Where Do Bed Bugs Come From?

A common question asked by many home owners and Apartments and Hotels. We have discovered and rid countless residences of nasty bed bug infestations. We are providing here some true stories that might help you understand the problem and solution.

Bed Bug Infestation

Orangeburg County, South Carolina

Orangeburg, South Carolina is located about 37 miles from Columbia, South Carolina with a population of around 16,000 residents. A late night call came in from a lady in Orangeburg in which she had been fighting bedbugs for almost a full year.

She had gone to Ace Hardware and bought their bed bug spray. She finally called us to professionally treat her home because she had finally given up trying to kill them herself. She said the bed bugs had started in her son’s room which she had cleared out and sprayed pesticides.

After a trip to downtown Orangeburg she decided to call our company BBDS to get rid of her bed bug infestation. After discussing the pros and cons of pesticides versus heat treatment, she decided to go with heat because a pest control professional had told her she would need to throw away her kids bed set. With the heat treatment she was able to be done with the bed bugs in one day and she didn’t have to get rid of her son’s furniture. Now one home in Orangeburg, SC is back to normal and bed bug free.

Santee, South Carolina is a town in Orangeburg, SC and has approximately 1,000 residents living there. We treated a lake house there which had a large bed bug infestation. It was an interesting case as the guy living in the home had tried (as many do) to self-treat. He used all the local store bed bug chemicals, the D.E. organic dust, rubbing alcohol, etc. He knew that he was killing them, but couldn’t figure out why he couldn’t get rid of all of them and why he kept being bitten.

An interesting Bed Bug approach to a meal . . .

When we went to Santee to do the heat treatment we were surprised to see how he had put double sided sticky tape as well as duct tape all around his mattress, box spring, and bed frame. As we began to look around the room we noticed some bed bug poop going up the wall and some poop going across the ceiling. It was clear that the bed bugs were avoiding the organic dust and tape by going up the wall, across the ceiling and then dropping onto the bed. His home was heat treated and now he is able to live in Santee on the lake and enjoy his life once again.

Another Bed Bug Infestation

Richland County

Columbia, South Carolinais the capital of South Carolina and is located about two hours north of Charleston, having a population of around 130,000 residents. Recall a case in which a luxury apartment community was told by a tenant that they were afraid they might have picked up bed bugs while on vacation in India.

Our K-9 team was sent to Columbia and the tenant did in fact have a medium sized bed bug infestation. As a precaution we then recommended that all adjoining apartments have a K-9 inspection to ensure that the bed bugs had not traveled between walls and into other apartments. After K-9 inspection it was concluded that no other units were infested and the original bed bug unit was heat treated to eradicate the bed bugs which were found in it. Our K-9 team does a complimentary follow-up four to five weeks post-heat treatment to ensure that treatment was a success.

This apartment complex was able to carry on without any further issues pertaining to the original infestation. Since they had a sprinkler system they did have to contact their sprinkler company to have spray heads changed over to commercial grade heads in order that they not go off or be damaged during the heat process. Once we completed the heat treatment they contacted their sprinkler company and had the standard sprinkler heads put back on. The lady that lived in the Columbia apartment had never had any reaction to the bed bug bites, but her boyfriend had been at her apartment and he had a pretty major allergic reaction to the bed bugs. She really didn’t need a K-9 follow-up, all she needed was to have her boyfriend visit her and if there were any bed bugs that had found a cool spot during the heat process, he would have been the first to know. Luckily, this Columbia resident reported that he had no more bites or itching and no other issues were reported.

Professional Bed Bug Inspection

It can take two trained technicians up to two hours to search one bedroom for bed bugs visually and they only have around 25% accuracy. Inspecting an entire home with an IBBMA certified canine and handler can be completed in a number of minutes with accuracy of 90% or greater. Bed Bugs are excellent hitchhikers and just like lice they are parasites and need people or animal blood to survive. 

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Bed Bug Detection Remediation Services of South Carolina is a division of FFR, Inc.