How to Photograph a Bedbug for Identification: Hammersmith and Fulham

Catch It First if You Can

Photographing a live insect as it walks across a sheet is hard. If you can, catch it. Press a strip of clear sticky tape over it and then stick the tape onto a piece of white paper, or tip it into a small jar or pill pot with a lid. Either way it stays still, and you still have the specimen if we want to see it.

Do not squash it if you can avoid it. A crushed insect is much harder to identify, although a crushed one is better than nothing, so photograph it anyway.

Light, Focus and Distance

• Use daylight near a window, or a bright lamp. Avoid the phone’s flash if you can; it washes out the colour and the fine detail.
• Hold a torch to one side so it throws a small shadow. That shows the shape of the body, which matters more than the colour.
• Move the phone closer rather than using digital zoom, and tap the insect on the screen so the camera focuses on it.
• If the phone has a macro or close-up mode, use it.
• Take several shots. One of them will be sharper than the rest.

Show the Scale

Size is one of the quickest ways to rule things in or out, and a close-up with nothing else in it gives no clue. Put something familiar beside the insect: a coin, a ruler with millimetre marks, or the tip of a pen. The ruler is best because it tells us the length directly.

Then take one wider shot as well, so we can see what the insect was on and where. A tiny brown insect on a mattress seam means something different from the same thing on a kitchen windowsill.

What Else to Photograph

The insect is the main thing, but the signs around it are useful evidence too, and sometimes they are all you have.

• Small dark spots on the mattress seam, the sheet or the bed frame.
• Pale, empty shed skins, which look like a see-through bedbug.
• Tiny white eggs, often in a seam or a joint of the frame.
• Any bites, with a note of when they appeared, though bites alone cannot identify the cause.

The London guide on early signs of bedbugs shows what each of those looks like, and our guide to skirting boards and floor gaps covers checking along the edges of the room.

Sending It to Us

Send the photographs on WhatsApp or through the enquiry form, and ring 0800 955 1018 if you would rather talk it through. With the pictures, tell us where in the home you found it, which room, how many you have seen, and whether anyone has been getting bites.

We will tell you what we think it is. Many pictures turn out to show carpet beetles, booklice, spider beetles or a crumb, and the London guide on bedbugs or something else explains the common lookalikes.

What a Photo Can and Cannot Tell Us

A clear picture can confirm that an insect is a bedbug. It cannot show how far they have spread, which rooms are involved, or whether the neighbouring bedroom has them too. Those questions decide the size of the treatment and so the price.

If the photograph is inconclusive, or it confirms bedbugs and you want to know the extent before choosing a route, an inspection from £120 answers that. If it confirms bedbugs and the picture is clear, we can often go straight to discussing heat or chemical treatment and a date.

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