Bed bugs cause a lot of pain. They can appear in any apartment or house, and contrary to popular belief, lifestyle and social status do not in any way affect the possibility of bedbugs infesting a room. House bugs feed on human blood. They are nocturnal and hide during the day. The habitat can be all sorts of cracks and crevices in walls, floors, ceilings, and furniture. The best shelter is a sofa or bed. A person's sleeping place is the bedbug's eating place. He doesn't have to walk long to drink blood. And after satiation, you can quickly hide in the thickness of the sofa or mattress.
If there are bedbugs in the sofa, it will be difficult to get them out. Most likely, not only upholstered furniture is affected by insects, so after treatment they will appear again. Bedbug eggs are more resistant to external influences, so they can wait out unfavorable conditions, after which the larvae emerge, and the torment of the owners continues. The eggs may not be in the sofa, so treating just one piece of furniture will not lead to the desired result. How to get bedbugs out of a sofa? The fight must be waged on all fronts. Many people think that it is impossible to get rid of bedbugs in a sofa, and the furniture will only have to be thrown away. However, you can try to remove the parasites yourself.
Bedbug detection
The owners do not immediately find out that there are bedbugs in the house. At first, the colony may be small, and bedbug bites may be sporadic. An adult can come out to feed once every 4–7 days. In one bite, she drinks up to 7 ml of blood. Many people confuse bedbug bites with mosquito bites. But unlike the attacks of other insects, bedbugs can leave a trail of several punctures in the skin along the blood vessel. So, several red blisters with severe itching are the first sign of the presence of bedbugs. After this, it is necessary to immediately inspect the room to discover their habitats and egg laying.
Signs that your sofa has bedbugs:
- black dots on the sleeping area are insect excrement;
- crushed bedbugs - after being saturated with blood, they increase in size, the chitinous shell becomes too vulnerable and breaks at the slightest pressure, so a person can easily crush them simply by turning over in their sleep;
- characteristic smell - bedbugs have glands from which in case of danger they squirt a secret, the unpleasant smell of which is designed to scare away enemies.
If these signs are found, then you need to find other places where insects are concentrated. These can be baseboards, back walls of cabinet furniture, paintings, lampshades, pet beds.
When the enemy is discovered, it is necessary to begin the fight against bedbugs.
Temperature method
The most effective option, since bedbugs cannot tolerate sudden changes in living conditions. And if bedbugs become immune to insecticides and other chemicals, they are powerless against freezing. It is most effective to lower the temperature in the room where the bedbug-infested sofa is located, to at least -10. In private homes, you can turn off the heating in winter and open the doors and windows wide for several hours or days. This is exactly how they fought bedbugs in the villages. However, in the modern world it is very difficult to arrange such a freeze. You can, of course, take the sofa outside, but bedbugs, their larvae and eggs will still remain in the apartment. In addition, after significant temperature changes, upholstered furniture can deteriorate. It must be dried well to prevent mold from forming. In short, this method is effective, but difficult to implement.
A comfortable temperature for bedbugs is 25 – 30 degrees. So you can use the temperature method to remove bedbugs, but do it at high temperatures. In hot summers, when the air temperature exceeds 30 degrees, you can take the sofa out into the sun. However, it is worth remembering that the temperature inside the sofa will be lower, which means there is a high probability that it will not be possible to completely “fry” the bedbugs.
Another way to get rid of bedbugs using high temperature is to treat the sofa with a steam generator. The steam will definitely kill all the bedbugs, but it is necessary to treat the furniture in all hard-to-reach places.
Hot steam has no residual effect
This problem is perhaps even more significant than the first. Once the steam hits the surface, condenses and cools, it ceases to pose any danger to bedbugs. Consequently, it can only kill those parasites that are visible and that can be directly sprayed with a 20-30 cm jet of steam.
In this case, a completely reasonable question arises: if bedbugs are right in front of your eyes and can be scalded, then why do you need steam at all? Bedbugs that are under your hands can simply be crushed with your fingers. Only if you are very squeamish can you boil them, but buying a steam generator specifically for this is not the most rational idea.
The fact is that in our practice, we often come across exactly this question from clients: if in order to destroy bedbugs you need to open all their nests, then why bother with any additional means and tools, including professional exterminators. If all the nests are opened, then the bedbugs can be destroyed simply mechanically. And people are looking for steam generators and other means precisely so as not to have to deal with such a painstaking search for bedbugs in the apartment.
