Bed Bugs Identification Greenwich: What Signs Should You Look For?

The Adult Insect

What to look for: flat, oval, reddish-brown, and often described as about the size and shape of an apple pip. Wingless. After feeding it is noticeably rounder and darker, which is why two insects from the same bed can look like different species.

What it tells you: everything - a live adult in the seams is conclusive. It also tells you the infestation is not new, because adults take time to develop.

What it rules out: anything with wings, anything fast-moving across an open floor, and anything hairy. Carpet beetle larvae are bristly; bed bugs are smooth.

Nymphs

What to look for: the same shape as an adult but much smaller and considerably paler - almost translucent before feeding, and visibly red afterwards. The youngest are very small indeed and easily missed without a torch.

What it tells you: that breeding is happening in the property, which is different from a single insect having arrived on a bag. Finding nymphs raises the priority.

Shed Skins

What to look for: pale, hollow, perfectly bed-bug-shaped casings, empty and light. In the seams, the frame joints, behind the headboard and in the folds of the base fabric.

What it tells you: that insects have been growing here, which means an established population rather than an arrival. This is frequently the first hard evidence a householder finds, because the skins stay put and the insects do not.

Spotting

What to look for: small dark spots on the mattress, the base fabric, the sheet or the wall behind the bed. Digested blood. It soaks into fabric and marks it rather than sitting on the surface.

What it tells you: a feeding site or a harbourage close by. A concentration of spotting in one corner of a mattress usually means the harbourage is in that corner or in the frame beneath it.

What it rules out: spots that brush or wipe off are dirt. Mould marks are usually greyer, more diffuse and smell different.

Eggs

What to look for: tiny, pale, elongated and cemented into a crevice rather than lying loose. Usually in clusters, and usually deep in a seam or a joint.

What it tells you: why a single treatment is rarely the whole job. Eggs are much more resistant than the insects that laid them, and the follow-up visit exists for what hatches after the first treatment.

Smell

What to look for: a sweetish, musty, slightly almond-like smell in a room with a heavy infestation.

What it tells you: that the population is substantial. It is not a reliable early sign - most people never notice it - so its absence means nothing at all.

Where to Look, in Order

1. Mattress seams, folds and labels.
2. The divan base - underneath, along the piping, and inside if there is access.
3. Bed frame joints, bolt holes and the underside of slats.
4. Headboard fixings and the wall behind.
5. Bedside furniture: the back panel, the underside, and drawer runners.
6. The carpet perimeter and skirting joints nearest the bed.
7. Curtain hems, and in a heavy infestation, sockets, switch plates and picture frames.

The order matters. It runs outward from the bed, because that is how an infestation actually spreads, and it means that if you find nothing in the first four you can reasonably stop.

Four Things People Mistake for Bed Bugs

• Carpet beetle larvae. Short, bristly and banded - the hairiness is the giveaway. Bed bugs are smooth and flat. Beetle larvae also damage wool and fabric, which bed bugs never do.
• Fleas. Much smaller, laterally flattened rather than flat top-to-bottom, and they jump. Bed bugs cannot jump or fly.
• Woodworm exit holes and frass. Damage to the timber of an old bed frame is a completely different problem.
• Ordinary dirt in a seam. The test is whether it marks the fabric or brushes off.

What the Evidence Tells Us About the Job

Different findings point at different amounts of work, which is worth knowing because the price follows the room count:

• A single adult, no spotting, no skins - possibly a recent arrival on luggage. Often one room.
• Spotting and shed skins in the seams - established in that bed. One room, treated properly, with a follow-up.
• Evidence at the skirting, in the carpet perimeter or on bedside furniture - spreading outward from the bed, and worth checking adjacent rooms.
• Evidence in more than one bedroom - usually because somebody moved rooms to escape the bites.

What to Do With an Insect You Have Found

Four steps, and the first one is the one people get wrong.

1. Do not squash it. A crushed insect is much harder to identify, and on a mattress it leaves a stain that then confuses the picture.
2. Catch it in something clear. A sandwich bag, a small pot, a piece of clear tape stuck over it on a card. Anything that keeps it intact and visible.
3. Photograph it against something for scale. A coin, a matchstick, the edge of a ruler. Good light, as close as your camera will focus.
4. Note where it was. Mattress seam, base fabric, headboard, bedside table, carpet edge. The location is half the information.

Send the photograph with the enquiry. Identification decides whether this is a bed bug job, a carpet beetle job, a flea job or nothing at all - and those are four different pieces of work at three different prices.