The Insidious Bedbug

Has any of you bought a new mattress set in recent weeks? Might be a good idea to strip your sheets & grab a flashlight. Carefully inspect every fold & crevice along the mattress edges, as well as open up the box spring cover underneath it & look for tell tale signs of odd blackish brown spots all clustered together... these are bedbug colonies silently invading your "new" mattress set!
When I got the new twin set for my son last Spring, I was never suspecting anything other than a few flea bites when he showed me the red marks on his legs & arms. After all, they can still hide anywhere even if the cat is protected. So we sprayed my son's sheets with deluted lemon juice & the bites stopped as long as I remembered to do that. But the cat had no fleas. No one in our household has seen a flea jump on them. So what was still biting my son on a regular basis?
Decided on a hunch to grab a flashlight & go on a quest to see if any clues were lurking in the dark hidden parts of my son's mattress & boxspring... and OMG did I ever find them!! Apparently my kid has been the source of nutrition for a whole lotta little blood suckin bedbugs... how gross to think they had multiplied feeding on him for months!
So since we live in an apartment complex, I raised the alarm with the maintenance man who promptly gave me a huge jug of bug killer spray so I could go in & make direct attack on these hideous crawling night invaders. The maintenance man offered to spray my whole apartment, but once I checked my bed & my husband's, there were no other signs of further infestation. I never had a bite & neither has hubby. So I have to conclude these creepy critters came along for the ride in my son's new mattress. Don't remember him ever complaining of little red bite marks til after we got his new mattress set...
So from now on I have to re-treat his bed every month with bug spray, cuz there's always a few that find a way to avoid it & live to produce the next gen. Just got the latest hatch outs the other day, only to discover how some had decided they would be better off migrating up to the crack in the ceiling over the bed & start a new nest site from there! Yakk!! Seems every species is determined to reproduce itself as close to their food source as possible. To me, a bedbug is something like a cross between a flea & a cockroach. A mini blood sucking cockroach, if you will. I've noticed when I spray an adult bedbug with poison, it raises its butt way up high before it dies... Gnarly!
So just to be on the safe side, next time you are planning to buy a new mattress set, don't take it for granted there couldn't possibly be a couple of hidden passengers waiting inside it to set up shop as soon as they have located a warm blooded host sleeping on it every night.... and spray it with bedbug insecticide before you even use it first, may be a very wise precaution!

Instead of using poison spray, invest in a steamer  http://www.h2omopx5.ca/?gclid=COvx_d_s0rkCFScSMwodmjQA-A

Not only will the steam kill the live bugs, but it will kill their eggs too.  Use the steamer on the mattress, the floors, the walls and especially on the baseboards.

All poison does is cause these critters to run and scatter.  And trust me, I've had problems with bed bugs in my apartment. If you have them in one room, they're also elsewhere. You just haven't seen them.  Best to have them come and spray the apartment, and the apartment next door and above and below  you, because if you have them, so do they.  And if they aren't treated in the other places, you will never fully get rid of them.

My former neighbour gave me bed bugs and it was an 8 month battle and 4 separate sprayings before I was bed bug free.  I invested in a steamer and I steamed every single piece of furniture I own, inside and outside and underneath. I also went along all of the baseboards where it meets the carpet, I steamed inside the radiator, and for months I was vacuuming my floors and carpets every single day without fail, and using the steamer on the rug once a week.

In fact when I bought a new mattress and box spring last year in February because I refused to take the bed bug infested one with me, even though it was only 2 years old and a $2,000 mattress set, I left the hard plastic covering on the new set, and I still have it on.  I can't say it's comfortable sleeping on thick crunchy plastic, but I'm too paranoid to remove it. I can't afford to replace my bed every 2 years.

Thanks for the tip! Not sure if I can afford one of those right now, but will definitely be planning it as a second defense. My neighbor upstairs complained of a bedbug infestation in her apartment as well- its like roaches, you may never be able to kill them "all" for long!

ChristineMarie said:

Thanks for the tip! Not sure if I can afford one of those right now, but will definitely be planning it as a second defense. My neighbor upstairs complained of a bedbug infestation in her apartment as well- its like roaches, you may never be able to kill them "all" for long!

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You can't target kill bed bugs. So I don't know what that can of bug spray they gave you to use was about!.  Spraying them will only cause them to scatter to other areas, and that just spreads the problem.  The building management needs to do a spraying of all apartments complaining of infestation, and the apartments directly above and beside each of those apartments.

It is a real pain!  http://www.toronto.ca/health/bedbugs/treatprepfactsheet.htm

All pictures off the wall, all cupboards/closets emptied, all fabric stuff laundered and put into sealed plastic bags and left there until the final spraying.  You literally live out of a suitcase of items that you have kept out for your use over the next 2 weeks.  They come in and spray once.  Then in 10 days they come in and spray again.  It takes about 10 days for the eggs to hatch, so the second spraying is needed.