Bedbugs in the socket - it’s unlikely to scald them here
In reality, it is usually not possible to find all the hiding places of bedbugs in an apartment, especially one that is heavily infested. And in those of them that remained unfound, the bedbugs die precisely from the action of the insecticidal agent that got there with the air, or after running over an already dried product with a residual effect - such a product poisons the bedbugs, even when dry.
Steam does not allow you to kill bedbugs that run around the apartment at night. This is its main drawback and that is why it can only be used as an additional, but not the main and certainly not the only means for killing bedbugs.
Mechanical method
Bedbugs can be collected. They don't move very fast, especially when they drink blood. In addition, they are clearly visible on light-colored upholstery. Of course, this is an unpleasant, ineffective method, but it can be used. You can collect them manually, but it is better to use a vacuum cleaner. If the vacuum cleaner has good power, then it can get bedbugs from under the upholstery. You can also use fly tape to catch some of the bugs as they move. Bedbugs collected by hand or with a vacuum cleaner do not die, so it is necessary to use insecticides against them or send them to the sewer.
Folk remedies
At home, you can remove bedbugs from your sofa using proven folk methods. Firstly, it is treating the sofa with strong-smelling substances, for example, turpentine or a concentrated solution of vinegar. These products do not kill bedbugs, but repel them. However, after such treatment it will be problematic to use upholstered furniture, since the smell will persist for a long time.
Another folk remedy for repelling bedbugs is essential oils with pungent odors. This could be lavender, peppermint, tea tree, clove. The furniture and floors next to it are washed with water and oils dissolved in it. You can also treat bed linen with essential oils. If a person tolerates such odors normally, then the oils really protect against the approach of bedbugs. But they don't destroy them.
Diatomite
Mineral based powder. This is a natural remedy that is not dangerous to humans and pets, but is harmful to bedbugs. Diatomite (also called kieselguhr) is applied to the elements of the sofa with a syringe and left for several days. After this, the powder is collected with a damp cloth. The only problem is that the powder affects parasites through direct contact, so there may be individuals left in the sofa that are not affected by this product. That is, the colony will reproduce again.
Steam does not reach bedbugs in very hard-to-reach shelters
The main problem with steam is that it retains its effectiveness only in the form of a short jet, which is sprayed directly onto the bedbugs. Having touched any surface, it is cooled by it, condenses and no longer penetrates in the form of steam to where bedbugs may be, even if such shelter is located a few centimeters from the treated surface.
For example, imagine that bedbugs are sitting behind the baseboards and under the linoleum that is covered with these baseboards. If you pass a stream of steam along the crack behind the baseboard, then the steam and part of the boiling water after it condenses will scald and kill the bedbugs that sit directly on the back wall of the baseboard and on the wall behind it. But this steam will no longer harm the insects that are under the linoleum.
Bugs on the back of the baseboard
Same with mattresses. If you scald the entire mattress using a steam generator, the bedbugs on its surface will die. But insects that were able to get inside through holes and breaks will not feel the vapor at all.
In this regard, steam is inferior to insecticides, which in the form of fog with air movement can be drawn even into narrow and winding cracks. And for this reason, professional exterminators consider it only as an additional tool for exterminating bedbugs, which can be used to kill parasites sitting in relatively easily accessible places. But when the bugs here are killed by steam, the remaining insects hiding in more secluded places will need to be poisoned with insecticides.
Chemicals
If there are bedbugs in your sofa, you can be sure to get rid of them using chemicals. To do this, you will have to disassemble the sofa into its component parts. The insecticide is diluted in the required proportion. All furniture parts are sprayed with it. Everything needs to be treated: upholstery, armrests, legs, joints, bottom, folds. After treatment, it is necessary to wait for the time specified by the manufacturer in the instructions for the drug.
Important: furniture in which bedbugs have appeared must be treated in compliance with safety requirements. You need to use a respirator and wear gloves. After treatment, effective ventilation must be ensured.
You can enhance the effect of chemicals if you do encapsulation, that is, cover the treated sofa with film or an airtight cover. After treating the sofa and removing the “capsule”, if used, it is necessary to ventilate the room and carry out wet cleaning.
Typically, the insecticide is used twice. Repeated treatment is carried out after a couple of weeks. If eggs, which are more resistant to chemicals, remain in the sofa after the first treatment, then new larvae may emerge from them. To destroy them too, a second treatment is carried out.
