Bed Bugs in Mattress Covers – What Should I Do?

There’s nothing that’s quite as disturbing as finding a bunch of bedbugs on your mattress. Bed bugs are prevalent and easy to bring into your home, but they can be challenging to dislodge once they become established.

In this article, we’ll discuss everything you need to know about bedbugs so that you’ll be able to identify them, fight them, and ensure that they don’t make a comeback.

What Are Bedbugs?

Bed bugs are small parasites that are brownish-red in appearance. Bed bugs bite humans and drink their blood. Subsequently, the bites cause itchiness, swelling, and blisters. Bed bugs can carry diseases, cause allergic reactions, and leave your pets and loved ones itching.

Bed bugs are, unsurprisingly, primarily transferred from contaminated item to contaminated item. In short, bed bugs are why you shouldn’t just pick up any mattress that you find on the street and take it home to sleep on.

If you avoid bringing contaminated items into your home, bedbugs are unlikely to become established there.

Bed bugs don’t hang onto their hosts for very long after feeding, so it is improbable that a person or pet could accidentally transport bed bugs into your home on their body.

However, if their coat or woolen clothing is infested with even one bed bug egg, it may be enough to transfer the pests from them to you.

Where Do Bed bugs Live?

Bed bugs live in the sheets, covers, and mattress of your bed. Typically, of these areas, bed covers are the most common area where bed bugs reside.

The reason for this is that bed bugs love to prey on humans as they sleep, so if they are inside of your mattress, they might be blocked from eating dinner by the sheets. Thus, bed bugs might be more accurately called “bed sheet bugs.”

Bed bugs detect their prey via carbon dioxide emissions, meaning that if there has never been a living being in a given piece of furniture, it is unlikely that bed bugs would want to live there.

Bed bugs can be present in your box spring, though bed bugs can also live in your bed frame. Via the internet, you can view images of bed bugs on mattresses to make sure that the insects you found are bed bugs and not a different pest.

Treating Bed bug Bites

If you find that you have been bitten by bed bugs, the first thing to assess is whether you are also allergic to them or not.

If you are allergic to bed bugs, you will have noticed that you are experiencing rashes and other allergy symptoms on your body when you wake up in the morning. If you aren’t allergic, you will only notice the bed bug bites as evidence that they are around.

Most bed bug bites don’t hurt or swell, but they do itch. Thus, if you are feeling extremely itchy as a result of bed bug bites, you should purchase hydrocortisone cream, which will help you reduce the amount of itching.

Before applying the cream, you should wash the wound site with soap and water to make sure that there are not any bed bug larvae in the wound. You don’t need to bandage the wound because it should heal in a day or two, but you can if you want to.

What’s The Best Way To Kill Bed Bugs?

Bed bugs are not hardy insects, and mechanical force is more than enough to kill all of the bed bugs which you will encounter. However, killing them with mechanical force will not be enough to stem an infestation, as bed bugs lay eggs in areas near where they feed.

Furthermore, be careful about how and where you kill bed bugs. If you find bed bugs on your mattress, you can easily kill them with mechanical force. However, killing them with mechanical strength will likely leave a spot of blood on your covers, which will stain them.

You can use chemical bait traps and lures to attract bed bugs and subsequently kill them. For most people, the best way to kill bedbugs is by vacuuming them up from any surfaces where they may be living in your mattress.

You should also look into a pesticide that is specially formulated to kill bed bugs without causing harm to humans or animals. These pesticides will need to be sprayed all over your home, especially in areas where bed bugs might want to live, such as in your bedsheets.

Other areas where you will need to spray pesticides include:

• Carpets
• Rugs
• Woolen clothing
• Blankets
• Comforters
• Curtains
• Stuffed animals
• Towels
• Lampshades

Remember, bed bugs love to live inside of anything fabric, woolen, or silken. If you have a home that is largely comprised of tiles and hard surfaces, there are likely very few places for bed bugs to hide.

On the other hand, if you have a home with extensive upholstery, you may be in for a difficult time if you notice that you have a bed bug infestation because there will be an ample number of habitats for them to lay in wait for a host.

How to Guard Against Bed Bugs From Bouncing Back

If you use bed bug covers, you will have an additional layer of defense against bed bugs. Bed bug mattress covers aren’t very expensive, but they can be one tool in your arsenal. You may find bed bug mattress covers to be less comfortable than your normal covers, though.

While it is possible to use hot steam to treat all of these objects in hopes of killing some of the bed bugs, steam treatments are not fully reliable. Still, it may be worth steam-treating your mattress or comforters if you have a steamer.

You should also seriously consider throwing out any mattresses, clothing, bedsheets, pillows, and other paraphernalia where bed bugs may be living. Of all the bed bug control methods, discarding all contaminated items is the most reliable way of getting rid of bed bugs.