Five Sources of Bedbugs   

In this day and age, you probably are itching to travel. It’s been over a year since the start of covid, but vaccines are rolling out and things are looking a little bit less bleak. But, that doesn’t mean you’re in the clear.  No sir, there’s always going to be risks with traveling. And one of those risks is always going to be picking up pests on the way. So today we’re going to be discussing Five sources of bedbugs, and what to do if you catch them.

Five Sources of Bedbugs: Overview

To start off with, we’ll discuss what a bedbug actually is. These insects are small and wingless, and look similar to an apple seed. They are red-brown in color and very flat. And after they eat blood, they turn bright red. They’re easy to identify. It’s just about what you do after that really counts.

They’re nocturnal, so they’re going to be hiding during the day. If you get bit, you will most likely be bit on the upper body. The shoulders, neck or arms. A truly disturbing fact is that bed bugs can live up to one year without feeding. So left on their own through abandoned hotel suites, or summer homes, they will still be alive and well and ready to feed when they find an animal or human. The way these infestations start, as mentioned above, is by someone bringing them home. So let’s talk about some of the places you’re going to pick them up.

Okay, so the easiest way to do this is probably a list. Let’s begin with the most obvious answer here.

Hotel Rooms

You’ve finally stepped into your room and the long flight is over. Yay! No need to worry from here on in until it’s time to head back home. Or is there? Yep! This is probably the most prolific of my five sources of bedbugs mentioned in this article. Just think about it, if you go to any hotel you’re going to be staying in a room that’s had anything up to thousands of people there a year. And in that year, there’s a good chance at least a few of those people are constant travelers. And what do people pick up when they travel constantly? You guess it, bed bugs.

The vast majority of people who end up with bed bugs in their homes likely picked them up while out traveling. So when you get into your hotel room, make sure to check high and low for the bugs. They can hide in your luggage for up to a year, so an ounce of prevention is worth a thousand pounds of cure here. When you get to your hotel rooms, make sure to pick up all the mattresses and look under them. Also, check the edges of the box springs and under as well.

Headboards in hotel rooms are easily removed. They are basically decorative. Lift up each headboard an lay it on the bed. Carefully inspect the hole where the headboard was lifted out of. Also, inspect all niches and corners of the headboard. Remember bedbugs are very small and dead bedbug husks sometimes can be hard to pick up. If you see any type of bug or husk of small bugs, you most likely have bedbugs in the room (or at least used to).

Public transportation

Do you ride buses? Trains? Maybe even take a nice trolly ride downtown? Well.

Five sources of bedbugs FINALE: Hospitals

This one is likely unshocking if you think about it. Many of the residents of hospitals are older people and many older people tend to live in sort of…poor housing situations. This can lead to bedbug infestations that follow them when they check in.