Understanding and Controlling Bed Bugs – National Pesticide …

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By nature, bed bugs are stow-a-ways. They enter homes or apartments by hiding out in the cracks and crevices of luggage, furniture, clothing, pillows, boxes and other objects when they are moved between apartments, homes and hotels. Bed bugs hide during the day and typically feed at night. Since bed bugs feed on blood, their presence has little to do with the cleanliness of the home, although clutter can provide hiding spaces for bed bugs and make them difficult to treat. Bed bugs can survive for months without feeding, so they may be present in vacant, clean homes when new tenants unpack. Once bed bugs are established, they rapidly reproduce and spread from room to room.

Bed bugs can be very difficult to control, even for trained professionals. Many insecticides are not effective at killing the eggs, so a repeat treatment is often necessary to kill the juveniles after they hatch. Even worse, some populations of bed bugs have developed resistance to common insecticides, making some sprays ineffective. Alternative methods include heat and steam treatments, structural fumigations and cold treatments.

The National Pesticide Information Center (NPIC) received hundreds of calls last year from all over the country about bed bugs. If you have questions about this, or any pesticide-related topic, please call NPIC at 1-800-858-7378 (7:30am-3:30pm PST), or email at npic@ace.orst.edu.

Last updated October 31, 2013

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