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Are Bed Bugs Easy To See?

bed bug on a mattress
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We get a lot of questions about bed bugs. One question we hear quite a bit is: "Are bed bugs easy to see?" If you've ever had a bed bug infestation, you are aware that bed bugs are very easy to see. They can be seen climbing on bed frames, congregating on mattresses, hiding out in nightstands and other furniture, moving around in the space between your carpets and your baseboards, and more. But, it takes time for these types of sightings to happen. When bed bugs first invade, they are harder to see.

If you have not had a bed bug infestation, but you've seen a video of a bed bug infestation, you may have wondered: "Why would anyone allow these bugs to be in their house?" Bed bug infestations are disgusting. These insects leave their feces everywhere they go, and infested areas have a mixture of black fecal stains and brown blood staining. How could anyone allow this? Well, the truth is that a bed bug infestation sneaks up on you.

An adult bed bug is about 4.5 mm long, is a rusty-brown color, and is pretty easy to see and identify. But bed bugs don't start off as adults. They start off as tiny, pale, transparent, immature nymphs that are barely more than 1 mm in length, which are hard to see unless their abdomens are filled with blood. And adult bed bugs aren't as bold as immature nymphs. Adults usually stay hidden until carbon dioxide levels in a room begin to rise after people go to bed and begin to breathe deep, regular breaths.

It is also usually hard to see infested areas when bed bugs first invade. These bugs establish themselves in hard-to-see places, like between a mattress and a box spring, in a recess of a bed frame, inside upholstered furniture, or in wall voids. The infestations that are usually captured on video are the really bad infestations, the ones that have gone on for a while where the bugs have completely taken over.

At first, bed bugs are usually not easy to see. Often they establish themselves in hard-to-see, or hard-to-get-into, places. That is why we use K-9 bed bug inspectors to sniff them out. Dogs can smell them inside walls, furniture, mattresses, box springs, and other hidden locations. That helps our team target and eradicate those pests quickly.

If you're in our Indianapolis or elsewhere in our service area, and you're starting to notice signs of bed bugs, let Action Pest Control help you stop those bugs quickly with effective bed bug heat treatments. It doesn't take long for these blood-eating pests to go from being hard to see, to being very easy to see, and very hard to ignore.