The range of products for removing bedbugs is very large. We recommend using MediLis-Supersila for bedbugs and MediLis-Antiklop. These are products designed to combat bedbugs specifically. They are offered in the form of a spray and are ready for use. You can also use general insecticides - MediLis-Ciper, MediLis-Permifen, MediLis-Neo, MediLis-Super. They are effective not only against bedbugs, but also against other insects. They can be used to treat not only sofas, but also any other surfaces. Namely, complex treatment is the key to effective control of parasites.
Bed bugs have become a disaster for Moscow: how to remove the parasites
“I look and there’s a plump black reptile sitting in my slipper.”
The specialists who directly fight them know most about bedbugs.
“Many hotels and old houses in the capital are contaminated,” says Igor Novikov, an employee of the city sanitary and epidemiological station. - Of course, if a guest spends two or three days in a hotel, he may not notice anything: blisters, for example, will be attributed to mosquito bites. And if you’re lucky, you won’t bring bedbugs home in your suitcase. Again, a single parasite will not make a difference. Well, he will sometimes bite (once every one or two weeks), and if he does not meet a life partner, he will die.
Yes, but this only happens in theory. Or with a very happy coincidence of circumstances. The problem is that domestic bloodsuckers are very “cunning”. Having not found a “wife” with whom to have offspring, the bug will most likely go in search of her - to a neighboring apartment, several floors higher or lower, to the attic. Whether he decides to stay in the new place is known only to him. It is possible that very soon he will return with his new family to his old apartment. And it’s already in full swing.
Or another example. “The apartment we bought turned out to be infested with bedbugs. Soon they moved in with relatives. Well, we think we'll take a rest. And what do you think - the bedbugs went with us!” Milana complains.
Bedbugs hide so carefully that even the invisible man would envy them: in mattresses, folds of bed linen and seams of clothing, in picture frames, cracks in baseboards. The main thing is to be closer to food, that is, to you and me. And even if an uninformed person sees a parasite crawling along a visible place - a wall or ceiling, he may not suspect that it is a bug. You never know - a bug snuck in from the street through the window, so why kill it right away, little one? Still, it probably won’t last long...
The latter is a serious mistake. Bed bugs live for a long time - more than a year, without even being adjacent to humans. Without food (human blood) they fall into suspended animation for many months. Maybe that’s why there is an opinion among people that bedbugs are clumsy and lazy. It’s like they eat blood and sleep with their belly up. No matter how it is. These creatures are dexterous, savvy and nimble.
“One day I sat down in front of the computer, and I felt an unpleasant tickling on the left side of my foot,” says Natalya. “I look and there’s a plump black reptile sitting in my slipper, apparently it’s already eaten.” Before I had time to bend down, the parasite was nowhere to be seen. A split second has passed! I pick up my slipper, and it turns out that the bug has already settled on the sole.”
“There were bedbugs under the blanket,”
Cleanliness and the absence (presence) of bedbugs in the apartment are not directly related. Without a doubt, in a murdered khrushchev or in a neighborhood with mentally ill people, the likelihood of finding parasites is incomparably higher than in a club house or a five-star hotel. Both bedbugs and cockroaches can coexist in the same room, and in huge numbers. That is why professionals always poison both of them at the same time.
“An elderly family lived in our apartment, a mother and son. We often saw them rummaging through trash cans. It is not surprising that we suffered from a huge number of parasites. No disinfection helped,” shares Larisa. “When my son died, my grandmother was taken to a psychiatric institution, and we treated them ourselves.
I have never seen so many bedbugs and cockroaches! They had a blanket hanging on the wall, under it there were bedbugs like a solid wall. And cockroaches lived in the table and under the table, under the seats of chairs. After disinfection, we threw away all the furniture and finally lived in peace.”
However, there are more unpredictable places where you can freely pick up the parasite: for example, in a taxi - especially if the driver likes to sleep in it, on soft ottomans in a cinema, visiting friends and colleagues.
The doctor at the skin and venereal disease clinic says that many people come with complaints about blisters, but rarely do anyone blame bed bugs - due to simple ignorance. Patients most often believe that they have an allergy, or dermatitis, or scabies. They use different creams from advertisements - it is clear that they have no effect on bites. Hormonal ointments and strong antihistamines are required. But even they don’t save you if you don’t get rid of the breeding ground for bedbugs in your apartment.
It happens that dermatologists themselves cannot immediately make the correct diagnosis. This happens if the patient has a strong reaction to the bites - and he scratches his body to a terrible state. Whether it’s scabies or an allergy, you guessed it.
