Bed bugs: why one spray never works and what a real treatment involves

Bed bugs are the one pest where almost every DIY attempt makes the next attempt harder. Spray a mattress and you kill a few adults, scatter the rest into the wardrobe and the next room, and leave the eggs — glued into the seams, unaffected — to hatch in ten days. A real treatment is built around that fact: it reaches the hiding places, it uses heat on the things spray cannot soak into, and it comes back for the second hatch.

Bed bugs are not on the standard rate card as a separate line; they are handled under a full home treatment or quoted after the technician sees how many rooms are involved. Ask when booking and you will be told which applies before anyone visits.

How to be sure it is bed bugs

• Bites in a line or cluster of three on skin that was exposed while sleeping, noticed in the morning.
• Small rust-coloured spots on the sheet or pillowcase.
• Dark specks like pepper along the mattress seam, in the piping, and in the corners of the bed frame.
• Live bugs: flat, brown, apple-seed sized, in the seam when you fold it back with a torch at night.
• A sweet, musty smell in a heavily infested room.

Check the mattress seams first, then the headboard where it meets the wall, the bed frame joints and screw holes, the bedside table drawer runners, the curtain hem near the bed, the skirting behind the bed, and the back of the wall socket plate. They stay within a few feet of where you sleep.

Why a proper treatment has three parts

Reach. The technician strips the bed, pulls the frame from the wall, turns the mattress, opens the bedside drawers, and treats the seams, joints, screw holes, skirting gaps and socket surrounds directly — with a residual that keeps working for weeks, not a space spray that is gone in an hour. The wardrobe and the sofa in the same room are checked, because that is where they go when disturbed.

Heat where spray cannot go. Bed bugs and eggs die at temperatures a steam gun or a hot dryer reaches easily. Mattress seams, the sofa, cushions, the fabric headboard and clothes are steamed or heat-treated rather than soaked in chemical. Nellore's summer helps here: a mattress sealed in black plastic and left on the terrace in April sun for a day gets hotter than they can survive, which is not true of a monsoon afternoon.

The second visit. Whatever survives as eggs hatches in about ten days. A return visit at ten to fourteen days treats the nymphs before they mature and lay. This is not optional; it is why one-visit "guarantees" for bed bugs are worth nothing.

What you must do yourself

The treatment fails without this, because the bugs in your bedding will re-infest a treated bed.

• Strip all bedding, curtains near the bed and the clothes from the bottom shelves; wash hot and dry in full sun or a hot dryer. Bag them sealed until the treatment is done.
• Do not move the mattress or furniture to another room "to save it". That is how the second room gets infested.
• Do not throw the mattress on the street. If you must discard it, wrap it in plastic first so the next person does not carry the problem home.
• Vacuum the seams, frame and skirting, and put the vacuum bag in a sealed plastic bag in the outside bin straight away.
• Reduce clutter under and around the bed. Every cardboard box is a hiding place.
• After treatment, keep the bed a hand's width from the wall, tuck nothing that touches the floor, and check the seams weekly for a month.

Why you cannot outlast them

Bed bugs can go months between meals. Leaving the room empty for a few weeks does not clear it; they wait. Moving to another bedroom moves the problem. Second-hand furniture, a hostel trip and a train journey are the usual sources, so a bag inspection on return from travel is the cheapest prevention there is.

When to call

One confirmed sighting is enough. Bed bugs only get more expensive to remove as they spread, and the difference between one room and three is the difference between a standard job and a week of upheaval. If you have tried a spray already, say so — it changes where the technician looks, because the bugs will have moved.