Why bedbug treatments require follow-ups
If you’re dealing with bedbugs and you’re due for a follow-up after your treatment, you may be wondering why this is necessary. Shouldn’t one round of treatment do?
While it’s completely normal to wonder about this, the real answer is that bed bugs are pesky little creatures to get rid of. So the process is a bit more long-winded to make sure they’re truly gone.
We’ll dive a bit more into bed bug treatment in this blog and just why bed bugs are more difficult to remove than other types of pests.
Are you dealing with a bedbug infestation? Our team can come out to your property as quickly as possible to resolve the issue before it gets worse with our domestic pest control. Acting quickly is the key to getting an infestation under control.
How do bed bugs commonly start?
Bed bugs can come to inhabit your own in quite a few ways, but most stem from being outside and socialising with others.
Most of the time, travelling is the main culprit, whether you’ve recently come back from being abroad or you commute using public transport every day for work. They may hitch a ride on your clothes, luggage, or bags after staying in a hotel or getting on a train.
These little pests tend to hide in mattress seams, bed frames and nearby furniture, then crawl into suitcases or clothing. Another common cause is second-hand furniture. If you buy an old sofa or bed frame, some may be lurking underneath the fabric, gaining free entry to your home.
Even if a piece of furniture looks clean, it can still harbour live insects, eggs, or shed skins tucked away out of sight. That’s why you should always thoroughly check any second-hand furniture before buying or take it to a specialist to be cleaned before bringing it into your home.
Why does bed bug pest removal require follow-up treatment?
If you’ve been told that you need follow-up treatment for your bed bug removal process, then don’t panic; this is a completely normal part of the process.
Since bedbugs lay a lot of eggs that can’t always be spotted and removed on the first go, it normally takes at least two rounds of treatment to remove them.
While our specialist pest removal technicians are highly skilled at removing bed bugs and their eggs, eggs laid before your first treatment may still hatch days or weeks later. That’s why a follow-up is needed to deal with the new insects before they’re old enough to breed and start the cycle again.
Since chemical treatments can take a while to resolve the issue, constant monitoring is necessary. A little patience and vigilance in between will make the process go much more smoothly.
The bed bug life cycle and treatment timing
Females tend to lay batches of white eggs, about 1 mm long, along seams of mattresses and furniture, as well as bed frames and skirting boards.
These eggs often take 6–10 days to hatch, especially when the conditions in your house are very warm and humid. Once the eggs hatch, the bedbugs are in the nymph stage, which are small adults with a paler colour.
There are five nymph stages, and at each stage the insect needs a blood meal in order to moult into the next one. After its fifth moult, it becomes a fully grown adult. Since the eggs are the hardest to get rid of, due to being tougher to reach and treat, the treatment requires a few stages to eliminate them.
A follow-up treatment will go ahead around 7 to 10 days after for the following reasons:
- There’s time for a fresh batch of eggs to hatch.
- To catch young nymphs that have started moving around and contacting treated surfaces.
- We can spot any new signs of activity and top up treatments where needed.
Where bedbugs tend to hide
We often find eggs hidden in small cracks and crevices in your home or tucked deep inside bed joints or behind skirting. Their tough shell and protective coating make them hard to kill, so we need to wait until they’ve hatched to exterminate them.
Bed bugs can live for months without feeding, so even a few stray ones that are missed can cause the infestation to start over. During the first treatment, a large proportion of active bugs and exposed nymphs will be killed.
What you should – and shouldn’t – do between bed bug treatments
Between treatments, it’s important that you don’t do anything that can ruin the progress that’s already been made and take you back to square one.
Not only would it be a waste of your own time and money, but it’ll also make it more difficult for our pest control team to get the issue under control. That’s why we ask that you:
- Wash and tumble-dry bedding, clothing and soft items on high heat where possible.
- Keep personal items in sealed bags until the treatment is finished.
- Avoid washing or vacuuming treated carpets and surfaces for at least two weeks to prevent washing away the insecticide that needs to stay in place to kill emerging bugs.
- Keep mattresses on the bed frame during the programme unless we advise otherwise.
- Declutter your home so there are fewer crevices for the bedbugs to hide.
- Move beds slightly away from the walls.
- Don’t bring in any second-hand furniture until the treatment is finished.
If you’re still experiencing fresh bites or spotting other signs of bedbugs while the treatment is ongoing, that doesn’t mean the first removal process has failed. It just shows that the bugs are still coming into contact with treated areas, and the follow-up treatment will weed the rest out.
A thorough treatment plan tailored to you
At Premier Pest Control, we plan our treatments around each type of infestation, so there’s no one-size-fits-all solution.
We’ll evaluate the areas affected and the best way to treat them. When it comes to bedbugs, we build our bedbug removal services around the life cycle of these pests, rather than guessing or just reacting to bites.
If you want to get rid of your bed bug infestation once and for all, contact our professional pest removers today. We’ll get out to you as soon as possible.