Bedbugs are very flat, which allows them to hide in tiny crevices. A crack wide enough to fit the edge of a credit card can harbour bedbugs (even cracks in the ceiling!). In the daytime, they tend to stay out of the light, preferring to remain hidden in such places as mattress seams, mattress interiors, bed frames, nearby furniture, carpeting, skirting boards, inner walls, tiny wood holes, or in the general bedroom clutter. Bedbugs can be found on their own, but more often than not, due to circumstances, are found congregated in groups. They are not social insects, and do not build or live in nests. These groups of bedbugs are most often found in beds, usually either in the seams of a mattress, or within the structure of the bed frame itself. But they can also be found in a wide variety of locations in a home, such as behind skirting boards, behind a picture frame, within books, in telephones, or bedside radios, and within the folds of curtains. Bedbugs are capable of travelling as far as 100 feet to feed, but usually remain close to the host in bedrooms or on sofas where people may sleep. They feed every five to 10 days and the manner in which infestations spread room to room throughout a home will usually differ from case to case. It is important to inspect all adjacent rooms for infestation, as bedbugs travel easily and quickly along pipes and boards. In treatment, it is important to consider the insides of walls as potential places for bedbug infestation. The actual size of a bedbug infestation is variable and hugely dependent on the time elapsed since the initial infestation. All infestations start small and grow exponentially from this point. Even a single female bedbug brought into a home can result in a huge population expansion once offspring start breeding with offspring. It needs to be noted that the visible bedbug infestation does not necessarily represent the infestation as a whole, as there may be infestations elsewhere in a home, however, the insects do have a tendency to stay close to their hosts (hence the name "bed" bugs), so this can be quickly assessed to understand the full scale of the infestation.

For more in depth info, please visit our bedbug symptoms & identification page.

Spotting the signs of an infestation is one of the most important weapon against the spread of bed bugs. As with most problems of this nature, the earlier you detect the problem, the quicker, cheaper and easier it is to eradicate them, and most importantly with the least chance of spreading them to friends and family. For most people who have little knowledge of bed bugs, the first signs they will spot are small clustered bites, normally located on the limbs and neck/head areas:

It is very important that these bites are diagnosed correctly and above you can see a picture of what to look out for. You will notice that the bed bug bites are clustered in groups of roughly 3 and do not have a dark "blood red" centre to them (unless you have been vigorously scratching them!). The tiny bumps you can see are formed where the bed bug has pierced the skin for feeding and injected a tiny bit of saliva that contains 2 active ingredients required for feeding. The first is an anticoagulant that stops the blood from clotting (to allow a free flow of blood for feeding), and the second is an anaesthetic to numb the area (to enable undetected feeding). Depending upon your reaction to each of these active ingredients, you will get a raised bump where the bed bug has been feeding. Reactions range from absolutely no sign at all, to a swelling the size of an egg, but the bites shown above are what 90% of people will experience (for more details on symptoms and treatment of bedbug bites, please visit our bedbug bites page). Next you might find a few brown coloured "blood smears" on the bed sheets, these are very small and unless you are specifically looking for them they are easy to miss. The cause of these marks are due to the bed bugs feeding on blood and as they walk away, some will seep out creating a streaking pattern (just like the “blood smear” image shown here). Once aware of the problem, further investigation will reveal 3 more key signs, the first will be little black stains on the bed frame, mattress, surrounding furniture, floor boards or skirting boards. These black marks are caused by the waste faecal matter produced by bed bugs after feeding and are mostly located around where the bed bugs have been living. Unfortunately this is a sign of the advanced stages of an infestation, and ideally the infestation should have been eradicated before these signs become visible to an untrained person.

Next, where the bedbugs have been nesting you may find what look like empty bed bug shells, these are called husks and are created through the moulting process whereby the bedbug will shed it's skin periodically as it grows from a nymph to the full adult male stage. It is only at this stage that bed bugs can breed, so the discovery of these husks is bad news with regards to controlling the population. At this stage, every day counts, and unfortunately these husks are a sign of an advanced infestation, so care should be taken to not disturb or spread the infestation. The next key sign will be actual bed bug eggs. These are smaller than a grain of rice (as shown in the photograph) and again, unfortunately this is a sign of an advanced infestation. The eggs have a sticky coating which enables them to bond with any surface and are usually laid out of sight so they can remain safely hidden until hatched.

For more in depth info, please visit our bedbug symptoms & identification page.