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Check your Motel for Bed Bugs
This is Roger Tinker, owner and general manager of All Star Pest Control located in Columbus, GA.I am going to be discuss habits of bed bugs, why they are found in many motels and how to look for bed bugs before you accept a motel room.
I want to start out and tell you motels do not want bed bugs, and the majority of motel staff work very hard not to have them. Even the best efforts can not stop all of the bed bugs.
Bed bugs only meal is blood and nothing else. Bed bugs travel by hitch hiking with humans. They hide during the day and wait for you to go to sleep and then crawl on your body and spend up to 30 minutes sucking blood from your body. Most of the time you will feel nothing. Only a few people will feel anything when they wake up. Ther are usually small blood spots on the sheets where you slept if you were bitten by the bed bugs.
It is interesting to note that people that toss and turn all night long very seldom are bitten by bed bugs. Bed bugs wait until they intended body is asleep and very still before they crawl on to the body to begin taking their meal. This explains why 2 people can sleep in the same bed and only one person gets bitten by bed bugs,
The reason that motels are prone to have bed bugs is because of the amount of people that come and go to motels. People travel from many places and bring bed bugs in to the hotels without ever knowing that they brought them in. Chemical applications can help deter bed bugs, but it will not stop or eliminate them.
Motels have had no choice, but the raise rates help with the expense of battling bed bugs. Intense, timely and costly treatments are necessary once an infestation is discovered. Motels want to treat quickly to keep the infestation from getting worse and spreading.
I would not spend the night in a motel until I checked the room for bed bugs before I agreed to rent the room. I would also advise you to go to the internet and look at the pictures of bed bugs if you have not seen them before. The first thing is to know what you are looking for. I would start by looking at the headboard of the bed, Many headboards are attached to the wall which makes a good hiding place for bed bugs. They just wait for a victim to come in and go to sleep. I would also look at the seams of the mattress for bed bugs or black droppings of any type. This would indicate bed bug activity. Look inside the drawers of the furniture for the same signs. I would then proceed to any closets and look at any cracks that would make a good hiding place for bed bugs. Look behind pictures attached to walls and especially the pictures close to the beds. I have seen bed bugs hide in alarm clocks, under lamps and even in thermostats on the wall. You may not be able to check everything, but the things I have described here are a very good starting point for detecting bed bugs. The more rooms you check will increase your ability to find bed bugs.
If you find bed bugs in a room, you should politely tell the manager what you found. Most managers want to know if there is a problem so they can handle the problem. Please do not make a scene and embarrass yourself. We all can be a part of the solution by working together to help stop the spread of bed bugs. Let’s not take them home to our house.
Please feel free to contact me if I can help you or be of any service to you.
