Hellobee

Ick. I feel so bad for you guys. It’s definitely a huge psychological thing.

My husband used to sell pest control services (for a local office of a national pest-control company) and I was always terrified that he’d bring SOMETHING home. I knew his day was particularly disgusting when I came home to all of his clothes in a pile in the garage. He’d strip in there and go straight to the shower, and his clothes would go STRAIGHT to the laundry.

It did come in handy when we went on our annual trip to New York though – he did find evidence of a bed bug infestation in our hotel room. They switched us and the second room was clean.

He says you’re generally OK in hotels as long as you keep all of your clothing in your suitcase, your suitcase on the stand, and keep your suitcase zipped when you’re not in it. Then make sure to wash all of your clothes as soon as you get home, and keep your bag in the basement or garage, or even in a garbage bag wherever you store it, until you need to use it again.

It’s when you throw your suitcase on the bed at the hotel, or put your clothes in the drawers, or put clothes back in your drawers without washing them, that you’ll bring them back to your home.

And even by wrapping your mattress up and throwing it out – you could have easily spread bedbugs throughout your apartment that way!

The heat treatment is much, much better at getting rid of bedbugs than freezing & spraying. But it’s much more expensive.

Ending my comment because I unfortunately know waaaay too much about this.

As you probably remember, Mrs. Bee, we had a bed bug scare right while you guys were going through your nightmare. I woke up with bites and Wagon Jr. had bites too, but Wagon Sr. had no bites. I was finding shells of insects, too. But when I saw a live one crawling across our sheets during broad daylight, my research led me to find out that they were actually carpet beetles, not bedbugs. They don’t bite, but the hairs from their bodies can shed and prick your skin and cause an allergic reaction. Turns out Wagon Sr. was just not allergic to their hairs. It made sense because the dogs were causing a lot of dust and fur to gather in the upstairs rooms, and carpet beetles feed on dust and fibers. We religiously vacuumed every day and didn’t let the dogs upstairs anymore and got rid of them pretty easily. They pop up again every now and then (I’ll find a carpet beetle shell or a dead one in a corner every now and then) but as long as we stay on top of our vacuuming, they stay away for the most part.

During the few weeks I thought it was bed bugs, I probably lost about 10 lbs and gained 20 gray hairs. It was so stressful.

I also know way too much about bed bugs because I used to do PR for a pesticide manufacturer! I’m terrified of them and always check hotel rooms as best as I can. Now that I have an infant, I’m even more concerned. I can only imagine how stressful this must have been for you with a baby.

@dagret: thermal remediation wasn’t an option for our building. but i have read several accounts from people who went through it that didn’t have it work.

my ideal treatment method would be vikane gas. if i couldn’t do that, then thermal remediation. alas we lived in an apartment and it wasn’t possible!

@mrs. wagon: yup carpet beetles are very frequently mistaken for bedbugs!

Ugh. I hate bedbugs. We had bedbugs at work! I work in higher ed so we have lots of traffic and people probably bring bedbugs in all the time unknowingly. We had the bedbug sniffing dogs come in and search the entire campus! The bugs were found in multiple locations but luckily they weren’t in many places. It’s gross.

Also, my former roommate had bedbugs. It’s interesting because she had them in her bed frame and luckily they never got anywhere else, so only her bedroom was treated. I remained bedbug free, hallelujah.

ohmygosh what an ordeal!!

@dagret: thanks for those tips! I’ll have to remember for the next time we stay at a hotel!

What an involved process to get rid of the bedbugs! My husband and I had an experience with bedbugs when we were overseas, which was especially trying with the language barrier. It was in a hotel in Korea, and once they figured out what we were saying they were insistent that they had no such thing. We had to call the hotel chain’s management to get all of our clothing treated because we were worried about flying home with the bedbugs.

OMG my grandma wouldn’t allow us in her home during the trip once she heard what was going on!

@Mrs. Bee: whenever anyone brings up bedbugs, I still love the mental image of you guys packing all your belongings into a moving truck, bombing it with vikane gas, and then moving into a new apartment.

He went to an infested apartment once and the mom was spraying HER CHILD’S BED with “Bedbug pesticide” from the dollar store. Poor kid. The lady just didn’t know any better – but I’m sure the pesticides (that were clearly labled “use in a well ventilated area away from children and pets”) did the kid more harm than bedbug bites ever could. She told DH that she knew her mom had an infestation in her house but couldn’t afford to treat it, and her mom was childcare provider. Sad.

That sounds like a nightmare!

