Bedbug Control Hayes, Bromley | Found One Bedbug? What It Means

First, Keep the Bug

A gloved hand holding a specimen pot containing collected bedbugs

Press a strip of clear sticky tape over it, or tip it into a small jar or a sealed freezer bag. Photograph it next to a coin. Squashing it and throwing it away loses the one piece of evidence you have.

Plenty of small brown insects end up in bedrooms, including carpet beetles, booklice and bat bugs, and some look very similar. The guide to lookalikes helps you narrow it down.

Is One Bedbug an Infestation?

It might be a lone traveller. A single adult can arrive in a suitcase, a bag, a second-hand chair or a visitor's coat, and if it never mates there may be no more. It might also be the first one you have noticed from a group already living in the bed frame.

A single bug cannot tell you which. What tells you is whether there is anything else to find, so the next step is looking, not treating.

What to Check Next

Strip the bed and look along every mattress seam and under the corners with a torch.
Lift the mattress and look at the base and the bed frame joints, including screw holes.
Check the back of the headboard and where it meets the wall.
Look along the skirting nearest the bed and in the bedside drawers.
Note any bites over the next week or two, while remembering that some people do not react at all.

You are looking for dark spotting, pale shed skins, tiny eggs and other bugs. Early signs of bedbugs shows what each looks like.

When to Get an Inspection, and When to Treat

If you find nothing else and have no bites, keeping an eye on the bed for a few weeks is reasonable. If you find spotting, eggs or a second bug, or the first one is confirmed as a bedbug and you cannot find where it came from, an inspection is worth doing. They start from £120, and it means nobody spends money treating a problem that is not there.

If the inspection confirms an established infestation, treatment is either heat, usually one visit and eggs included, or chemical over two or three visits. Bedbug treatments start from £220. If the bug arrived on a recent purchase, the second-hand furniture guide is worth a read, and more on homes across the borough is on the Bromley page.

If you find more than one

Two or three bugs in the same seam, or any eggs, means it is established. Do not reach for a shop spray at that point. Irritant products push bedbugs out of the bed and into the skirting and the next room, which makes the job bigger; the page on what DIY leaves behind explains why. Keep what you found, keep sleeping in the bed, and ring us.

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Questions

Bedbug Control Hayes — Questions

I found one bedbug. Should I book treatment straight away?

Not usually. Check the bed thoroughly first, and if you find more signs or cannot be sure, book an inspection before paying for treatment.

Can a single bedbug start an infestation?

A fertilised female can. A lone male, or an unmated female, cannot. You cannot tell which by looking, which is why checking for more matters.

Where could a single bedbug have come from?

Luggage after a trip, a second-hand chair or bed, a bag left on a friend's sofa, or a visitor. Thinking back over the last few weeks often points to the source, and to anything else worth checking.