How Do I Know If I Have Bed Bugs? | bedbugs

By BENJAMIN KONG, Posted March 6th 2012

It is not difficult to determine if your house or apartment has become infested with bed bugs, but because a number of different insects can cause infestations, the best way to be completely sure that bed bugs are your problem is to come up with an actual sample of a bug or an egg. Short of this, home owners and tenants can use secondary signs and symptoms to deduce that their problem is bed bugs rather than another insect.

Most of the secondary signs manifest themselves in the form of fecal stains or spotting. When the problem is bed bugs, the fecal matter produced by the insects tends to collect in a few key locations:

Because bed bugs generally feast on the blood of their hosts, creeping out of hiding places at night to latch on, some people think that fecal stains from the insects should at least be tinged with the color of blood. This is not in fact the case.

Fecal spotting tends to resemble smears or stains which are dark brown or even black. This is because the blood has been digested and excreted.

In some cases, shed skin is also a sign of a bed bug infestation. You are likely to find shed skin where bed bugs habitat. The same goes for bed bug eggs (which are tiny), and live bugs.

You are likely to find bed bug shed skin along the piping of a mattress as well as on the bottom of the box spring, which can also be a place where both eggs and live bugs can be found. As all of these locations indicate, bed bugs are called that for a reason. They do tend to assemble in the areas in and around beds.

You may also find crushed bed bugs under the sheets where youre weight has squashed a few roam beneath the sheets.

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How Do I Know If I Have Bed Bugs? | bedbugs