What Are Bed Bugs?

Bed bugs. You have heard the word but do you really know anything about this creature? Most people do not. Many do not even realize that they actually exist. But, they do and they may be lurking in your home, in your bedding or even in your carpeting. It is essential that you take the time necessary to learn more about these pests. By doing this it will help you to succeed in treating them, and having a home that is free from an infestation of the worst kind. While some of the information you will read here is a bit graphic, you will learn from it just why it is so important for you to rid yourself and your home of these nasty little creatures.

What Are They?

The bed bug is a creature that likes to feed off of human beings. It is his food of choice. If they can not find a person to feed from, they will select other warm blooded animals to use as a host for their necessary feeding. This can include your pets like cats and dogs. It also includes birds, rodents and bats as well. Their food is that of the host’s blood.

With that being true, you usually find these creatures in locations were there is food for them. They are found in homes and in other locations where there is a good amount of hosts. This would include in places like hotels, motels, shelters, apartment buildings, dorm rooms at colleges, and even prisons. Anyplace that there is a good source of human hosts, in a large turnover amount, is a good place to find bed bugs.

How Do They Get There?

If you have a home, you may be wondering how these bugs have gotten into it. One of the major ways in which bed bugs do infest is through means of transportation that we all use. Often, they can invest methods of transportation such as busing lines, trains, and various types of passenger and commercial ships and even in the airlines. They can literally infest these locations because there is a large amount of hosts located in them. Because there is usually a large amount of people in any of these places at any given time, they make for the ideal location to be if you are a bed bug. So, how do they get from these transportation units into your home? Bed bugs are able to be transported from any of these transportation methods to your home in several ways.

• They can be transported through the clothing of their host person.
• They can be transported through the luggage that comes from an infested location.
• They can come through furniture that is carried on board one of these units.
• They can come from bedding as well.

There are plenty of ways in which the bed bug can make his journey from one place to the next. Often times, people have no idea that the location they are staying in, such as a hotel room, is infested. They then come home; luggage packed, bringing the bed bugs with them. Within a matter of time, the bed bugs have grown in their numbers and can easily move from one place to the next. Soon, there are large numbers of them. They will leave you wondering just where they came from in the first place.

Hygiene And Bed Bugs

One thing to note is that if you have an infestation of bed bugs in your home, this does not mean that you are a bad housekeeper. Bed bugs are very versatile and strong creatures that are more than capable of hiding and lurking in places where you may not ever look. In fact, they would prefer to live in a home that is clean anyway. That means that if your home is clean, you may still have the presence of bed bugs in it. Also, it does not mean that you have poor hygiene yourself if you have bed bugs in your home. Again, bed bugs do not want to live and host from an unclean source, although they will if they have to. You do not have to be a dirty person or live in a dirty home to have an infestation of bed bugs in your home. It is essential that you know now, though, that most bed bugs are not going to respond to the same types of treatments that you give to ants or other pests that infest your home.

Remember, they use their host for feeding. They need blood to be sustained. Therefore, they are not going to necessarily respond to food products that you put out. Before you begin to worry if you have bed bugs in your home, take the necessary time to insure that these little creatures are not there by knowing what they look like, what they do and what possible clues you have. Bed bugs may be something that is a bit frightening, but you can learn what to do to treat them. And, although you may not want to hear it, it is likely that the bed bug will be found in your home at one time or another. Therefore, if you do not have an infestation right now, you should take note of what can happen if you do.