A1 Home Pest Control, Inc.

Scoop on Bed Bugs:

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• Bed bugs do not discern a clean home from a messy unkempt one, they will infest in ANY home. They harbor in the areas you spend the most time in such as: couches, beds, chairs, desks, night stands, and head boards. They are very fast and travel through electrical outlets to get from one room to the next.

• Bed bug bites can occur not only humans, but on your pets as well.  This means the area your pet sleeps in will have an infestation also. Sensitivity to the bites vary from person to person; some feel it right away while others do not feel any irritation at all. These bites also mimic other pest bites in appearance and can happen instantly or take over a week before being seen. 

• Good news: bed bugs DO NOT transmit diseases !!!! But the collection of feces and blood spots on a heavy infestation will cause health issues to you, but the bed bug itself does not.

• Bed bugs are a light brown color (almost translucent), flat, and have an oval body. After they feed, they become blood red or darker brown in color. They shed their exoskeleton five times before becoming an adult.  They are often confused with fleas, ticks and sometimes juvenile roaches.

• One female bed bug can lay 1-3 eggs a day, that is over 200 eggs during her life, which is generally 10-12 months. The eggs generally hatch within 5 - 10 days and start breeding within one months under optimal enviornmental conditions!                        

 

Bed Bug Feeding Information:  

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• Bed bugs are attracted to the carbon dioxide emitted by their hosts. For this reason, they tend to feed at night on bare skin that is exposed while sleeping. However, they are opportunistic insects and will consume a blood meal during the day, especially in heavily-infested areas. Although bed bugs prefer to feed on humans, they will feed on other warm-blooded hosts as well.

• Bed bugs usually require 5-10 minutes to engorge with blood. They feed by inserting two hollow, beak-like feeding tubes into their host. The first tube injects the bug's saliva which contains anesthetics to numb the feeding area. The second tube draws blood. After feeding, they move to secluded places and hide for 5-10 days. During this time they do not feed, but instead digest their meal in order to do any of the following: cast exoskeleton to achieve the next stage if they are not an adult, mate and/or lay eggs.

• They will not be attracted to any hormones, pheromones or other chemicals that say they will attract them and kill them. It is a waste of money, you can "monitor" the population but this needs to be done in a very particular way in order to be effective. 

 

How To Control An Infestation:

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We highly recommend that you seek assistance from a professional pest control company.

Controlling an infestation requires very detailed work, much moving and disassembly of furniture, and specialty equipment. Careful inspections must be completed in conjunction with non-chemical controls (such as heat treatments, vacuuming, and steam treatments) and insecticide treatments. The insecticides available are commercial products requiring special equipment and training. The insecticides available in over-the-counter products and methods used by residents are not effective in controlling bed bugs.

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A1 Home Pest Control's method  for controlling bed bugs in homes is the use of heat treatment, supplemented with chemicals that are safe. Specialized equipment is used to raise the temperatures in target areas to 118° F and higher and then maintain it for at least 70 minutes. All stages of bed bugs are killed when this is done properly. While very effective, heat treatment does not prevent bed bugs from being brought back into a home and re-infesting it, no treatment can, not even fumigation.

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It is important to cooperate with a pest control service. However, it should not be necessary to have to move or discard your furniture and your belongings out of your home, especially from an apartment or condominium. Sometimes furniture is removed and heat treated in a container, but it would be rare to actually need to throw items away.

 

 What Does A-1 Home Pest Control Offer For Bed Bug Infestations:

   

• We first start with a bed bug inspection of the structure in question.

 

• Next we review our findings and go over the action plan that we have tailored to you and your structure. We will educate you and answer any questions you may have. We will NOT perform treatments the same day as the bed bug inspection. We do not want our clients making an emotional decision and want you to evaluate all of your options and choices first. We will do them the next day or when it is convenient for you.

• The first step is to nail down the best we can how the infestation was introduced to the structure, this is VITAL! With out this you can waste a lot of money regardless of the company you use. We are not here to judge or place blame, we are here to educate you on how to keep it from happening again and to cut off the source so you do not get another infestation right after you had an expensive treatment done. We are only here to kill your bed bugs, while giving you support and making it an easy of a process as we can.

 

• Please note we try to shoot for 100% kill rate on the first treatment but this is hard to do and general not the norm. Our experience is you should experience 85-90% kill rate on first treatment and after the follow up the rest should be killed. This isn't unusual but is a strong indication that some one in the structure is bringing them in from some where or some one or something is bringing them to you. If elimination is not reached after the second follow up, we have not nailed down the source of where they are coming in from, which generally means the client has not been completely honest. We see this A LOT!  That is why we say, please tell us before first treatment where you think the issue may have come from honestly, so we can eliminate this issue. You can pick up bed bugs from ANYWHERE! A bus, taxi, airport, hospice, assisted living facility that a loved one lives at, co workers at your office. Visiting relatives or friends that have them but are unaware or just do not tell you.

 

• Our treatments consist of an advanced thermal heat treatment of the entire structure, chemical wall void treatment, chemical barrier treatment in each affected room, chemical application in the crawl space (when accessible), chemical application when applicable in the vehicle, 30 day service warranty and one mandatory follow up treatments/inspections. We do not treat one room and charge for additional rooms, the pricing is for ALL rooms! A1 Home Pest Control will also apply chemicals to furniture if and when needed.

• Our bed bug treatments comes with a full home pest control treatment as a courtesy to you. We will sweep the eves, apply a chemical barrier to the exterior of the house and bait the interior hot spots. Since a bed bug treatment is taxing and very tedious to perform, the courtesy pest control treatment will most likely take place on the first two week follow up inspection/treatment.                                                                       

 What A-1 Home Pest Control, Inc expects and/or requires from you before, during and after the treatment: given to you on the client prep sheet prior to treatment .