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When you first discover a possible bed bug problem in your home in can all be quite daunting. Initially you want to find them and this can be difficult to do. Bed bugs will hide in the tiniest cracks and crevices in rooms where you rest or sleep. You won’t find them in kitchens or bathrooms as there isn’t an opportunity for the bed bugs to feed from us in these rooms.  During the first few weeks of an infestation there are so few bugs that it is very hard to find them.  This is a good time to use a bed bug sniffer dog. Bed bug dogs are 98% accurate. They will alert on just one bed bug, if your bites have just started this is the best time to call us as you can start the treatment process very early on in the infestation.

A bed bug sniffer dog is also a great tool for checking if your bed bug problem has been eradicated. Whether you are treated by Trust K9 or a different bed bug specialist we can use our bed bug sniffer dogs to confirm if the treatment has worked. If you do have a chemical treatment we would need to wait 30 days from the date of treatment to use a bed bug sniffer dog.

Things to remember when having a treatment.

We will always advise treating all bedrooms and living rooms in your property as these are the main areas that bed bugs live. Nothing will need to be bagged up or thrown away. When treating the whole property a six month guarantee will be given with your treatment.

When bagging up items you can trap bed bugs. Bed bugs can live for up to 18 months without a feed which can make it possible to re infest yourself at a late stage.

Please call us for a tailor made quotation to irradiate the bed bug problem in your home. Our lines are open 24 hours a day.

Whether you’re buying or renting a property, there is always the possibility that something else could already be living there. We recently carried a bed bug heat treatment for a couple in Walthamstow. Their story was a little different but for us it wasn’t all that unusual.

When moving into a new property you always view it first. You look for signs of damage or things that are out of the ordinary. We might have a nosey in the cupboards and imagine how many new shoes we can store in there. The one thing the majority of us don’t check for is a bed bug infestation.

The hardest part about checking for a bed bug infestation is that there may be no obvious signs. To thoroughly search for bed bugs in a property would involve stripping the bed, removing the mattress and turning the bed over, all to look for bed bug poo.

There’s the chance you might not find any evidence and doesn’t mean they’re not there, or you could be looking in the wrong place all together.

Dave and Jan from Walthamstow had purchased their first home together. The property had a bed bug problem that they weren’t aware of. They had planned to redecorate before moving in to their two bedroom flat. Some of the furniture had been moved in. Whilst decorating Jan had a quick nap on the bed and woke up to find three fat bed bugs crawling away from her. With a few hours she had bite marks around her wrists. She acted quickly luckily knowing what bed bugs were (she had lived in New York). They called us in and had a heat treatment carried out and within 24 hours they were clear of bed bugs and guaranteed for six months.

However could this problem of been prevented? Could it have been found before the house was bought?

You can have a bed bug canine search carried out to a property you are interested in buying or renting before you move in! That way you can decide whether to move in and treat, treat and then move in or not move in at all and continue looking for you dream home.

Call us today for some free friendly advice.

Did you see us on TV?

Alfie getting ready for Filming!

We participated in a four part series produced by KEO Films for the BBC Two Show The Lady Killers: Pest Detectives. The show is following four female pest controllers as they go about there daily routine. They are following Imogen of Tufnell Park Pest Control, Janet of Kwickill Pest Control, Deborah of Des Bone Pest Control and Angela of Conquer Pest Control. During the show Imogen calls in Claire and Alfie to carry out a canined bed bug search. She also calls Trust K9 out to carry out  three heat treatments over the course of the show.

Here is the link to the first episode.  The next episode will be aired at 8pm on Wednesday 1st of April 2015 on BBC Two.

Following the show The Guardian, Telegraph and Daily Mail wrote reviews which featured Alfie.

Dont forget to visit our Facebook page and let us know what you think 🙂

4 of the most common mistakes in the control/eradication of bedbugs

As a company that deals exclusively with the eradication of bed bugs our engineers often come across customers who have been misinformed about the most effective treatments. In many cases, this can lead to spreading or even aggravating the insects, making the problem much worse and harder to get rid of.

We have come up with a simple guide to help you avoid making some of these most common mistakes:

1. Wrapping up clothes and bed linens in sealed bin liners or  plastic bags.

Although this can create a physical barrier between you and a small number of the insects, some bugs will survive in these bags –and they can survive for up to 18 months- only to infest your property and start to bite again once the bags are opened at a later date.

2. Throwing away your mattresses.

Although Bedbugs often travel over mattresses, in the vast majority of cases you won’t find harborages in them and so it’s not necessary to spend a lot of time and money on replacing them. Even if a small number of bugs are found in the seams of a mattress, it’s often possible to treat those affected areas with heat or none-residual chemicals. However, mattresses that contain cardboard or wood or have holes in may cause a problem.

3 Turning up the central heating to make all the eggs hatch.

Some pest controllers will advise you to take this approach with the intention of killing all the adult and nymph insects on the day of treatment and hoping there will be no eggs left afterwards. THIS WILL NOT WORK. Raising the temperature will give the bedbugs a boost in energy so that they will breed faster and simply lay more eggs. The only way to deal with all the bedbugs, including eggs and without heat treatment is to use residual pesticides and make sure that once the eggs hatch they have to cross over these pesticides on their way to feed.

4 Flying, Jumping, Living in your skin or on your person.

Being bitten by a parasite, especially a bedbug can be hugely traumatic and cause a great deal of psychological distress. If you are being bitten by an insect in your own home and especially in your own bed it’s easy to become paranoid about them. However bed bugs do not like motion or movement so as soon as they feel it’s safe enough to do so they will scurry away to a crack or crevice.

We will happily pass on any advice.

Please do not hesitate to call us on the number above.