They also live in newly built houses
So that no one is deceived, parasites also live in new buildings. The reason for this is simple. “We bought an apartment with a mortgage, and after a couple of months bedbugs appeared,” says Galina. - We poisoned ourselves twice - it was useless. They called private owners, they treated the house with cold steam - the parasites left us for two weeks. And a month later everything happened again.
They called the private owners again under warranty and paid for the departure. As a result, the creatures became even angrier, their legs were all sore, and with the onset of evening, panic and tic began. I don’t know how to fight, it’s all to no avail. We have two small children, they bite me and them, but they don’t touch my husband. I have no strength anymore, I want to escape from this apartment”...
“Galina made several mistakes at once,” says Igor Novikov. — First of all, I admit that Galina’s house was renovated by visitors who were not accustomed to maintaining hygiene, but often visited the same not very clean friends. The next mistake is processing the apartment yourself, and even twice. Surely Galina used popular remedies, to which (even quite strong ones) many species of individuals had long ago developed immunity.
Why didn't the bedbugs touch Galina's husband? Doctors explain that, most likely, they touched him; some people are simply insensitive to bites. Alternatively, perhaps he slept separately from other family members in some distant room, uninteresting for bedbugs, who have excellent dinners nearby.
— None of the exterminators can guarantee that parasites will not appear again even after repeated treatment. I don’t mean, of course, charlatans, of whom there are also plenty, but professionals who perform their work at a decent level. In general, I recommend treating the entire apartment with hot steam with barrier protection, then the bedbugs will leave the owners alone for several months. “And then, no one knows,” our expert commented and gave valuable advice that will help you get rid of parasites with a high probability.
— An important point: you need to carefully prepare for processing: hide the dishes in plastic bags, remove clothes and bedding from closets if possible. The chemical smell disappears after a maximum of half a day.
— Before starting treatment, you need to leave the room with the animals, ideally at night. If you have nowhere to sleep, you need to return three hours after the end of the procedure, open the windows wide and leave again for a couple of hours.
— The next day after treatment, wash your linens and clothes in hot water, or better yet, boil them or take them to the dry cleaner.
— If you find nests of bedbugs in a bed, it is better to throw it away.
— You can’t wash the floors for at least a week after treatment (it’s not even recommended to sweep) — bedbugs usually don’t die right away, so give them this opportunity. They can sometimes wander around the apartment for a month under the influence of paralytic substances, even bite. The spectacle is unpleasant, but you just have to endure it.
Prevention
Bed bugs appear in an apartment and a sofa in different ways. They can be carried on shoes and pet fur. They are carried on clothing, you can bring them home from an infected room or from transport, for example, from a hotel or train. So after visiting a room that could potentially harbor bedbugs, you should wash all your clothes in the washing machine at high temperature to kill the pests.
And although, as mentioned above, everyone has a chance of finding bedbugs, regardless of lifestyle and social status, it is worth taking preventive measures:
- regular wet cleaning, you can use antibacterial agents;
- maintaining order, avoiding debris from furniture and things - these are the places bedbugs love;
- It is advisable not to buy used furniture or antiques, but when purchasing them, carefully inspect them for the presence of parasites and, if possible, treat them.
If bedbugs were found in the sofa, then preventive cleaning and treatment of the furniture should be carried out regularly.
In what cases does steam help kill bedbugs?
However, we know of situations in which people have completely destroyed bedbugs with hot steam alone. This result was obtained mainly due to a successful combination of circumstances:
- There were few bedbugs in the apartment;
- The insects did not have time to settle in really hard-to-reach places, but were only on the mattresses of the beds;
- The owner of the home was quite calm about the bedbugs and the need to steam them several times. That is, he did not have hysteria, panic, he understood that with each steam treatment he destroys only part of the parasites, and other bugs will remain alive and will bite him until after the third, fourth or tenth steaming he destroys them;
- The apartment was either reliably isolated from the neighboring premises and the bedbugs did not get in here themselves.
Bedbugs that crawled out of the sofa during steam treatment and died “in the hands” of the exterminator.
At the same time, the mere readiness to steam the sleeping places several times is usually not enough. If bedbugs can get into the apartment and are taken from neighbors, such treatments will be carried out with varying frequency indefinitely. If there are a lot of insects in the house and they hide in places where a stream of steam cannot reach them, then the chances of their complete extermination are also very small. That is, all these favorable circumstances must add up and be multiplied by the diligence, perseverance and common sense of the owner of the premises, so that the bedbugs can actually be removed by steam. This happens very, very rarely.
