What Bedbug Shed Skins Tell You: Camden

A young bedbug grows by splitting out of its skin and leaving the old one behind. It does this five times before it is an adult, and it needs a blood meal before each moult. Every one of those cast skins stays where it was left until someone vacuums or disturbs it.

What a Cast Skin Looks Like

A cast skin is the same flat, oval shape as a bedbug, with legs and antennae, but hollow and pale: a light, yellowish brown you can see through. It is dry and papery, weighs almost nothing and crumbles if you press it. Sizes range from tiny, from the youngest stages, up to nearly adult size.

Skins collect in the same places as the bugs themselves: mattress seams, the joints of the bed frame, behind the headboard, along the skirting and in the folds of curtains or a sofa next to the bed.

What Skins Tell You for Certain

A bedbug skin is better evidence than a bite. Bites vary, some people never react, and several other insects and skin conditions leave similar marks. A cast skin can only come from a bedbug that was growing, and growing means feeding.

• Skins mean young bedbugs have been feeding and developing, not just a single adult passing through.
• Skins of several different sizes mean nymphs at different stages, which points to more than one round of eggs.
• Skins in several rooms mean the problem is not confined to one bed.

What Skins Say About How Long

No one can read a date from a skin, and we will not pretend to. What you can read is roughly how established things are. A few small skins in one seam suggest something recent. Lots of skins in a range of sizes, along with dark spotting and eggs, suggest several generations and a problem that has been there for a while.

That is useful when you are working out where they came from. If you moved in recently, or a guest stayed recently, a heavily established picture may point to an earlier source. For renters, that is information to put in writing to the landlord or agent. An inspection before signing for a flat or at the end of a tenancy is another way to get it on record.

Skins After Treatment

Skins do not go anywhere on their own. After a treatment you may still find old ones in seams and gaps, and that does not mean the treatment failed. What matters is whether you find fresh signs: live bugs, new spotting or new bites.

During a chemical course, some young bugs hatch between visits and cross the treated surfaces, so new small skins in that time are not a surprise. Tell us at the follow-up. The London guide to what happens after treatment and why bedbugs reappear cover the weeks that follow.

What to Do With Them

1. Photograph the skins where you found them, with something for scale.
2. Pick one or two up on clear tape and keep them in a jar or a sealed bag.
3. Note where each one was: which bed, which seam, which room.
4. Vacuum the rest and empty the vacuum outside.
5. Ring 0800 955 1018 and tell us what you found and where.

If you are in a flat inside a shared house, the main borough page explains how we treat one flat with neighbours on the other side of the walls.

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