A question often asked is what kills Bed Bugs instantly. Of course, once you get an infestation of these bugs you’re going to want to get rid of them as quickly as possible. Not only is the thought of this bug crawling on you at night sucking your blood sort of creepy. There’s also the fact that the bites they leave behind can become incredibly itchy.

Hiring a pest control company is one alternative but it can also be very expensive. But, if you can’t afford an exterminator don’t feel that you are out of options. There are a number of tactics and products that are available for a Do It Yourself approach to exterminating. Many of these tactics will even help make a professional exterminating more successful.

What Are Bed Bugs

The activity and behavior of bed bugs make them hard to get rid of. Bed bugs have a lifestyle where they are active at night and hide out together in small cracks and crevices during the day.  These bugs are small, oval, and flat-shaped pests about the size of an apple seed. They feed on human blood, usually during the night when we are asleep. But they are also a bug of opportunity that will feed anytime that there is the availability of a meal.

Although the bugs tend to hide close by where they feed you won’t generally find them hiding on your body. You usually can find them hiding along the seams of your mattress and the cracks and crevices of your mattress frame. Their small size means they can get into an opening as small as a toothpick. Any furniture that is near to your bed can also house an infection. You should make sure to check along the edges of your carpet and behind picture frames hanging near your bed.

But they can also show up anywhere that you sit for an extended period of time. BedBug infestations have also been found in places like hotels, restaurants, libraries, and cabs. You’ll find them pretty much anyplace that there are people. A one night stay in an infested hotel room can mean that you bring home the bugs in your bags or on your clothing.

And they can easily travel from place to place by hitchhiking on clothing or in boxes and furniture. Always make sure to carefully check any used furniture or clothing that you bring into your home. This is a common way that infestations start.

But they also can travel from apartment to apartment. Recently after a long period of being bug-free we got infested by a neighbor who got an infestation. The little pests crawled from his apartment into ours and both had to be treated to get rid of them.

These bugs also know to feed when you are in your deepest sleep. This is when you aren’t moving around and they can feed more easily. They find you by sensing the carbon dioxide that you breathe out.

You probably won’t feel them biting you because their saliva contains an anesthetic that temporarily numbs the area of the bite. Then they feed by injecting a tube-like appendage into your skin. Often times they feed in several spots as they follow a blood vessel.

Although you probably won’t feel when they bite you the site can become very itchy after a while. How To Treat Bed Bug Bites

Even a single female can start a new infestation that could go unnoticed until it’s grown enough to be a problem to treat. At that point, you are going to want to know how to get rid of Bed Bugs quickly.

Home Remedies To Kill Bed Bugs

Getting rid of these pests is a process that can take weeks. Not only is there the initial treatment. But any eggs that escape the initial treatment can re-infest your home. So any treatment plan needs to include re-treating as many times as it takes to kill the entire infestation.

One DIY treatment is using heat. For instance, if you have traveled recently and are afraid that your bags have become infested you can put them in a black back in the sun to have the heat kill any bugs. One important step that you need to take is washing your bedding in hot water and drying on hot heat to get rid of the bugs. Some exterminators offer a service where your belongings are all put into a storage container that is heated to a high enough temperature to kill the bugs.

Using cold is another alternative. I’ve heard of people that have placed their belongings outside during the winter to kill an infestation.

But both of these methods are for your belongings and of limited use in killing an infestation that is in your carpet or walls.

An effective DIY treatment for these bugs is diluted rubbing alcohol. Dilute it and spray it in areas where you see the bugs to kill them on contact. But this is only part of what you should do to kill these pests and will only kill what you see, leaving open that chance of re-infestation..

Bed Bug eggs can be extremely hard to kill no matter what method you use. So you should also use a residual product that will kill on contact, but also last for a period of time after the initial application. This will help kill the new Nymph bugs as they hatch. Bed Bug Treatment

Then you need to be ready to retreat as bugs show up that were missed in the initial treatment or from eggs that resisted your efforts. The size of your infestation will also determine how long and hard treatment is going to be. But you can expect that from the time that you find an infestation to the time that you are bug-free can take 4 – 6 weeks.

Bed Bugs Hide

One of the tricky things with actually killing these bugs is how talented they are at hiding. They will hide in the seams of your mattress or even inside it through tiny tears. They will hide in books. behind pictures. along the edges of your carpet, and in the furniture close to your bed.

This makes it hard to treat and kill every bug. And if you fail to kill every bug when you treat it’s only a matter of time till an infestation starts thriving again.

This is why it’s so important that any treatment plan includes re-treating as needed and the use of a contact killer and a residual spray. A contact spray will kill on contact and a residual spray will last for a week or two to kill the ones you missed and the new bugs that hatch from their eggs.

Most Effective Bed Bug Treatment

There are a few things that I think you should consider in fighting these bugs.

One is using diatomaceous earth. This product is a great tool. It’s made up of finely ground shells that have tiny sharp edges. You sprinkle a light coat of this powder around your bed or anyplace that you think the bugs are coming from. The sharp edges rip open the abdomens of the bugs which results in the bug drying out and dying. It takes some time but is effective.

Another important tool is using a Bed Bug mattress enclosure. These are basically big bags that fit tightly over your mattress and seals up, trapping any bugs inside till they die and keeping the bugs from using your mattress as a hiding place. Bed Bug Treatment