I Found a Bug in My Bed in Spring Hill. Is It a Bed Bug?

You found something in your bed and now you cannot stop thinking about it. It was small, flat and brownish and it moved when you touched it or maybe it did not move at all. You are staring at it trying to decide if this is what you think it is and whether you need to panic right now or whether there is a chance it is something harmless that just wandered in from outside.

Here is how to tell.

What a Bed Bug Actually Looks Like

A bed bug that has not fed recently is flat, oval shaped and about the size of an apple seed. It is brown, almost mahogany colored and its body is distinctly flattened top to bottom which is what allows it to squeeze into the tiny cracks and seams where it hides during the day. If you press on it and it is alive it moves slowly compared to most insects. Bed bugs do not jump, they do not fly and they do not move fast the way a cockroach or spider does.

After feeding a bed bug looks very different. It swells up and becomes elongated, the flat oval shape fills out into something more cylindrical and the color shifts to a darker reddish brown from the blood it just consumed. A fed bed bug found in the morning near where you slept is one of the clearest confirmations of an active infestation.

The nymphs which are baby bed bugs are smaller and paler. Newly hatched nymphs are about the size of a pinhead and almost translucent until they have had their first blood meal. Older nymphs are progressively larger and darker as they develop through several molts toward adulthood. Finding a nymph means eggs have been hatching in your bedroom and the infestation has been established long enough to produce a second generation.

What It Might Be If It Is Not a Bed Bug

Not every small brown bug found in a bed is a bed bug and it is worth ruling out the alternatives before you call.

Carpet beetles are one of the most common cases of mistaken identity. They are small, oval and brownish but they have a distinctive pattern of scales on their back that bed bugs do not have. Carpet beetles do not bite people and finding one in your bed is not a cause for the same level of alarm as finding a bed bug.

Bat bugs are close relatives of bed bugs and look almost identical to the naked eye. They are found in homes that have or have had bats in the attic and they occasionally make their way down into the living areas of the home. If you have had any bat activity in your attic bat bugs are worth considering.

Spider beetles are another small brown oval insect that people find in beds and confuse for bed bugs. They are rounder than bed bugs and have long legs relative to their body size. They do not bite people.

How Did It Get in My Bed in the First Place?

This is the question that keeps people up at night almost as much as the bugs themselves. You do not feel like you did anything wrong and you are trying to figure out how this happened.

Bed bugs are not a sign of a dirty home. They do not come in through the soil like ants or through drains like cockroaches. They travel on people and on objects. A bed bug that is in your bed right now got there by hitching a ride on something that came into your home or on someone who visited.

Travel is the most common way bed bugs enter Spring Hill homes. Hotels, motels and vacation rentals throughout Florida have ongoing bed bug pressure because of the constant turnover of guests. A single infested room is all it takes. Bed bugs crawl into luggage, into the folds of clothing and into any fabric item that sits on an infested surface. You bring the luggage home, you set it on the floor or the bed and within days you have bed bugs in your bedroom.

Used furniture is the second most common source in Spring Hill. A couch, a bed frame, a dresser or any upholstered item that came from a home with bed bugs can introduce them to yours. Bed bugs survive for months without feeding which means a piece of furniture that has been in storage or at a thrift store can still be harboring live bed bugs when it arrives in your home.

Guests who have bed bugs at home can also bring them without knowing it. Bed bugs crawl into personal items, clothing and bags and travel with their host. A visitor who is dealing with an undetected bed bug infestation at home can unknowingly introduce them to yours during a stay.

The Fastest Way to Confirm What You Found

If you still have the bug put it in a sealed plastic bag or a container with a lid. Do not squish it. A live specimen or even a dead intact one can be identified with certainty. Take a clear close up photo of it next to something that gives a sense of scale like a coin and call us. We can identify it from a photo immediately and tell you whether what you found is a bed bug or something else entirely.

If the bug is gone and you are not sure what you saw look for the evidence bed bugs leave behind in your mattress seams. Tiny dark droppings that smear reddish brown when dabbed with a damp cloth, shed skins in the seams and folds of the mattress and small rust colored blood spots on the mattress surface or sheets. Finding any of those alongside a sighting of the bug gives you a much clearer picture of what you are dealing with.

If You Find Any of This Call Us Today

If what you found matches the description of a bed bug or if you find supporting evidence in your mattress seams call us the same day. Do not move to a different room to sleep. Do not strip the bed and wash everything before we inspect. Do not spray anything on the mattress. All of those responses feel like the right thing to do and all of them make the situation harder to resolve. Moving to a different room causes bed bugs to follow their food source which is you and spreads the infestation. Washing the bedding removes the evidence that tells us exactly where the colony is concentrated. Spraying the mattress scatters bed bugs deeper into the structure and into the walls. Our bed bug removal in Spring Hill starts with confirming what is actually there before anything else happens. You get a straight answer before we do anything.