@dagret: when we told our landlord, he sent over the handyman with a bucket of pesticides and he was just going to spray it right then and there. the building manager said that he didn’t know what the difference was between hiring a professional exterminator and spraying pesticide ourselves. “it’s the same juice!” he said.

we ended up paying for all the treatment ourselves.

@Mrs. Bee: OMG. I would have freaked out, especially with kids in the apartment! Definitely NOT the same thing. The stuff you can buy as a layperson is MUCH different than what you can buy (and what actually works) when you have your Class Whatever License to Legally Apply Pesticides. (obviously not what it’s really called, but you get the gist.)

I never got confirmation of this, but about 4 years ago I came home from my parents beach house with suspicious looking bites. I ran to my dermatologist right away and she confirmed that it was most likely bedbug bites but couldn’t guarantee.

My parents had JUST bought the beach house as an estate sale and negotiated with the sellers to leave all of the furniture including the mattresses since they were planning on tearing the house down in a couple of years and rebuilding completely (which has since happened). They didn’t want to waste money on ‘temporary’ furniture that would have to be thrown out. Because of my scare, since there were already 6 grand children at that point, my Mom had to replace all the mattresses and all of the carpeting in the entire house. That seemed to do the trick!

@dagret: Poor kid!

My skin is crawling just reading this. Please hurry with the next part of this!!

@tipperella: Ditto!!!

@Mrs. Bee: This all sounds really really expensive Especially, when we just moved and called to get a pod and they told us it would be $1000 :O. So glad you guys got rid of them!! Does vacumning your mattress help prevent them?

@dc yoga bee: the best thing you can do is to get those bed bug mattress covers. even if you have bed bugs, you can trap them in there with the mattress cover and they will eventually die. but bed bugs can live over a year without feeding, which is why they’re so scary.

vacuuming may help, but they hide in many more places than just the mattress — behind wallpaper, in the headboard, nightstand, electrical outlets… they travel up to 20 feet at night to feed and then back to their hiding place!

it was really expensive — the dog, the pesticide, the cryonite, the vikane gas.. plus the hotels and kenneling! in retrospect i think we could have treated with just pesticide just in the rooms with the bugs instead of our entire apartment, and i think we would have been fine. but i was freaking the you know what out then and i really needed that peace of mind!

Man, this post totally made me itch, especially since we just got back from vacation where in we stayed in 4 different hotels. Blech!

@Mrs. Bee: didnt one of the treatments get into your system and affect your supply or something? which was that, the organic one or the vikane gas? I live in the NYC area, and knock wood, no infestations for me, but my stster and her boyfriend’s apartment got them-also from a business trip. It was a NIGHTMARE

@LivsMama: yes i ingested the pesticide when i was cleaning after they sprayed, and it came out in my milk and charlie broke out in hives. we knew it was the milk because he was at our nanny’s place and didn’t have any contact with the pesticide other than through my milk.

he didn’t seem to be bothered by it, but that’s why i ended up weaning. i probably should have included that in my story.

This is one of my biggest concerns with Mr. S’s constant travel. He stays at a new hotel every night he’s flying – that’s over 100 hotel rooms last year! He checks the mattress for bed bugs everywhere he goes and never puts his bag on the bed, but it scares me. I don’t know if he really knows what he’s looking for. This post has renewed my paranoia, I’ve gotta get Mr. S up to speed on what to look for.

oh. my. word. what a nightmare!!! so glad everything worked in the end…and thank you for writing this very informative post…i hope i never have to refer back to it!

Gross! Reminds me of uku’s or head lice. My students would get uku’s and I’d be paranoid about getting them and bringing them home.

I travel a lot for work and when I get into the room I put my stuff in the bathroom, rip off the sheets from the bed and look for any signs of bed bugs. I’ve found lots of things, but no bed bugs yet!

Thank you so much for not posting any pictures!! The word bedbug is scary enough!!

I want to congratulate Mrs. Bee on her knowledge of bed bugs. It is refreshing to read such an article as this one and not find glaring errors. Many websites pass along misinformation on this pest which makes it harder to others to understand what to do and what not to do. Do educate yourself – research on the web, but be careful and do not believe everything you read. Do install monitors – passive monitoring technology has improved over the years and it is your best early warning detection system, next to a watchful eye. Do have occasional quality control canine-assisted inspections of your home, especially after a suspected bed bug encounter. Early detection is the key.

I don’t blame you for throwing everything out. I’m itching just reading this..Ugh!

