How long before I know if I brought bed bugs home?

You may have them for a while, but may not notice them until weeks, or even months later. Bed bug eggs take anywhere from six to 12 days to hatch, and the adult life span can be anywhere from six months to a year. That's why it's important to know these early signs of an infestation.

Looking for Signs of Bed Bugs

When cleaning, changing bedding, or staying away from home, look for: Rusty or reddish stains on bed sheets or mattresses caused by bed bugs being crushed. Dark spots (about this size: ), which are bed bug excrement and may bleed on the fabric like a marker would.

The chances of bringing bed bugs home are not nearly as great as the media would have you believe. These days, the hospitality industry is well aware of the issue and tends to be proactive when it comes to bed bugs. Even if a single bed bug crawled into your luggage, chances are nothing would come of it.

Normally, bed bugs don't like to wander around unless they need to feed. During the day, they typically find a hiding place and stick to it. For this reason, many people never see live bed bugs until the infestation becomes severe.

If you are concerned that you may have picked up bed bugs, you should inspect everything that you bring home (luggage, purse, and other belongings) for signs of bed bugs. You want to look for blackish specks, drops of blood, and shell-like remains. If possible, inspect everything before you bring it inside your home.

Generally it takes at least seven weeks for a bed bug to grow from an egg to an adult, so there should be no new adults from eggs during that period. Therefore, if many adult bugs are present one can reasonably assume that the infestation has been there for more than seven weeks.

Wash everything on a high temperature or sanitary cycle for at least 30 minutes. Placing everything in the dryer on the hottest setting for 30 minutes will also kill bed bugs and larvae. Immediately after you're finished putting clothing in the washer, tie up and throw out the empty garbage bag in an outdoor trash bin.

How to emotionally cope with bed bugs in eight steps:

While bedbugs are a nuisance and can be upsetting, they aren't known to transmit disease (their biology is a little different from bloodsucking insects that do transmit disease).

If you suspect that you might have bedbugs, it's a good idea to check your mattress and bedding for rust-colored spots — this is what bed bug excrement looks like. Another sign could be shed exoskeletons that look like coffee grounds.

These night biters can be mites, fleas, mosquitoes, lice, spiders, and ticks. Most of these insect bite marks look alike; hence, you should first look for bedbugs and investigate further.

Finding one bed bug in a home is not necessarily a sign that an infestation is present. If you found a single bed bug, killed it, and can't find another after a thorough search, wait for a few days. Bed bugs don't take time off; if there are more, they will show themselves. Be vigilant.

Bed bugs can have a specific preference of blood type while some may only be present on the side or part of the bed. These bugs might be present in another bed and not yours. A different bed bug type might also bite you or ward them off without realizing what they are doing.

But what if they infest a property you own that you're not living in? Tempted to let the bed bugs die off on their own, you might be wondering, “how long can bed bugs live in an empty house?” Bed bugs can live for as long as 4.5 months or more in an empty house before completely dying off.

While not overly effective, the most useful essential oils for deterring bed bugs appear to be blood orange oil, paraffin oil, silicone oil, and spearmint oil.

Bed bug infestations spread quickly.

Every day, a single bed bug can lay up to 1-2 eggs, and in rare cases up to 6 eggs. Bed bugs are also good crawlers, moving as much as three to four feet per minute. All this means an infestation can get out of control quickly if not addressed.

The presence of only one fertile female bed bug in a friendly environment such as a single or multiple family dwelling is an infestation that is waiting to happen.

Do continue to sleep in your bedroom after identifying a bed bug infestation. If you move rooms or start sleeping on the couch you run the risk of contaminating these other areas of your home. Similarly, avoid taking your bedding from the location of the infestation to other rooms of your home.

As soon as you see a bed bug or notice a bite, the first thing you may want to do is sleep somewhere else until the infestation is controlled. However, that is not the right call. It feels counterintuitive, but you should continue sleeping in the same bed.

Technically, bed bugs are unlikely to live on the clothes you're wearing, but they can quickly take up residence on items in a suitcase, and even what's in your drawers or on your floor. You should always launder items after returning from a trip, but will washing clothes kill bed bugs or just reduce the population?

Pyrethroids are synthetic chemical insecticides that act like pyrethrins. Both compounds are lethal to bed bugs and can flush bed bugs out of their hiding places and kill them.

Do Not Panic. Panic is the sudden uncontrollable fear or anxiety that often leads to erratic, sometimes unreasonable behavior. Panic associated with bed bugs include throwing away all furniture, spraying general pesticides in the bedroom and/or refusing to travel to any place, by any means, at any time.

Bed bugs can stowaway undetected, which leads to larger infestations. If you see one or two today, that doesn't mean there aren't a bunch more hiding. Bed bugs can hide anywhere – You may have seen a couple bed bugs on your sheets, but there are places all over your house where they could be hiding.

Bedrooms are the principal locations for bed bugs; however, any room where people sleep in the home may provide harborage for bed bugs. Living rooms with sofas and sofa beds are the next most common sites for bed bugs. Typically an infestation starts in one room and spreads slowly to other places where people sleep.

Do Bed Bugs Usually Stay In One Room? Since bed bugs do not have wings and do not jump, some people incorrectly assume that they tend to stay in one room and not travel much. However, this is not true. Bed bugs move around quickly and seek any place where they can find their next blood meal (i.e. humans).

Everyone's body is different, so therefore different bodies will react to bites differently. If your immune system treats the bed bug saliva as a threat, then the small reddish bumps will appear. If your body does not have a reaction to them then a bite will not appear.