Pest control in Massachusetts is an essential aspect of bed bug control, but it isn’t the only way. While bed bugs can be impossible to eliminate without local pest control for bed bugs, knowing about them can make the difference in controlling your infestation or preventing one altogether. Here’s what you need to know about bed bugs in Massachusetts, how to identify and prevent an infestation, and the best pest control for bed bugs near you.
The Lifecycle Of The Massachusetts Bed Bug
Bed bugs go through several life stages where they molt and grow over a period of about five weeks. However, like ticks, they need to have a blood meal in order to progress into the next stage of life, so the process of maturation from nymph to adult can take as long as six months if food is scarce.
As an egg, bed bugs gestate for up to 10 days before hatching. An adult female can lay an egg a day, give or take. After hatching, a nymph will eat a blood meal and shed its exoskeleton five times, in ideal conditions, this happens once a week. As an adult, bed bugs live an average of around six months and can lay several hundred eggs in that time. However, bed bugs can live for more than a year depending on how quickly they became an adult, their conditions, and how often they feed.
Because of their relatively long life span and exponential birth rates, once you notice the signs of bed bugs, it’s important to act fast by calling bed bug pest control in Massachusetts to quickly get the infestation under control.
How Can I Tell If I Have A Bed Bug Infestation?
Bed bugs are pretty nasty houseguests. They leave a lot of signs, but they aren’t all that easy to locate. Knowing where to look is one of the most important bed bug control techniques for your home. If you suspect an infestation, look out for these signs on your mattresses, couches, curtains, floorboards, and carpet:
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Eggs the size of the head of a pin
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Shed exoskeletons and dead bed bugs
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Feces stains that look like marker blots
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Bloodstains
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Clusters or lines of bites on your ankles or wrists
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Reddish-brown bed bugs the size of an apple seed
If you find one, you may be tempted to try and deal with an infestation yourself. A lot of advice online guides people to use toxic household chemicals to try and squelch the infestation. However, this will do nothing but maybe lower their numbers and jeopardize your health and the health of your pets. Do not wait if you see signs of bed bugs. Call pest control to kill bed bugs, and don’t expose yourself to excess chemicals.
5 Tips For Bed Bug Prevention
Bed bug prevention will not only help you to avoid an infestation, but if bed bugs do find their way in, you may be able to get a grip on them faster. That’s why prevention goes hand-in-hand with bed bug control. To prevent and control bed bugs, try these bed bug control techniques for your home:
1. When traveling, don’t store your clothes or luggage on the floor.
2. After you get home from traveling, wash and dry your clothing on high heat and vacuum out your luggage.
3. Thoroughly check second-hand appliances and furniture before bringing them indoors.
4. Install door sweeps if in a building with many other tenants.
5. Wash your sheets and vacuum often.
Bed bugs are hitchhiking bugs that can be difficult to detect until it’s too late. Make sure when you’re staying in hotels that you do a bed bug sweep before settling in, and be extra cautious when you’re returning home from places where a lot of people come in and out to wash and dry your things and keep your room tidy and clutter-free.
How To Keep Bed Bugs Away From Your Home
To get rid of bed bugs quickly and permanently, you can trust the best pest control for bed bugs near you, Big Blue Bug Solutions. For bed bug control in Massachusetts, you can’t go wrong with our over eighty years of experience and the trust we’ve accumulated in this area. As professionals and experts on pests, we don’t want you to have to rely on extermination services alone.
More than any other local pest control for bed bugs, we want to help you to create a long-term solution against pests by assessing your home for risks and guiding you towards preventing them to make your home more secure. At Big Blue Bug Solutions, we know pest control to kill bed bugs is just one part of the job. Call Big Blue Bug Solutions to learn about treatments and about what we can do to make your home safe for years to come.
