Your Broken Arrow pest control company are experts when it comes to dealing with bed bugs. Bed bugs are an insect that attack us in the middle of the night when we are most vulnerable. These blood feeders will crawl out of our mattresses and feed upon the blood of us, and our loved ones. They’ll rob you of a good nights sleep and make you feel generally uncomfortable to live in your own home. So in this article, let’s take a good hard look at bed bugs, their lifecycle, and what you and your Broken Arrow pest control company can do to protect your home from these invaders.
BED BUG TREATMENTS AND BROKEN ARROW PEST CONTROL
Bed bug treatments can be quite costly and get very involved. It’s important you know the details and how they size up against one another. Many companies will treat your home with heat treatment. Bed bugs die when their temperatures go over 120°F. In order to do this, many companies will bring in large heating units to heat their entire house up over 120°. While in theory, this should work, the tricky part is to get every nook and cranny that hot. The center of mattresses or the middle of a wall can be very difficult to heat up without using excessive heat that will damage the rest of your home. Here at TermMax pest control, we use a localized heat treatment in the form of a steamer. This can pinpoint areas that are highly problematic areas, thoroughly covering them without risking damage to anything else.
Chemical treatments are also often effective. While heat treatments will kill bugs while the treatment is occurring, chemical treatments will stick around and continue to kill bugs even long after your pest control technician has left. Bed bugs are quite adept at growing an immunity to many different chemical treatments. This is why over-the-counter treatments are unfortunately mostly ineffective. They almost always use an active ingredient known as pyrethrin. Pyrethrins are a family of pesticides that was derived from a pesticide found naturally in chrysanthemum plants. This pesticidal family was used extensively against bed bugs in the 90s until they grew an immunity to them. Now, those active ingredients are just as ineffective against bed bugs. Call your Broken Arrow pest control company for more information.
BIOLOGICAL CONTROLS
Biological control is using a natural predator against these pests that you’re trying to control. Bed bugs have a natural predator in a fungus that actually feeds upon them. The chemical known as Aprehend is available and used by TermMax pest control. This chemical contains the spores of this fungus. As these insects crawl on your bed frames, they will walk through the pesticide without knowing it. They’ll pick up this fungal spore and then carry it back to wherever they’re harboring. Then they will pass it around to all their friends, and the spores will grow into a fungus, It will begin to feed upon the bed bug itself. This will wipe out not only the bugs that walk through this pesticide, but also the ones that are hiding that you can’t get to.
Bed bugs are blood feeders. They have syringe like mouth parts that they inject into our skin and draw blood out of it. While many blood feeding insects are vectors for diseases, bed bugs actually are not vectors for disease. The way that they draw blood is unique, in the fact that they continue to suck the entire time they inject the needle, and once they remove it. Because of this, there’s no backwash. Scientists have not found any diseases that have been passed by this insect to date, which is a good sign for us. But the psychological weight of bed bugs in your home can be devastating. Knowing that you’re sharing a bed with an insect that’s going to feed on you can be extremely unnerving for many people and simply unacceptable. That’s why you need to call your Broken Arrow pest control company for help with them.
BED BUG HISTORY AND BROKEN ARROW PEST CONTROL
Bed bugs have been around since the beginning of mankind. We have cave paintings that show depictions of bed bugs. We have writings from the Romans that describe bed bugs and their control. We have medieval writings that include love potions with bed bugs being part of the ingredients. Entomologists believe that the first bed bugs were derived from bat bugs. Bat bugs look much like a bed bug. In fact, it takes an entomologist to tell the difference between the two. The main difference, though, is that that bat bugs feed upon the blood of bats, while bed bugs feed upon the blood of humans. It’s believed that when we were still caveman, we slept underneath roosting bats. Some of these bat bugs, crawled down the sides of the cave and fed upon humans. This was the beginning of the bed bug.
Fast forward to the 1940s. A new pesticide came on the scene. It was DDT. This miracle chemical wiped out every pest problem that anyone had. People with bed bugs would douse their mattresses, sheets and pillows with DDT. And it was quite effective. Bed bug populations dropped so low they almost went completely extinct. But then scientists discovered that DDT caused cancer. Because it is a carcinogenic, it was removed from store shelves and not allowed to be used as a pesticide ever again. Ever since then, bed bugs have been slowly making their way back. Now populations are growing every year and we are constantly getting more and more calls for these insects.
ELIMINATING BED BUGS AND BROKEN ARROW PEST CONTROL
If you’re having an issue with bed bugs, or any other pest issues, then it’s time to call a Broken Arrow pest control company that you can trust. Here at TermMax pest control we are the best in the business when it comes to dealing with bed bugs, or any other insect. We service the greater Tulsa area, including Broken Arrow, Claremore, Coweta, Catoosa, Sapulpa, Sand Springs, Prattville, Bixby, Jenks, Owasso, Turley, and so much more. Call today for a free estimate. We’re here to help!
