Most people won’t realize they have bed bugs until they see a bite. Biting usually happens when a person is sleeping, often an hour or so before sunrise. It’s painless, so the person being bitten is unlikely to feel anything at all. “They call them bed bugs because they want to be close to you when you sleep and take the opportunity when you don’t notice them to feed on you,” says Braun.
After bugs are fed, they tend to bring them back to the crevices where they were hiding. So if you don’t look for them, you probably won’t spot the bugs roaming your room. For most people, the first sign of a bed bug problem is waking up with itchy bites that weren’t there the night before. But not everyone reacts the same way to bedbug bites, and some people either don’t react at all or their reaction may not happen until weeks after you feed them.
Adding to the confusion is the fact that not all bites look the same. Some can look like mosquito bites while others can be large welts that won’t go away for weeks. Sometimes you’ll notice a series of bites while sometimes it may just be a single bite.
Bed bugs are not known to spread disease and in most cases the bites are harmless other than extremely itchy. In some cases, the bites can trigger an allergic reaction that requires medical attention.
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The bites can show up anywhere the bed bugs can access while sleeping – your back, neck, face, arms, or legs are all options. (This is a key difference between bug bites and flea bites, which only show up around the lower legs and ankles.)
To confirm that you have a bed bug problem, you (or an expert you hire) must try to locate the bed bugs. You may notice skins that the nymphs shed and that are usually translucent or light-colored, says Lazarus. Other signs include brown or red fecal marks on your mattress or bed sheet. Usually these dark spots indicate where a group of bugs are hiding together.
Bed bugs can also have what Lazarus describes as sickly sweet, like the smell of rotting raspberries. However, Braun says it would have to be a pretty serious infestation for most people to smell it. Some dogs have been specially trained to spot bed bugs, much like dogs can be trained to sniff out drugs or bombs, Braun notes.
It is difficult to confirm the presence of bed bugs from bites alone, as they can easily be mistaken for flea or mosquito bites. (3) But knowing about bedbug tendencies will give you an idea of what to look out for so you can safely identify them.