However, it's been my experience that they really should do a 3rd spraying, just in case some eggs didn't hatch. Because if there is even one bug left, even a baby one, there will be more eggs and the infestation will continue.

ChristineMarie said:

Thanks for the tip! Not sure if I can afford one of those right now, but will definitely be planning it as a second defense. My neighbor upstairs complained of a bedbug infestation in her apartment as well- its like roaches, you may never be able to kill them "all" for long!

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Steamers are a wonderful investment! Safe for kids and pets too (no chemicals). I got my Haan steamers from Amazon.

And on a trivia note of bed bugs (I'm now an authority).  Did you know that a bed bug can live without feeding for a period of 7 months?  So one obscurely hidden bed bug can find it's way out of hiding in 6 months time, and start feeding and reproducing.

From what I can understand, there's nothing for the critters to eat except the blood of a sleeping host at night. They "sleep" til their next nocternal trek to your body on a bed. I've carefully checked our other two beds for ANY sign of a bug, & none was found. The insecticide I was given is just for fleas/bedbugs in a gallon bottle with pump, & works just like the pro kind used around the baseboards or other hidey holes for bugs. I haven't found any other sign of infestation but in that new mattress set alone... we are also vacuuming under it & scouring for new arrivals every 2 or 3 weeks. I do like the steam machine idea alot & will be checking around for the best price on one.

Do it yourself spraying, will NOT work!  You will always have bed bugs, because they get into the walls through electrical outlets and migrate from place to place.

Having the building management do a spraying does not cost you anything!  They have to pay for it.

IMHO you should complain to the rentals board that they are making you do spot spraying. That's just a temporary bandaid.  Doing what you are doing will have to be done for ever so long as you live there, unless they come in and do a professional spraying!

And by the way, if you say you bought that bed new in the spring, it's several months later.  Each adult female bed bug can lay about 7 to 10 eggs per week.  Each of those takes about 21 days to grow up, and each of them can lay 10 eggs per week.  Since you bought that bed in the spring, it has been many weeks.  And now you say that your neighbour has them too.  So either you gave them to her, or she gave them to you and you only think they came in on the new bed.

Bed bugs prefer fabric, and they love humans. We are the perfect host for them. However, they don't always live on beds. They can be on your clothing  or sheets or towels in the closet, and they can also live inside drawers and inside baseboards and electrical outlets and radiators, behind pictures on your walls. and yes, even inside your kitchen cupboards, 

Either way, you NEED to have a professional come in and do a full extermination, and you need to go through the spraying precautions of putting everything you own that is fabric, from curtains to sheets and everything in between, through a hot dryer for about 30 minutes each drying time, and then put them into sealed plastic trash bags until after the second professional spraying.

This is the last I'm going to talk to you about this, because you're going to do what you are going to do. However,  I seriously know what I'm talking about. I went through a bed bug infestation, and lived through having my apartment sprayed because of other people having bed bugs adjacent to me.     All you are doing is chasing them to other areas and they will come back. Guaranteed!

Thanks Natalie- appreciate the advice!

Bedbugs travel. You may have gotten them from the neighbor. I have read that they can come home with you on your clothes or on new clothes you purchase. When you bought the mattress set was it made when you ordered it and delivered in plastic....or was it sitting around somewhere in a warehouse.

blueyedgirl5946 said:

Bedbugs travel. You may have gotten them from the neighbor. I have read that they can come home with you on your clothes or on new clothes you purchase. When you bought the mattress set was it made when you ordered it and delivered in plastic....or was it sitting around somewhere in a warehouse.

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I can't remember offhand if I took plastic off the mattress or not... tho anything could of gotten inside the box spring even easier while at the warehouse... So the question of getting rid of them completely is going to be alot of hassle...

Just wondering how you are coming along with this problem

Thank god I never had this problem. The only problem I had was a couple months ago I had to get another mattress cause one of the cats peed on it. The problem has stopped thank god.

ChristineMarie,  since you started this and I have read all the posts,I'm going upstairs to check our bed and from here on too. You are giving me goose bumps.    

I try check everything over before bringing it inside. I have read online that even new clothes and furniture can be infested with bedbugs. I try to remember to look any clothing, whether new or from the thrift store, over before bringing it inside. Check pockets and seams carefully. Then wash and dry. If it is clothing that I can't wash and dry on hot, it goes in the clothes dryer for at least 20 minutes. Then it gets washed and hung on a line outside or on my porch to dry. If I can't wash it immediately, I keep it in the garage in a plastic bag. Just using some caution might help. We don't travel so there are no night stays anywhere except in this house.:lol3: