Bed Bug HotSpots: “I think they’re inside my mattress!”
They cannot go through fabric or eat their way through materials. Bed bugs cannot be inside your mattress, unless it is torn or damaged.
The initial instinct after discovering bed bugs crawling across a furniture can be to throw it all away, and assume the pests have left the building with the furniture. Unfortunately, this is not always an effective solution to evicting bed bugs from a property as they may be hiding in other places. Throwing furniture away may sometimes greatly reduce the population of the infestation but often the insects feel disturbed and they drop off deliberately.
Why are bed bugs rarely nesting on pillows or duvets?
Bed bugs are rarely nesting on pillows or duvets, as it’s too risky for them to settle there. It is a waste of money to throw these items away if they are not torn and in good usable condition. Seeing them crawl over your mattress or clothes during the daytime can also be a sign of the bed bugs being disturbed. This behaviour is usually observed when the bed bugs are (insufficiently) poisoned and they come out of their hiding spots in an effort to flee and survive. An example scenario is DIY treatment of an infestation, where the bed bugs know they are at risk and need to crawl out for a new settlement zone.
Bed bugs are sometimes nesting on the mattress, if they are completely undisturbed or unnoticed by their host.
Another reason you may observe bed bugs on your mattress is due to them being highly active at night when the host is not active, giving them a good chance to feed without being caught. Same is applicable to any other furniture that is your resting place, like the comfortable reclining chair in the sitting room, or the sofa bed. It can be a good practice to use encasements to protect the quality of your mattress but this is just another layer on top of the mattress that is usually bed bug proof anyway.
Author:
Bed Bug Hunters & Prime Pest Control Team