For a while I thought I had bed bugs. It was horrible. For like 6 months I had bites over my entire body, like the entire thing. I seriously had probably 500, and they were so itchy and they burned so bad. But I went to the derm and they couldnt find anything, and the pest control people came and couldn’t find anyhting at all! No bed bugs, no fleas, no anything. It was so frustrating. I threw away my mattress and moved rooms and nothing changed. I still do not know what it was! But now like 3 months after the ordeal I haven’t had a bite since. Oh and my husband had no bites ever, and I have 2 cats and only one of them got bitten. So strange!

UGHHHH…. such a horrible, tedious process for tiny little buggers! I haven’t had the experience yet and I hope I never have to– but this is a great post that will keep me from googling elsewhere!

This is scary and creepy. What a headache to clean everything and vacate it from your house.

“in retrospect i think we could have treated with just pesticide just in the rooms with the bugs instead of our entire apartment, and i think we would have been fine.”

Do you mean in retrospect you would have not done the high temp laundry, the cryonite, the vikane gas and etc at all? Just simply pesticide in the rooms the BB’s were detected and that is it?

@little brother – i still would have done the laundry in the affected rooms, and the cryonite esp because it was in the nursery. but not the vikane gas… that was probably overkill but i had too much anxiety over the whole thing.

I had an outbreak of bumps that resemebled mosquito bites about 2 weeks ago. They have since cleared up, but I keep finding little shells around and am itchy. The itchy spots are no longer growing into bigger bumps, like they were before. I could be paranoid, but this is annoying and I’m scared. I have a 6 year old and i’m constantly checking her mattress for signs. She doesn’t have a boxspring (a loft bed), but I see nothing on her bed. I checked mine and don’t see any remnants of what I read I should be seeing. This is driving me crazy. I’m constantly washing and rewashing my clothes to “kill” them off. I haven’t slept in my bed since the incident. No idea where they could’ve come from.

How did you sleep at night Mrs. Bee???

I just found out I have them (mild infestation) but I am freaking out!!! I saw a small one tonight behind the mattress/box spring encasement Oh my nerves, talk about anxiety!!

i need to why i only see bed bugs once a week maybe not even that much and i see them in the bathroom\

Just wanted to say since we rented a very expensive summer home in North Carolina Nags Head, we have been chasing bedbugs thru out a 7000 square home. We had orkin come out but still have incidents of bites here and there. Once you have them it is a constant battle to keep on alert. In answer to someone’s question the bugs can live a year without eating. So they could be packed away and when you unpack something they reappear a season later. They feed at night when you are asleep. They bite in 3’s, unless detected or you move in your sleep. Bites are like, breakfast, lunch and dinner. I have since now ordered online covers for my box spring and mattress since I believe I found blood stains on my sheet and a squished bug. The initial outbreak was in my daughters room 2 stories down. She slept in my room one night to avoid being bitten and inadvertently brought an egg in my room I am assuming. Even with one or two bugs it can grow out of hand. I never had this problem and I am 59 years old. Pest companies say it has nothing to do with cleanliness, but is most common with wealthier people because it is known that travelers have the money to travel, thus that is where they are picked up. Hotels, airplanes, movie theaters, etc. my relatives have not invited us to visit because everyone is afraid it will be brought to them….very frustrating!

I recently stayed with an elderly woman who had recently had a 3 part bedbugs extermination, during which time she stayed elsewhere for about 5 months, until we stayed there while her normal caregivers were out of town. I found a live bedbug the morning after my first night. I sprayed the beds with spray that indicates for bedbugs, and notified her family. When I came home, I immediately stripped of all my clothes, and threw in a hot washer, along with everything inside my leather bag. I also dried them all for about an hour on high heat. (my laundry room is in my rear entryway, and set this plan on my way home) about 4 days later, a set of 4 evenly spaced bites, zigzaged
Up my arm. I searched the web, and found they may not appear for 1-9 days if bitten. I just bought a new, and more expensive bed than I could afford, and will be devistated if I must throw out., but tonight I found a single tiny dot of blood on my top sheet, but not the fitted. I looked under my mattress, on top of the foundation and inspected both sheets and mattress. Only the one tiny , tiny dot. With the precautions I took upon arrival, do u think that’s evidence of bedbugs? I could’ve bled from a pimple, or a cat scratch too. I’ve been being like a crazy person, and wondering if I should’ve took another shower at home or something. I hope I can get some reassuring news, but please give me an honest opinion. I don’t feel comfortable calling an exterminator, because I called a national reputable one in the fall, who told me the stink bugs I saw were infested in my walls and so forth. I found out it wasn’t true, but they still continue to telemarket me monthly. They also dropped the price 50% the next day after I refused service because I couldn’t afford it, and that just seems shady behavior to me. So, I’m asking you, since you’ve experienced this. May I ask about how much it cost for the dog service? I’m always itchy, from that experience, even fresh from the shower! I know it’s my mind playing tricks on me, the constant itching, but I think I’ve been a bit traumatized! I hope you have good news, but please be honest. Will I get email notified if you respond, or if anyone does? I never did this before, so I’m not sure. I’m subscribing, just in case…lol thanks

Hi Mrs. Bee!

