When the unfortunate happens and bed bugs enter your Bronx, NY, home, it is not uncommon to panic and resort to extreme measures. Most likely the myths about bed bugs are running through your mind. Understanding what is true about bed bugs can help you make a wise, successful decision about how to treat those bugs and what you need for an effective bed bug service.
Myth: They Only Inhabit Dirty Places
On the contrary, bed bugs can show up in the cleanest of homes—they are equal opportunity invaders. Bed bugs actually are seeking the warmth of a human body only for food. They can live inside cracks of furniture, on the walls, even on the ceiling. When you live in a multi-unit building, they can travel under doors and through electrical sockets to live in other parts of the building.
Related: What to Know About the Bed Bug Life Cycle and Treatment in NYC
Myth: They Only Travel on Bodies
While bed bugs can travel on your body, they more often jump onto backpacks, purses, and luggage. Living in Bronx, NY, most people rely on public transportation to go from place to place, and bed bugs can lurk on bus seats, taxi trunks, and sometimes subways. Once you stow your baggage or purse, bed bugs can hop on and ride home with you. They are not like lice or ticks that prefer body heat—they are more likely to accompany you on your shoes.
Myth: They Can Fly
Bed bugs cannot fly but they can crawl. Compared to other bugs and insects, they reproduce slowly, taking over two months to have a baby.
Myth: They Carry Diseases…
While having an infestation of bed bugs can cause understandable anxiety and stress, they do not pass on diseases to humans. Because they often bite at night while people are sleeping, it can seem like worse things are happening than just a bed bug bite, but more often than not, itchiness is the one physical side effect of having bed bugs in your home. They can also be active at day, despite what you may have heard. While we think of them as nocturnal, they can just as easily come out to bite during the day.
Related: Bed Bug Exterminator Tips for Keeping the Infestation From Spreading In Your Manhattan, NY, Home
Myth: They Will Ruin All Your Belongings
Furniture and clothing only has to be discarded when there is no accurate treatment for them. However, most of the time, the treatment includes furniture and is effective. Clothes can be washed in hot water to kill the bed bugs.
Myth: They Can Be Successfully Treated with Home Remedies
While home remedies may work for some pests, they do not work for bed bugs. Any product can claim to be effective at bed bug eradication, but none truly are. Foggers not only will not kill bed bugs, but they can leave a chemical residue over your furniture and floors. Heat and extreme cold can kill bed bugs, but it is impossible to heat or freeze enough areas at the same time to use this as a method for removal unless you use a professional method.
If your Bronx, NY, home has bed bugs, the surest and only effective treatment is with a pest control company. Using trained bug sniffing dogs to detect and isolate the problem and deploying Cryonite freezing to rid you of the pests, NY Bed Bug Dogs offers an integrated approach.