Bedbug Control Chislehurst

Why a Shut Room Does Not Starve Them

The obvious thought is that a room nobody sleeps in will clear itself. It does not work like that. Bedbugs can go a long time between meals, and adults in a cool, quiet room can wait out the gap between one set of guests and the next. When someone finally sleeps there, they feed.

Some will also go looking. If the room is empty for long enough, a few may wander along the landing towards the bedrooms that are in use. The guide to how long they live without feeding goes into this without pretending to precise figures.

How It Usually Comes to Light

Often it is the guest who notices, with bites a day or two after staying. Sometimes it is the person changing the sheets, who spots dark marks on the mattress seam or a bug in the fold of a pillowcase. Occasionally it is found months after the visit that brought it in, when the room is made up again.

Bites alone do not prove anything, since people react very differently and some do not react at all. Spotting on the seams, pale shed skins and the bugs themselves are what confirm it.

Checking a Guest Room Before and After a Visit

1. When you strip the bed after a stay, look along the mattress piping and under the corners, and into the joints of the bed frame with a torch.
2. Check the headboard, especially where it is fixed to the wall, and the bedside table drawers.
3. Look at the luggage rack or chair where the suitcase sat.
4. Before the next visitor, repeat it. A room that has been shut for months is worth a look before anyone sleeps in it.

The places bedbugs hide that get missed are worth knowing for a room with heavy furniture.

Treating a Room That Is Hardly Used

Chemical treatment relies on bedbugs crossing the residue when they come out to feed. In a room with nobody sleeping in it they have less reason to move, so the course can take longer to show results. If you go that way, the follow-up visits still need to happen, and it helps if the room is slept in between them.

Heat does not depend on them moving. The whole room is raised to a temperature they cannot survive, eggs included, usually in one visit, which is why it often suits a guest room. Heavy wardrobes and old beds get extra attention with the thermal camera. For the bigger picture on larger houses, see the Bromley page.

When a visitor is on the way, it is worth asking them to put their case on the luggage rack or a hard floor, not on the bed or the carpet beside it. That one habit keeps anything they are carrying away from the mattress, and makes the check after they leave much quicker.

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