I am going through a situation with bed bugs and stumbled upon your site. Would you be able to recommend the company you used for the Vikane gas??

Thank you,

Al

@al – this is who we used, but i don’t think it is necessary and would not do it again in the case of a mild infestation.

http://www.bedbugsandbeyond.com/

so I just recently found out my kids bunkbeds are infested with bed bugs bout 11 oclock last night here is it 6 am and I am still freaking out they are not in the mattress the are in the bed frame how odd I was thinking maybe the furniture place gave us a infested bed frame cus of cause the mattress was wrapped in plastic I have not been able to go to bed cus I am so freaked out bout this I cant believe I could get them and cant imagine how we got them

Worried!! I do home care and my clients family has bed bugs! I had three bites on my body which I believe I received at their home. I was only there once and it’s been three weeks since I’ve been there. I’ve had no new bites. Who thinks I’m in the clear? No one in my home has bites and no signs of them. I sure hope they didn’t travel home with me. I should know by now, right?

I am trying to be a surviver of these bed bugs…we had the 2 treatments $3,200.00 later & weeks of hell…did the dryer thing to all my daughters stuff. It was really only in one side of house but I still can’t live in my home comfortabably. It’s the worst thing ever & hard to believe that they all can’t be gone. How long does it take to feel normal again. I know I can’t be the only one feeling like this.

Mrs. Bee, you said you live in a brownstone…did the bed bugs travel to your neighbors once you treated? We live in a duplex and just found out that our neighbors have them and are having treatments done Tuesday. We are FREAKING out, taking all kinds of precautions, just waiting to find them.

I don’t know how this.works but I have some questions. My mother had a BB infestation and she babysits my two year old daughter five days a week. When she discovered the bugs she took precautions to not spread the bugs and checked my daughter everyday. I recently discovered bites that I have confirmed as bb bites. I bombed my small apartment and bought casings for my bed. I have not found signs of in my apartment but still have bites. Could they have been bites from being at my moms house and took a few days to show? Am I overreacting by bombing already without solid proof? I searched high and low and found no signs….

I fought a duplex-wide infestation for well over a year, at a time when I couldn’t afford to move. The landlord and other tenant kept trying to treat it like a roach infestation, except roach/ant poisons don’t work and foggers just drive bedbugs to other parts of the building (in this case, my apartment).

To top it off, the landlord suggested I wasn’t cleaning up enough. (He changed that tune when the bedbugs took New York, and TV news started their endless “What you need to know about bedbugs!” clips.)

I put my faith in diatomaceous earth. A dusting along all the baseboards, cracks, crevices, etc., not only helped curb the infestation, it prevented reinfestation from the other apartment, and the little creeps can’t develop an immunity to it…

Please help me. I keep getting these bites my 8 year old daughter gets them too. After weeks of waking up at night scratching I finally took her to the doctor. He diagnosed her with scabies I treated her. After the scabies treatment we were fine and she started getting bites again. I took her to the doctor again they ask that I treat her for scabies again but say that the bites look like spider bites. They keep ruling out bed bug bites but I keep getting bites. Smh I’m going crazy!!!!

when i was a kid we had bed bugs at my mothers, at first she wouldnt believe me that it was bed bugs, but when i showed her the things i was reading online it was clear that we had an infestation, she did nothing about it though for 3 months. i couldnt sleep at all i was staying up for days at a time and when i did sleep i slept in the bathtub, which was the only place in the house i would not get bitten. it was horrible and i wish bed bugs never existed.

and she never did anything about them, we moved to a differnt house and got lucky i guess, because we all stopped getting bit and didnt see one bug. we put covers on our beds and got rid of the couches.

