Bed bugs are a process, not a spray
Bed bug eggs survive most chemical treatments. That single fact governs everything: any treatment that does not account for the egg cycle will appear to work for about ten days and then fail, which is why so many people have paid for a treatment and been bitten again a fortnight later.
Our standard programme is two visits about two weeks apart. The first treats the active population, the second deals with everything that has hatched since. Skipping the second visit is the single most common reason a bed bug job fails.
Heat treatment
For severe infestations, or where the property cannot be out of use for a fortnight, heat treatment raises the room to a temperature lethal to bed bugs at every life stage, eggs included, in one visit. It costs more, and it is usually the right answer for furnished rentals between tenants, hotel rooms, and cases where the infestation has spread beyond the bedroom.
Where they actually are
Not only the mattress. Bed bugs harbour in the bed frame joints, behind headboards, in the seams of upholstered furniture, behind skirting, and in the backs of bedside units. A treatment that covers only the mattress misses most of the population. We inspect all of it and tell you what we find.
Discretion
People are embarrassed about bed bugs, and they should not be — infestations travel in luggage and furniture and have nothing to do with how clean a home is. If you would rather the building did not see a pest control van outside, say so when you book and we will attend in an unmarked vehicle.
Cost
The chemical programme starts at AED 400, excluding VAT, covering both visits. Heat treatment is quoted after inspection because it depends on the area and the furniture involved.
How to tell it is bed bugs
Bites alone are not proof. Plenty of people call us about bed bugs and have mosquitoes or fleas, and a few call about a skin reaction and have bed bugs they have not seen. Look for the physical evidence rather than the marks on your skin.
- Dark spotting on the seams. The most reliable sign. Small dark dots, like a ballpoint pen touched to fabric, along mattress piping, in the joints of a wooden bed frame, and behind a padded headboard. That is digested blood, and it does not wipe off cleanly.
- Blood smears on the sheet. Small rust-coloured smears, usually where an arm or a leg rested.
- Shed skins and eggs. Translucent empty casings in the same seams, and eggs about a millimetre long, pearly white, glued into cracks in ones and twos. Eggs mean an established population, not something carried in last night.
- Live insects. Adults are flat, oval and about the size of an apple seed, reddish-brown, and get rounder and darker after feeding. Young ones are much smaller and almost colourless until they have fed, which is why people miss them.
- Smell. A heavy infestation has a sweetish, musty smell in the bedroom. If you notice it, the problem is not small.
- The pattern of the bites. Often several in a rough line or cluster on skin that was uncovered — shoulders, arms, neck, ankles. Mosquito bites tend to be single and scattered, and flea bites cluster around the ankles and lower legs.
One thing worth knowing: reactions vary enormously. It is common for one person in a bed to come up in welts while their partner has nothing at all, and that is not evidence against bed bugs. Send us a photograph of the mattress seam rather than the bites — it tells us far more.
Chemical or heat: which one you need
Both work. They suit different situations, and the honest answer usually comes out of the inspection rather than the phone call.
The two-visit chemical programme is the right choice for most homes. It costs less, it leaves a residual that keeps working between visits, and you can stay in the property throughout. The trade-offs are that it takes two visits about a fortnight apart, it needs preparation from you, and it only clears the property once the second visit has dealt with what hatched after the first.
Heat treatment raises the room and its contents well above 50°C and holds it there for several hours, measured at the coldest points in the room rather than in the middle of it. That kills every life stage including eggs, in one visit, with no waiting on the egg cycle. It costs more, and a few things have to come out of the room first — aerosols, candles and wax, some electronics, musical instruments, vinyl records, anything heat-sensitive. It is the right answer when a furnished apartment has to be ready for a new tenant next week, when a hotel room cannot be out of service for a fortnight, or when the infestation has spread past the bedroom into a sofa and an armchair.
The one thing neither method survives is a partial job. If a problem is travelling between two bedrooms, or between two apartments through a shared wall, treating one room clears it for a while and then it comes back from the other side.
How to prepare
Preparation makes a real difference to whether one programme is enough. Before the first visit:
- Strip all bedding and wash it at 60°C, or tumble dry it hot for at least thirty minutes. Heat is what kills them, not detergent.
- Put the laundry straight into sealed bags and take it to the machine — do not carry an armful through the flat, and do not pile it on a clean sofa.
- Do not move to another room to sleep. This is the mistake that turns a bedroom problem into a whole-apartment problem. Bed bugs follow where a person sleeps. Stay in the same bed until the programme is finished.
- Do not spray a supermarket insecticide first. Repellent sprays scatter them deeper into the structure and into adjoining rooms, and they make a bait-and-residual programme measurably harder.
- Clear the floor around and under the bed so the technician can reach the frame, the skirting and the sockets. Leave the bed where it is.
- Vacuum the bedroom, then empty the vacuum into a sealed bag and put it in the outside bin immediately.
- Do not throw the mattress out. Most can be treated and encased, and a mattress carried through the building on the way to a skip spreads the problem to the corridor and the lift.
- Tell us if a neighbouring flat has the same problem, or if you are in a building where furnished units turn over quickly. It changes what we recommend.
After the treatment, and keeping them out
Expect to see some live bed bugs for up to a fortnight after the first visit, and expect the occasional bite in that window. It does not mean the treatment failed — the residual has to be walked through, and eggs are still hatching until the second visit deals with them. Keep sleeping in the same bed, and do not spray anything over the treated areas.
Once it is clear, almost everything that keeps it clear is about what comes into the property.
- After travel, do not put the suitcase on the bed. Unpack it in the bathroom or on a hard floor, put the clothes straight into a hot tumble dry, and keep the case out of the bedroom.
- Check hotel and short-let rooms for two minutes on arrival: lift the mattress corner and look at the piping and the headboard. That habit prevents most reinfestations.
- Be careful with secondhand furniture, particularly upholstered items and wooden bed frames. In the UAE this is one of the most common routes into a home.
- Encase the mattress and box spring. A proper zipped encasement traps anything missed and makes future inspection quick.
- If you are taking over a furnished apartment, get it inspected before your own furniture goes in. It is the cheapest bed bug decision available, and it is the single most common way we see bed bugs move in Dubai and Sharjah apartments — see residential pest control for what a handover inspection covers.
For furnished rentals, staff accommodation and hotels where turnover is constant, a scheduled programme is cheaper than reacting to complaints — the annual contract page covers how that works, and pricing sets out the bands. Restaurants and other food premises with a bed bug problem in staff areas should look at commercial pest control instead.