not a poison. It’s finely ground material with tiny spikes that injures the bastards. So needs to be placed where they’ll encounter it.
If you have the space and facilities it’s a combination of disposing of things, treating them, placing them in freezers. Do it now before they reproduce too much.

I had them in my last rental, couldn’t get rid of them after eight months - they hide in the tiniest of places. I left the rental due to another reason and did regular laundry of my bedding and checking all over the bedroom so my point is they are very hard to remove without professional help or the powder mentioned above (which I wasn’t aware of at the time). I found them in various areas of my bedroom.

Have you checked everywhere? It doesn’t take them long to reproduce in warm conditions.

So sorry OP. We were away last week and realised when we were there that there were bed bugs. The accommodation was expensive and had good reviews and appeared very clean. I think their infestation had just started as nothing was obvious on the sheets and I only spotted a small bug after 24 hours. I still look like a dot to dot and the bites are really itchy and uncomfortable and last up to 14 days. I have much sympathy with your DP. I react to bites much worse than my DH and have lots of obvious ones whereas he only has a few.
I did a lot of googling when we were away and the consensus seems to be a professional pest company heat treating the house is the only thing that gets rid of them. Chemical treatments don't seem to be as effective.
Because I realised when we were away I have tried to do all I could to avoid infestation at home. After much reading on the internet we did a horrible routine when we arrived home of stripping off at the back door and showering first and changing in to clothes left at home, keeping cases outside, all clothes in 60 degree washes (transferred from bin bags outside and straight into the machine), vacuuming and steaming cases, and ironing all clothes. Before we left the accomodation we ironed everything we were wearing in the hope of killing off any on our clothes. I'm still waiting to see if we have brought them home and it really spoilt our holiday.

I hope you haven’t! They’re absolute buggers and the NHS recommends professional help. From what I’ve read since my original post, heat treatment is most effective and the going rate is £1,200. I don’t think I’ll be able to sleep in my own room until they’re gone. Luckily there are no signs of them in my child’s room or spare bedroom

You really need a professional to do it. They are obviously used to doing it and will give you precise instructions on what to do. You'll need to be out of the house when they do it. Heat treatment isn't always possible depending on the layout of your house, in which case they'll offer a chemical treatment. Look at reviews and make sure you get one which will do a return visit if necessary. Good luck. Feel free to PM me.

Hopefully you have caught nice and early

I share a flat. An ex-flatmate introduced them, and the room that was hers is very badly infested. It’s now penetrated to mine. The pest control people are coming in any time now for 12 hours to heat-treat then a chemical treatment. Getting the flat ready has been a nightmare - three of us have had to strip out rooms overnight and put everything except furniture in the bathroom and kitchen. All fabric has to be washed at 60 degrees. Two flatmates had to go to work, and as I WFH, I’m here to liaise with the pest control company. I’ll let you know how it goes.

I don’t know how my partner slept in the bedroom last night after we’d hovered, cleaned, and laundered everything. I saw one of the buggers on the headboard this morning . I’m contacting the council this morning as I think I can pay them to treat it. If not, hopefully they can recommend someone

Please do! They seem to reproduce incredibly quickly in this weather and from what I’ve read they eventually find you whatever room you’re in!

We've brought them back from holidays twice - cases are now never put on the beds in holiday accommodation and are quarantined in the utility and all clothes washed on returning home.

I found a combination of Indorex Defence Spray (no idea if you can still get it - mine is left over from after our 1st bout in 2020) and Diatomaceous earth powder (which I already had a bag of for chicken coop red mite) did the trick relatively quickly.

Did the quarantine work? You'll see from my post below I'm hoping I've done enough after a bad holiday experience last week ☹️

Both times we got them was from Dominican Republic - 2020 (the worst, as I didn't realise at first and they had time to multiply) & 2022 (treated straight away and was very minor).

We've only been on a couple of holidays since, no sign of them on either holiday but I did the quarantine anyway.

Okay, so we have a company coming out today. They’ll be doing two lots of spraying (the heat treatment is £1,200 so we’ll try spraying first). We need to take everything drawers and wardrobes and put it in the bath. All clothes and bed linen needs to be washed as hot as possible (piled up in black bags atm). It’s much more of a nightmare than i initially thought it would be!

How on earth can you wash drawers and wardrobes full of clothes, most which wouldn’t survive a temperature of 60 degrees anyway?

Yiu can put delicates in a bag and put in the freezer for a few days if there's room...

So sorry @BeLimeTiger . It is indeed a nightmare. Because I realised when I was away I did a lot of internet searching. It ruined our holiday because I knew what we had to do when we got home. And I'm still nervous that it hasn't been enough 😥

If you want, after a while they will be gone for good, try to leave it as long as possible, trust me if you get a bad outbreak you will not care about some particles of dust on furniture etc. Also try to get a metal framed bed and a bed bug cover for the mattress, or buy a mattress in a plastic cover/packaging and leave the plastic on, again usual concerns about how things look are out the door when these things attack.
You don"t need the dust everywhere, they target humans where humans sit at rest mainly, so sofas/chairs in front of the telly and where you sleep, dust these areas and they will pick up the dust, it only takes one to carry dust back to the nest and it infects more of them, sounds brutal but they will chew you up badly ,especially during the night, otherwise.

They find you wherever you are, if they also find the magic dust there though they are crawling to their own doom, I have heard that the heat etc. treatments don"t work but no doubt people will feed back on how effective they were. There is a whole online industry dealing in sprays, liquids etc. to combat these things, any that I tried were just expensive B.S, try the dust, it works.

All of our bedrooms have been treated now and I shall continue to sleep in the spare room! I asked the pest man about diatomaceous earth and he said it works very well. They don’t use it professionally because it creates mess but it would be a good alternative that chemical sprays.

the spray keeps working for months after treatment so we can’t do any hoovering or cleaning the furniture for a month. I hope this works!

ABC Answer

Yes, don"t disturb the stuff they have sprayed around leave it to do it"s work for as long as possible. The dust is a fraction of the price of professional cleans though.