Mrs. Bee I want to say I feel for you as well as everyone else. Anyone can get these damn things. I have OCD and my house is so clean you can eat off the floors. My neighbor attached to me got bed bugs. I devastated me horribly. I had an exterminator at my house every two weeks for 7 months. Every time they came I had to dry all my stuff for an hour box and bag it up and take it out to the detached shed. Every time is do this my neighbor would not. So they had to come again and again. They kept coming thru the walls. You can’t do one side and not the other they will come back and fourth and you will keep getting them. My house is very country primitive so my house looks like a country store. Again everything material needed to be dryer. Outside the cost of the exterminator for 7 months I lost thousands of dollars of my country stuff. And in the mitfs of all this I was in a severe car accident, I almost lost my teen do to a medical problem as well as my ex planting me in the wrong place at the wrong time losing my police career. Worst time in my life. Bed bugs are no joke. You cry for hours you try to sleep at night you spaz out. Good luck to anyone. And if you want to know if you have them another place to look is your curtains up by the curtain rod but be careful look closely cause you don’t want them to fall and the babies are oblique

Ughh I feel for everyone here. For the last few weeks, I have been in hell on earth. Bed Bugs? No way. Bed bugs are found in filthy downtown apts and hotel rooms. I live in a clean, modest 4 bedroom home in the suburbs. I have a housekeeper. Well, indeed I stand corrected. We are assuming we brought bed bugs back with us from a spring break indoor water park trip. It was one of the “better” places to stay even though I was disgusted the entire time, but fun for the kids right? Well about 1.5 weeks after we got back, I noticed itchy red bumps on my arm. I asked my husband if he had some too, and he had them on his arms and back. Kids never got bites thank God. We called the hotel and they did confirm bb in our room. I lost it. We started looking through the bedroom and thought we might have seen something on the corner of the bed but honestly it could have been a fuzz. I wanted to instantly throw out every single article of clothing/blanket/bedding but was told not to move anything. Extremely difficult I made a big mistake sleeping on the couch that night (I now know) but like most, i couldn’t sleep in my bed for even one more night. My husband was kind enough to be the bait. Anyway, we had two bed bug exterminators come through, one without a dog and one with. The first exterminator found no evidence in our home. The dog from the 2nd exterminator did hit on the corner of our bed and nowhere else, however my husband told the handler first where we “thought” we saw something. We decided to have the whole upstairs heat treated anyway. It;s been two weeks as of today and no more bites. I am still a nervous wreck that they will rear their ugly heads again or worse reappear and move into the kids’ rooms. Have had to go on major anti-anxiety meds just to function. All of this and the only evidence we’ve had is the bites and the hit from the first dog, This week, one week later, we had another dog run through and a thorough visual inspection and neither found anything, I wish i was convinced this was over. I feel like we haven;t done enough even though there has been zero evidence. That is what drives you crazy is the waiting to see if the treatment did indeed work. All of this hell because I had the audacity to take my kids on a fun spring break trip. It can happen to any one. I think my friends and family are sick of me telling them how to check hotel rooms and what to do when the get back. I wouldn’t wish this hellish experience on my very worst enemy. Here;s a prayer to all of you that you get out of this misery soon and we can move on back to our normal lives!

Hi!! I have these bed bugs issue in my home from many days as these are not visible clearly. After one of my friends visit to home, I came to know I had bed bugs issue. It is really a horrific experience with these bed bugs in my life. I immediately reached a nearby bed bugs removal in Toronto contractor and got rid of these at once. I would say, I have a clean home now.

Hi Mrs. Bee,

Which company did you use to perform the bed bug inspection?

Thank you so much for writing this blog post. I have been freaking out that I may have bed bugs. Your post is easing my anxiety a bit as I can see that while horrific that it can be successfully treated.

On another note, I used to read your Wedding Bee blog site back in 2006/2007 when I was planning my wedding. I am so happy to discover your Hello Bee site while searching the web for bed bug info!

Thanks for your help!
Julie

@julie – this is who we used!

http://www.mandmpestcontrol.com/

good luck!

I am losing sleep over this. I am a clean freak, neighbours had them as I live in a townhouse. I feel useless and I keep crying about it. I haven’t slept in two days and the lights are on, not that it makes a difference. I began washing everything in hot water and drying in hot temp. I double bagged and sealed everything. I keep thinking things are getting cross contaminated. It’s worse because I have an exam and every time I try to study I’m researching about this. I’m losing my mind, I can’t go anywhere because it’ll spread but I don’t want to stay in my house. Please tell me there is something I can do. The landlords gave my mom the exterminators number but they won’t spray unless they have proof. When my neighbours had it they didn’t wanna treat our place to prevent it. I already had anxiety because my parents were in a domestic abuse relationship and when they separated I had to stay in an apartment with my mom and younger sister. I was upset because I was the oldest still living with my mom, while one of my other sister who was younger was able to move out for school. The apartment had roaches. When we left after two years we moved into a town house and after two years of no problems, we now have bed bugs and I can feel the same anxiety and insomnia taking over.