If you’ve recently had your home treated for bed bugs, and you’ve started finding remains of the little pests in your home, then: congratulations, your treatment has likely worked, and you can proudly call your home your own, once more.
Whether you’ve opted for a heat treatment, or a chemical treatment, to be administered to your home, you might need to wait for more confirmation than just the carcasses of a few dead bed bugs. This is because unhatched eggs, which may have been stored away in crevices or in other out-of-the-way places, might manage to avoid the lethal heat, or the chemicals at their most potent, and thus the original bed bugs’ offspring may continue to be a plague to your home. If, after a period of time you start to experience the signs of a bed bug infestation once more, this is likely the cause- as such, you might need to administer a second treatment.
How long can bed bugs survive after treatment?
A.k.a. how soon should you start seeing dead bed bugs lying around?
A heat treatment should kill all the bed bugs in the treated area immediately. With chemical treatments, however, the bed bugs can survive up until they come into contact with the bed-bug-busting chemicals, so it’s a little more difficult to estimate the time frame, but they should be dead within a few days. After a few days, these chemicals start to become less potent, and as such lose some of their effectiveness. If you start to see bed bugs after a few weeks of treatment, then they’re unlikely to suddenly die off and you’ll need to conduct another treatment.
Will you still see bedbugs after the first treatment?
At Mantis Pest Solutions, a leading bed bug control service in Overland Park, it’s extremely unlikely that you’ll see any live bed bugs after treatment, since- to tackle the problems faced by only using one form of treatment –they use both a heat and chemical treatment to ensure that your bed bug problem is permanently fixed. Since it’s such a sure-fire method of ridding your home (or car, or workplace) of bed bugs, they offer a 90-day warranty, so if you do suspect bed bugs within this period, you can get another treatment for free.
It’s advisable for you to keep a close eye on your bed bug situation in the first 2-3 weeks after treatment, since it’s possible that unhatched eggs could survive the treatment if they’ve been stored out of the way. If you don’t notice any signs of a bed bug infestation after 6 weeks, then you can call your home a bed bug free zone!
What should you do with your bed bug cemetery?
Bed bugs aren’t serious a health hazard, even in death. So, just a simple vacuum-cleaning of the affected room is sufficient to rid your room of any bed bug carcasses or waste that might still be there- moreover, in the case that bed bugs have laid eggs in your carpet, vacuuming can help to ensure that subsequent generations of bed bugs don’t start wreaking havoc in your home. Aside from this, if your bed bugs were inhabiting your bed it’s recommended that you wash your sheets, duvet and pillow covers etc. simply for peace of mind- no one likes the thought of rolling around in bed bug waste and decomposing bug bodies.
So, now that you’ve had your treatment and you’re beginning to find the evidence that– thank goodness –it’s worked, you can go to sleep in your bed or sit on your couch without fear of these invasive little critters and their maddening bites.
